Adult-Children of alcoholics & other narcissists
☯ RISKS
taking too many or not enough - addiction to
excitement, physical danger, making constant
changes OR not taking advantage of
opportunities or making appropriate changes
Assumption: it’s inevitable that any risk will
lead to abandonment
☯ SELF HATE
DEF : ‘Everything bad that happened to
me as a kid was my fault! ’
Self-hate is a defense mechanism - defending
against the pain of all the original abuse,
abandonment & neglect we experienced as kids.
The child’s assumption is that if I caused it I
should be able to fix it, ie: change myself in
order to stop others from hurting us, by
somehow pleasing or placating them.
Since that didn’t work very well the child
feels like a failure & is hopeless.
BUT we still blame ourselves, even now, & keep
trying to figure out ‘what we did wrong’.
☯ SUCCESS averse
(may be related to 'survival guilt'): sabotage
ourselves when close to success, don't take
advantage of good opportunities, make
unnecessary mistakes AND when near failure -
work even harder, but with little appreciation
or fulfillment
☯ TRUST issues
difficulty sharing emotions & true feelings,
fear of abandonment and intimacy, guarding
secrets, AND not trusting our own judgement,
values, feelings, experience & knowledge
☯ VICTIM-hood
unnecessarily continuing the role of victim -
carried over from childhood. ‘Learned
helplessness’. Don’t believe we can take care
of ourselves AND don’t want to !
☯ WORRY
about everything, 'awfulize', always expecting /
assuming the worst, convinced that being
abandoned is our only option! - & worry about
passing on bad genetics & abuse (alcoholism,
depression, incest, illness, etc) to our children
SYMPTOMS:
‘Laundry List’ of ACoA Characteristics
☯ MISERY
finding many ways: internally - to torture
oneself, & externally - to be mistreated in
most or all relationships (work, love, friends)
☯ MISTAKES
extreme fear of choosing anything incorrectly,
as if it were life & death (leading to pain of
abandonment). Not allowed to consciously
know what we want or prefer, fear of
rejection if we don’t agree with some else’s
demands, expectations, even tastes
☯ MOURNING
endless sorrow, bitterness & complaining
about not having good parents, family,
lost opportunities etc, but not willing to
improve oneself. True mourning takes time
but leads to healing, not continued suffering
☯ NORMAL
is guessed at: poor parental role modeling,
gaps in learning, inadequate social skills, not
knowing basic realities, not reading social
cues, naive, not street smart
☯ PAINFUL EMOTIONS dominate:
depressed, lonely, hopeless, helpless,
inadequate, suicidal, 'why bother' attitude.
Living in extremes - too high or too low
emotionally. Evenness is considered boring
☯ PERCEPTIONS
always testing, not trusting our perceptions
& intuition, ‘forgetting’ what we already
know, not learning from experience,
devaluing or negating good things that happen
to us as being accidental or unintended
☯ RELATIONSHIP Difficulties:
repeatedly choose inappropriate, unavailable,
selfish people. Either find it hard to keep
friends, stay with someone, get married, cope
in the workplace, OR never leave them, no
matter what
☯ RESCUE
fantasies underlie most choices: marry an
alcoholic or otherwise 'disabled' person, go
into the helping professions, unable to leave
harmful family, attracted to depressed,
unavailable people we can can 'fix'
Home • SITE MAP • About Me • ACoA Traits • Article • Books • Boundaries • Co-Dependence • Course • Decisions • Definitions • Effective Responses • Emotions • Family Roles • Friends • Healthy Rules • Inner Child • Links • Love • Recovery • Relationships • Toxic Rules • Trust