Alcoholism
 

The Signs

Thirteen characteristics of adult children of alcoholics Janet Geringer Woititz, widely acknowledged as the founder of the Adult Children of Alcoholics movement, lists 13 traits to look for.
These individuals:

• Can only guess what normal behavior is
• Have difficulty following a project from beginning to end
• Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth
• Judge themselves without mercy
• Have difficulty having fun
• Take themselves very seriously
• Have difficulty with intimate relationships
• Overreact to changes over which they have no control
• Constantly seek approval and affirmation
• Usually feel that they are different from other people
• Are either super responsible or super irresponsible—there's no middle ground
• Are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved
• Are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsively leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

WEB MD A Toxic Brew/Part I
 

A Toxic Brew



WebMD Commentary from "Psychology Today" Magazine




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If alcoholism seems like a lot to handle, imagine growing up with addicted parents. The alcoholic family is one of chaos, inconsistency, unclear roles, and illogical thinking. Arguments are pervasive, and violence or even incest may play a role. Children in alcoholic families suffer trauma as acute as soldiers in combat; they also carry the trauma like an albatross throughout their lives.
Not only is the experience devastating, it's common, says Stephanie Brown, founder of the Alcohol Clinic at Stanford Medical Center, where she formulated the developmental model of alcohol recovery. Seventy-six million Americans (about 45 percent of the U.S. population) have been exposed to alcoholism in the family in one way or another, and an estimated 26.8 million of them are children. "These children are more at risk for alcoholism and other drug abuse than are children of non-alcoholics, and more at risk of marrying an alcoholic as well."
Overcoming the legacy of a parent's alcoholism may be difficult in part because there is a long history of denial. "The family is dominated by the presence and denial of alcoholism, which becomes a major family secret," says Brown, today director of the Addictions Institute in Menlo Park, California. The secret becomes a governing principle required to hold the family together, the scaffolding for coping strategies and shared beliefs, without which the family might fall apart.
Claudia Black, a leading expert on adult children of alcoholics and author of It Will Never Happen to Me, says these children grow up with three dangerous rules: don't trust, don't feel, and don't talk. Since alcoholic parents are so self-absorbed, they forget birthdays and other important events, leaving their children with the sense that they can have faith in no one. Since the parents inflict so much pain on their families, they teach their children to suppress their emotions just to survive. Indeed, alcoholic parents are prone to angry or violent outbursts that (along with the drinking itself) they end up denying, and children in such a home may buy the delusion, themselves. Since the children are inculcated to deny the reality around them, they develop a resistance to talking about urgent, important, or meaningful aspects of life.
Brown adds that children of alcoholics may suffer depression, anxiety, and compulsions, all related to the grueling experience of growing up in such a home. Dealing with the legacy of disturbance means treating the traumatic stress, she says. First and foremost, adult children of alcoholics "have issues with control." That means they are afraid of others and have problems with intimacy; they harbor anxiety that if they lose control, they may become addicts themselves.
The most important emotional leap for such a survivor: Separating the past from the present. They must learn to realize that when they overreact to something now, "they are really feeling pain from the past." Once they have that skill, they can start to move on.
Brown recommends psychotherapy for adult children of alcoholics, and states that group therapy may work extremely well. "When family distortion is the problem, groups are ideal for bringing that out." Brown especially recommends seeking support from Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization or Co-Dependents Anonymous, which offer 12-step programs. If a group is unavailable, individual psychotherapy, family therapy, and even psychopharmacology can do a lot of good.


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((((((Nikko)))))),

WOW!! :mad:

I never until about 20 years ago realized how much damage my father's drinking did to our family.

He was a "good" drunk. Never missed work. Never hurt anyone. It depressed him and he fell asleep. AND, we had to be quiet when he was asleep. No friends allowed in the house. What a ****-head.

I made a conscious decision in 1990 that I would never drink again. Even though the only drinking that i ever did was a glass of sherry once in awhile with my sister-in-law (maybe one glass once a month). But, I was attending a group for adult child of alcoholics and it seemed rather ridiculous to let anything into my life that had done so much damage.

I can see that a lot of the personality 'defects' that my brother and my half-brother and I ended up with have their roots in alcoholism. I'm assuming there were other things too. It isn't always only one thing in a family that causes problems. It's when the whole confluence of them come together that you see ####.

It's kind of a wake-up call when you see it down on paper like that, isn't it :hug: Just know that every decision that you made because alcohol was involved was a decision that probably kept you safe. You don't have to live "INSIDE OF" or "WITH" these decisions anymore.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v9...beingthere.gif

Barb :hug:

I grew up with an alcoholic father, HE DIED AT 48, his father (GRANDFATHER) and then my mom started drinking at a later age. Yet her mom (GRANDMOTHER) was an alcoholic bad, and her dad was a drinker, but I wouldn't consider him an alcoholic.

My step-dad also was an alcoholic too.

I'm doomed in this category.

Nikko....I posted part II also.:grouphug:

This is part II from a Toxic Brew by WEB MD

Hi,

Thanks for posting this.
I bolded the ones that seem to apply to me.
My old tdoc helped me get rid of some of these things in my 20s and 30s (saw him for eight years.) Others I am still working on.

I once met a counselor who wanted me to go into treatment for Adult Children of Alcholics but I never returned after one session. She was too weird for me. Plus, I don't like counselors who seem to only have one trick up their sleeve or want to push something that they have embraced and act like it will solve all my problems.


The freaky thing in my family is that although my father is big drinker, he is saner than my mother. My mother is actually the crazy one. My siblings and I looked/still look to my father for stability and sanity. I suppose that I can be grateful to him for that.

M.

I certainly see some of the signs in me. My dad, grandfather,(dad's side) grandmother (mom's side) and later in life my mom, suffered from and suffer from alcohol. Then my step-dad.

I don't know what else to say, except it still hurts that my Dad died at 48 yrs old, I was only 22 or 23 at the time. To this day, they want me in therapy for it, because I never dealt with his death properly, so they say.

I sure miss him. He wasn't mean or angry or bad, he just couldn't stop drinking.

Nikko:grouphug:

I printed out both parts of this article. I needed to really read it on paper, then I gave it to my mom to read it, since she too is a child of an alcohlic mother, and whether she thinks she is one or not, that's her decision.

We haven't spoke about the article yet, it should be interesting when we do.

Nikko:grouphug: