Adult Children of Alcoholics: does the pain ever go away?

In 1980, when the term “adult child of alcoholic” (ACOA) was coined, ACOAs came out of the woodwork, testifying in droves to the confusion, resentment, and hurt that the child within them still hung onto.

They reported feeling, at times, like “children walking around in the bodies of grownups.” Both scared and relieved, they were admitting how much—after all these years—they still felt haunted by issues from their past. They grew up in families where alcohol had turned their cherished homes into terrifying places and the parents they adored into scary people. The tears flowed as they realized they weren’t the only ones who avoided bringing friends home, hid when their parent was drunk, and envied classmates with “normal” families.

The desire to heal

A movement was born—not political, but a campaign based on a need to reveal and a desire to heal.

As these “inner children” began to open up, they found they weren’t alone in having frozen and “forgotten” parts of themselves that they didn’t know what to do with. These hidden parts, not surprisingly, were becoming triggered when as adults, they began having families of their own.

Sitting in their living rooms with their spouses and children, they felt disturbed by scenes from yesteryear. All over again, they found themselves smack in the middle of the very situation that had traumatized them, to begin with, namely, a family.

ACOAs family relationships

For the ACOA having a family is like a car backfiring!

The natural feelings of intense closeness and dependency that are a part of living in a family can become potential triggers for the ACOA. Just like a soldier with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) “hits the dirt” when he hears a car backfire because his unconscious reads it as gunfire, an ACOA reacts emotionally when they fear a repeated situation to himself or the family he needs and loves.

This is why ACOA syndrome is a post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Long after the “stressor” is removed, the ACOA lives as if it is still present.

Long after they left home, got jobs, married, and had children, their unresolved pain from childhood still lives inside of them, waiting to be triggered to the surface through events that mirror the situations that hurt them to begin with.

The fear lives on

Beneath the level of their awareness, ACOAs get scared all over again. Their natural neediness makes them feel vulnerable. They wait for the proverbial roof to cave in the way it did when they were kids, for life and love to hurt and betray them all over again.

Ghosts from their past dance around their present. Unconsciously they see chaos, humiliating scenes, and out-of-control behaviour lurking just around the corner, which mocks and mimics their early childhood experience. They may be so convinced that distress is looming that they may feel mistrustful and suspicious if problems are solved too smoothly. They may even push a situation in a convoluted attempt at self-protection, trying to ferret out potential danger until, through their relentless efforts to avoid it, they create it. And so the pattern of emotional closeness and dependence leading to chaos, rage, and tears is once again reinforced and passed along.

The brain’s response to fear

Our thinking brain shuts down when we’re terrified, but our feeling brain keeps going and absorbing what’s around us. The cortex, where we think about and make sense of our feelings, shuts down when we’re in a state of terror.

When we’re scared, our limbic system takes over, and we go into fight/flight. Nature doesn’t want us thinking about running for safety when confronted with a charging, wild boar. It wants us to run.

But for a child, a drunk and raging or neglectful parent is just as terrifying as a sabre-toothed tiger and can throw them into extreme stress. They freeze in fear – like a deer in headlights, they get caught in a “startle response.” Following that is the attempt to fight or flee. If escape is possible, the experience of the near-trauma will be temporarily stressful, but the person is unlikely to develop full-blown post-traumatic stress disorder. If the intention to flee is prevented, a “freeze” response results. What is a child supposed to do? If they fight, they will eventually lose. The parent, after all, has the keys to the front door. And if they flee, where will they go?

Nowhere to run

All those fear-laden memories may have remained unconscious and unprocessed because the adults they would typically have gone to for comfort and to help them understand what was scaring them were unavailable. And to make matters even worse, it may have been the adults themselves causing the fear and stress. For children who grew up in addicted homes, there may have been nowhere to run.

For the child living with addiction, the COA becomes a double whammy. Not only are they being hurt and terrified, but the adult they would typically go to for comfort and to make sense of the situation is causing the pain or even blaming it on them. There is, in other words, no escape. This child is at a higher risk for developing PTSD.

How childhood pain gets played out in adult relationships

When children cannot make sense of frightening childhood experiences, those experiences do not necessarily disappear. Instead, the images, impressions, and feelings that surround them can remain locked within their unconscious, waiting to be triggered to the surface.

Unfortunately, when they surface, they often get projected onto the situation that triggered them, with little or no awareness of their deeper origins. They may see today’s circumstance as the sole cause of their intense emotional reactions and be entirely unaware that pain from their past may be driving an overreaction in their present.

This can make adult intimacy feel confusing and unmanageable because the past becomes mixed up with the present, and problems become more prominent and more complicated than necessary. Some psychologists call it relationship trauma because childhood trauma gets triggered and played out in adult relationships.

But there is a solution. The good news is that relationship trauma is very treatable. And the treatment itself becomes a journey of personal growth and a deepening of self-awareness.

At Hope Trust, counsellors identify such issues are identified, and a focused therapy process is initiated. The therapists work with experience and empathy to help adult children of alcoholics.

The therapy process for ACOAs brings balance back into a family affected by addiction.

Click www.hopetrustindia.com for an online or in-person appointment with an expert.