For some reason this morning I was reading about Adult Children of Alcoholics. I think often we say to ourselves “if I have this new family and no one drinks and we go to church and we work hard then all that chaos I grew up in won’t affect me anymore. ” There is research that says even if the parents are adult children and there is no drinking in the home the effects can pass through to the next generation. This is a collection of statements often referred to as the “Laundry List for Adult Children”.
- We become isolated and afraid of other people, especially authority figures.
- We are frightened by anger and any personal criticism.
- We judge ourselves harshly and have low self-esteem.
- We don’t act – we react.
- We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment.
- We will do anything to hold on to a relationship. This is the way we avoid feeling the pain of our parents not having been there for us emotionally.
- We become alcoholics, marry them, or do both. Or we find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic or an overeater, with whom we continue to play out our fear of abandonment.
- We have become addicted to excitement from years of living in the midst of a traumatic and often dangerous family soap opera.
- We live life from the viewpoint of victims or rescuers and are attracted to victims or rescuers in our love, friendship, and career relationships.
- We confuse love with pity and tend to love people whom we can pity and rescue.
- We felt responsible for the problems of our unstable families, and as a result we do not feel entitled to live independent lives now.
- We get guilt feelings if we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
- We became approval seekers and lost our own identities in the process.
- We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility toward others, but we rarely consider our responsibility to ourselves.
- We had to deny our feelings in our traumatic childhoods. This estranged us from all our feelings, and we lost our ability to recognize and express them.
Adult Children grow up to have addictions, marry addictions or have serious control issues. My experience is it is hard to trust a God when you are so busy playing god. And since you fail at being the god of your universe you assume the true God will fail you too.
Tomorrow we will talk more about the Healthy Family vs. the Dysfunctional Family.
Blessings…..
