20 Ways Excessive Drinking Affects Your Children
Sometimes the truth hurts, but it also sets you free to choose to act differently. The truth also gives you the freedom to get help when you know help is available. Addiction is not a pretty disease and it affects the entire family.
Children are the victims of the alcoholic or addicted parent. Imagine being a child whose parent is more interested in a substance than caring for and raising you. Imagine the inappropriate behaviors and responses in daily life of the person who is under the influence of a mind-altering chemical. The child doesn't know what is real or right. Also Read: When Should I Tell The Guy I'm Dating I'm In AA?
The child knows what anger and sadness are. She also knows what neglect and abandonment are through physical and/or emotional absence. They witness lying, violence, aggression, desperation and worse. They know what hurt and pain feel like and what it's like to be alone is like. Children are the true victims of living in the chaotic dysfunction brought on by addiction.
Here is a list of what the kids and adult survivors, of addicted parents, will get some combination of (determined through study & admission*):
1. They do not understand what normal behavior is.
2. There are feelings of isolation and fear of authority figures.
3. They fear angry people and personal criticism.
4. They learn to suppress their feelings from multiple traumas and lose the ability to feel or express feelings, like joy and happiness.
5. They take on the characteristics of the addict's disease and become reactors in their life roles.
6. They have difficulty having fun but may become addicted to excitement.
7. There is a tendency to lie when it is just as easy to tell the truth.
8. There is difficulty following through with projects from beginning to end.
9. They often confuse love and pity with each other.
10. They take themselves very seriously. Also Read: 15 Signs You're In An Abusive Relationship
11. They learn to overreact to changes over which they have no control.
12. They are constantly seeking approval and affirmation from outside themselves because of their loss of identity.
13. They experience feelings of guilt for standing up for themselves instead of giving into others.
14. They act excessively responsible or irresponsible.
15. They become impulsive and tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences.
16. As adults, they continue to live from the viewpoint of the victim, taking no action or responsibility for their own life.
17. There is difficulty with intimate relationships, now and later in life.
18. They go through life extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
19. They will develop dependent personalities, becoming so terrified of abandonment that they will do anything to hold onto relationships to avoid the painful feelings associated with it.
20. If the child survives - which some don't - without help, they will become an alcoholic/addict themselves, marry one or both. They will find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic, gambler, over-eater, or sex-addict to fulfill the ironic, irrational and unintended, subconscious need for abandonment than what they are allowing to happen in their own. You can stop this disease of denial and dysfunction in your home and break the chain of reaction through the generations of your family. If you're an alcoholic or addict, help for recovery is available through the 12-Step groups of Alcoholics Anonymous or another specific group for your addiction.
Your family can benefit from other recovery groups that utilize modified versions of the same 12-Steps of AA such as: Al-Anon, Ala-Teen, Ala-Tot and ACA (Adult Children Anonymous - formerly, Adult Children of Alcoholics or ACOA). You and your family deserve a better life. Also Read: Should I Leave My Alcoholic Husband? VIDEO
*Study & admission through the creation of the ACOA groups, now ACA, participation and testimony.
Written by Wendy Kay for YourTango.com.
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