And if you’re not sure if a rehab you’re looking into offers informed support, you can always call their admissions team to ask. But because ACoAs didn’t have the chance to learn positive resolution skills, conflict can quickly trigger aggressive behavior. Or you may be conflict avoidant, meaning you handle conflicts by pretending they don’t exist. It’s hard to predict your parents’ next move and you never really know if your needs are going to be met or ignored. Rajnandini is a psychologist and writer dedicated to making mental health knowledge accessible.
Difficulties in Relationships
Unfortunately, children confuse a parent’s addiction and inconsistency in being a present and healthy parent as the child not being worthy of their parent’s love. Inevitably, this can lead many children with parent(s) who are alcoholics to potentially develop abandonment issues or low self-esteem. It can take a lifetime for adult children of alcoholics to repair the emotional damage from their childhood. You can’t erase your past or the pain from it, but you can find ways to let go of its hold on you and live a joyful life.
The Impact of Growing Up with an Alcoholic Parent
Your living situation growing up felt very much out of control, and that is a feeling that you’re always trying to escape, whether that’s trying to control your environment, yourself, or other people. The emotional trauma of living with an alcoholic can include issues like abuse and neglect. Your parents’ substance abuse hinders their ability to be a trusted, stable figure in your life.
Overview of Adult Child Syndrome
Consider whether your childhood involved dysfunction, neglect, or trauma. Understanding these experiences can help you identify and address the root causes of ACS. Adult Child Syndrome arises from growing up in dysfunctional environments and affects various aspects of life.
Children are disempowered by the very nature of their youth and dependency. The child learns to stand there in the situation that ensnares them, but on the inside they flee, they dissociate. The child is trapped in a world that is run and paid for by the parent; and the CoA has limited access to other sources of outside support and sustenance. Their ability to understand, process and manage this situation is dictated by their dependency and their limited intellectual equipment at any given point of development.
How can mindfulness help with adult child syndrome?
This obsession with external success combined with self-blame for your parent’s addiction quickly turns into perfectionism for many ACoAs. Your focus becomes avoiding any reason for people to criticize or blame you. The outside world becomes a scary place when you have a parent addicted to alcohol. Your parents may have taught you to keep their adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome secrets so they wouldn’t get into trouble.
It’s important to remember that you’re worthy of love and kindness regardless of your resume or report card. Pursuing healing through rehab or therapy can help you develop a truer sense of self-love. Our advisory council brings together leaders in behavioral health, technology, and business. Their diverse expertise ensures our resources and product are innovative, evidence-based, and effective. They guide our mission as accomplished individuals dedicated to improving the landscape of addiction recovery and mental wellness.
Recovery.com combines independent research with expert guidance on addiction and mental health treatment. Our mission is to help everyone find the best path to recovery through the most comprehensive, helpful network of treatment providers worldwide. With therapy and support, ACOAs can make changes in their life and treat the underlying PTSD and trauma. Talk therapy one-on-one or group counseling, somatic experiencing, and EMDR are highly effective in addressing the signs of trauma and developing new, healthy coping mechanisms. When we feel that nothing we can do will affect or change the situation we’re in, we may develop learned helplessness. We may lose some of our ability to take actions to affect, change or move a situation forward; we may give up and collapse on the inside or adopt a permanent position of victimhood (van der Kolk, 1987).
- Therefore, our treatment model directly addresses adult child syndrome, uncovering and healing both past trauma and its impact in the present.
- Self-awareness is key to recognizing ACS and taking the first steps toward healing.
- If your mother or father abused alcohol or drugs, they may have had underlying mental health conditions, putting you at higher risk for them.
- I incorporate mindfulness practices to help clients become more grounded in the present moment, and I emphasize self-awareness as a key to personal growth and emotional healing.
- You’re not to blame if you learned to use alcohol as a means of dealing with trauma from your childhood, but you can always take action to learn new, more helpful coping mechanisms.
Environment
- Experts highly recommend working with a therapist, particularly one who specializes in trauma or substance use disorders.
- It’s common for ACoAs to feel responsible for their parent’s addiction and its consequences.
- The child is trapped in a world that is run and paid for by the parent; and the CoA has limited access to other sources of outside support and sustenance.
The combination of these factors can contribute to PTSD, the symptoms of which may lie dormant in the unconscious for years. Fear of abandonment in relationships is another major challenge many children who had a parent struggle with addiction experience. “In this process, you’ll process unresolved traumatic experiences and develop tools to formulate healthy relationships and communicate your needs,” she explains. Kayla holds over 6 years of experience in the rehab space, including in-house content management at a leading treatment center. She believes addiction and mental health issues are universal human experiences that can serve as important entry points onto a path toward self-realization and well-being.
Counseling services offer effective tools and support to manage stress and improve academic well-being. Learn how to navigate this developmental phase and foster healthy development. We accept most major insurance plans and offer low self-pay rates to ensure quality care is accessible to everyone. Your well-being is our priority, and we’re here to help regardless of your financial situation. Individual therapy is a great place to start, says Michelle Dubey, LCSW, chief clinical officer for Landmark Recovery.
According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, nearly 29 million people in the U.S. struggled with alcohol use disorder in 2023. Alcohol addiction doesn’t just impact the individual struggling with the addiction, it also impacts the relationships you have. In this article, you’ll learn more about what adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome is, and how having a parent growing up who struggled with alcoholism may impact your life today. Research shows that children of alcoholics have higher rates of anxiety, depression, and poor self-esteem. You probably didn’t get a lot of affirmation from your alcoholic parents. They may have emotionally neglected you and even belittled you and your interests.
Many ACoAs also grow up feeling like it’s their job to keep their family afloat. You may have started working to earn money for your family very early in life or taken on a parental role to younger siblings. This hyper-responsibility doesn’t disappear when you turn 18 or move out. Many ACoAs will continue to feel responsible for the happiness and well-being of everyone around them—an impossibly big task.