Trauma Symptoms of Adult Children of Alcoholics

It may play out as impulsive decision-making, or an inability to make decisions at all. When our personal world and the relationships within it become very unpredictable or unreliable, we may experience a loss of trust and faith in both relationships and in life’s ability to repair and renew itself. It is also why having a spiritual belief system can be so helpful in personal healing because hope and a sense of a larger more perfect order tend to be part of such systems. The numbing response along with the emotional constriction that is a natural part of the trauma response may influence our ability to accept care and support from others. Our willingness to let love and support feel good may lessen because we we fear that letting our guard down will only set ourselves up for more loss or pain. So we protect ourselves, imagining that by avoiding meaningful connection we will also avoid hurt (van der Kolk, 1987).

• As a result of the relationship dynamics in your family, you may feel terrified of abandonment or have difficulty with intimate relationships.
• Or they’ll purposefully create conflict with you so that they “need a drink to calm down.” And when you blame yourself for such an intense issue at a young age, you may begin to believe there’s something wrong with you.
• They may learn to bend the truth, for example, to make it less frightening, creating “reasons” for their parent’s erratic behavior that are less threatening than the truth.

How an Alcoholic Parent Affects Adult Children

They make excuses for their partner’s abusive behavior, much like they excused their parents’ behavior as children. And once they do get into a long-term relationship, they may be afraid to leave it, even if it is dysfunctional. Or they may form codependent relationships because they believe it’s their responsibility to take care of the other person no matter what. The researchers then tracked the risk of mental health disorders for each subtype.

FAQ: Common Questions About Adult Child Syndrome

They may have trouble with commitment, be unable to hold on to a job, and rely on others financially and emotionally. An ACoA’s feeling of mistrust that can manifest as resistance is the truly unconscious nature of traumatic memory. Because the cortex was not fully involved in the storage of traumatic memories, the ACoA may have never processed the experiences nor put them into a logical context and sequence. Consequently, the traumatic memories can be difficult to access through reflective talking alone (Sykes Wylie, , 2004). This can be interpreted by the therapist as what may appear to be resistance but in reality is related to a loss of access not only to repressed feeling, but also to any understanding of what actually may have occurred.

You might also end up spending a lot of time addressing the consequences of these actions. It may initially feel daunting to uncover past traumas, but you can heal—and multiple pathways can help you get there. If you’re a treatment provider and have a question, please reach out and someone from our Customer Success team will be in touch with you shortly. Accurate, complete profiles best connect you with the right people for your services.

• One reason for this is that many children of alcoholics believe they’re to blame for their parent’s addiction.
• For example, if you couldn’t depend on your parent to feed you breakfast or take you to school in the morning, you may have become self-reliant early on.
• Some adult children of alcoholics, (or ACoAs) turn to alcohol themselves, while others find themselves disconnected from the world around them.
• Children who grow up in these circumstances are at risk for adult child syndrome.

What is the impact of adult child syndrome on relationships?

If you grew up in a house where substance abuse was common, you are more likely to abuse alcohol later in life. When caretakers have lax attitudes around drinking alcohol, they normalize substance abuse. You may grow up thinking alcohol or drug abuse isn’t a serious problem. In fact, issues stemming from addicted parenting can still impact older adults. Every month, 150,000 people search for addiction or mental health treatment on Recovery.com. There are several issues relevant to the effects of trauma on a child in these types of households.

Help Is Available at The Bridge to Recovery

Watching someone we love slowly become someone we cannot make sense of can shake us to the core. Family members may twist or distort their own reasoning to make this destabilizing experience easier to manage or less “real,” by essentially denying reality. Also as children, we make sense of situations with the developmental equipment we have at any given age; when we’re young we either borrow the reasoning of the adults around us or make our own childlike meaning. This “child think” may be saturated with what psychologists call magical thinking or interpretations that are laced with immature or even fantastical conclusions. It may also be influenced by the natural egocentricity of the child who feels that the world circulates around and because of them. This kind of reasoning can be immature and distorted and can be carried into and played out in adult relationships.

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The idea of “looking good” becomes a critical survival strategy and keeps the family from having to endure the pain slipping ever further into dis-ease. Because of her need to “look good” to herself and her family, the CoA may take refuge in creating a persona that is workable and acceptable within the family as it exists, at the expense of her own authentic self. We all, adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome to some extent, cultivate a false self (Horney, 1950) for protection, but the CoA may become her false self and lose touch with who she really is on the inside. Beneath the false self lies the fear of exposure, which can make the CoA, once they have grown up and become an ACoA, want to cling to it at all costs. This can complicate recovery as it feel dangerous to expose the confusion and pain that the false self was designed to keep in place.

The cumulative effect of childhood toxic stress is part of what gives the ACoA trauma syndrome teeth. And although toxic stressors are common throughout society, some are more devastating than others. When CoAs move into adulthood with a history of childhood trauma, they are more vulnerable to being traumatized as adults (Krystal, 1968).

Recognizing Adult Child Syndrome in Yourself

ACoAs can and often do suffer from some features of post-traumatic stress syndrome that are the direct result of living with the traumatizing effects of addiction. Years after we leave our alcoholic homes behind, we carry the effects of them with us, we import past, unresolved pain into present day relationships–but again, without a lot of awareness as to how or why. At many rehabs, you can find support groups for people experiencing the same issues.

Many ACoAs also have trouble regulating their emotions.11 You most likely didn’t grow up with a positive model of emotional self-control because you may have seen your parents use alcohol to cope with unwanted feelings. Or you may have witnessed them become extremely emotionally volatile while drinking. So you didn’t have a chance to learn how to manage your emotions or react to others’ emotions in a positive way. It’s common for ACoAs to feel responsible for their parent’s addiction and its consequences. Sometimes that’s because a parent directly places blame on their child through their words or actions.

Even those with a higher genetic risk for AUD can often take a harm reduction approach when they learn to better understand their triggers, risk factors, and engagement with substances, Peifer says. You can’t predict how the alcoholic will behave from one day to another. There is often constant arguing, little order, and no way to know what to expect around routines and needs.

Decoding the Laundry List: A Deep Dive into Adult Children of Alcoholics Traits

However, if young adults find that feeling like a child is negatively affecting their life and social development, it’s important for them to seek help from a mental health professional. In disaster situations, the smallest form of involvement can allow victims to be less symptomatic. Even cleaning up branches and debris after a hurricane can allow those affected to restore a sense that they can do something to improve their situation, which counters the PTSD symptom of learned helplessness. Experts highly recommend working with a therapist, particularly one who specializes in trauma or substance use disorders. According to Peifer, a mental health professional can help you connect deep-rooted fears and wounds stemming from childhood to behaviors, responses, and patterns showing up in your adult life.