We believe everyone deserves access to accurate, unbiased information about mental health and recovery. That’s why we have a comprehensive set of treatment providers and don’t charge for inclusion. We do not and have never accepted fees for referring someone to a particular center.

Lifestyle

It’s critical to understand you don’t have to suffer in silence with your struggles. If you are struggling with fears surrounding abandonment or low self-esteem from your childhood, it’s important to seek mental health support to heal from these issues so you can lead a healthier, happier quality of life. Growing up with a parent addicted to alcohol can make for a difficult childhood. Some adult children of alcoholics, (or ACoAs) turn to alcohol themselves, while others find themselves disconnected from the world around them.

Support

  • We all, 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.
  • Adults who have parents with alcohol use disorder are often called “Adult Children of Alcoholics,” aka ACoAs or ACAs.
  • 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.
  • Yet while your parent didn’t choose to have AUD, their alcohol use can still affect you, particularly if they never get support or treatment.

If you’re an adult child and lived with a parent with alcohol use disorder, there are ways to manage any negative effects you’re experiencing. These effects can last long into adulthood and make it difficult for adult children to have healthy relationships. Twelve-step programs can be a wonderful adjunct or even initial intervention to therapy. Twelve-step meetings provide a safe and constantly available container in which ACoAs can feel both held and less alone in their pain. There are a variety of 12-step programs that address common issues that ACoAs, who are seven times more likely to self-medicate than the average, also face.

Center for Teens, Young Adults and Families

  • You appreciate the ones who are able to plow through, even with blinders, because someone has to, because there are school buses to make, homework to be done, and appointments to get to.
  • The limbic system, which is part of the nervous system, regulates emotion.
  • Children too can become traumatized by being trapped in a world that is frightening them.
  • 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.
  • This is why the restoration of hope is so important in recovery.
  • These factors include the feeling of being unable to escape from the pain, being at risk in the family, and being frightened in a place that should be safe.

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. Many ACoAs have trouble both forming and maintaining healthy relationships,15 especially romantic ones. Growing up without being able to trust others or even rely on your parent for consistent affection may make you fear intimacy in adulthood.

Lifestyle Quizzes

As a result of the relationship dynamics in your family, you may feel terrified of abandonment or have difficulty with intimate relationships. Theses tendencies can wreak havoc on your connections with others. Additionally, some children of alcoholics unknowingly seek out partners that have similar traits as the alcoholic parent, creating little room for a healthy relationship.

And even when you do start to rely on others, it’s very common for ACoAs to fear abandonment.7 The volatility of your childhood makes it difficult to believe that love can be consistent. Join our global mission of connecting patients with addiction and mental health treatment. Coping with the lasting effects of a parent’s alcohol use can be difficult, but you don’t have to do it alone. There are several issues relevant to the effects of trauma on a child in these types of households. The most critical factors include the age of the child, the duration of the trauma during development, and the ability of the child to have support within the family or from an outside source. Reclaim Therapy is a group of trauma therapists who specialize in EMDR Therapy, Treatment for PTSD, Therapy for Complex PTSD, Eating Disorders and Body Image concerns.

Treatment Options for Adult Children of Alcoholics

It can be difficult for anyone, especially a child, to watch their parent(s) struggle with addiction. Because many young children oftentimes don’t understand what addiction is, they may view their parent’s inconsistent parenting or abandonment of them as the child not being worthy of their parent’s love and attention. So, working with a therapist for adult children of alcoholics at Wisdom Within Counseling helps you gain self-worth tools. Therefore, the Wisdom Within Counseling team wants you to know that you are perfect just the way you are. Even if that may be hard to believe right now, holistic, creative, somatic therapies help resolve complex post-traumatic stress disorder.

Watching your parents express anger, rage, and belligerence is emotionally stressful for you, as a child. If you’re unsure where to start, you can check out Psych Central’s hub on finding mental health support. One of the most common issues reported was a lack of trust in adults (more than 1 in 5). Others included having memories of abuse, violence, and neglect. Adults who have parents with alcohol use disorder are often called “Adult Children of Alcoholics,” aka ACoAs or ACAs.

Being an adult child of an alcoholic is a relief in a sense because now you have a name and label. However, also, thinking of yourself as an adult child of an alcoholic, you also feel scared because this opens a whole new roller coaster of emotions. The parent is the one who holds they keys to the house, the car, the refrigerator and the bank account.

We know that we each of us carry the voices of those who we grew up with in our heads and hearts. When those voices are soothing we can call on them for consolation and confidence, when they are abusive, we defend ourselves from the admonitions of ghosts. I am here for you, as a creative therapist in Niantic, and adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome would love to help you figure out your past to make the future better for your children.

Some rehabs also offer Al-Anon meetings, specifically for loved ones of people with addiction. Even if you don’t have a diagnosed mental health condition, the trauma of your childhood can affect you in many ways. Many rehabs offer trauma-informed programs to help you heal from your past, and learn healthy ways to communicate and cope. On the flip side, some children growing up with addicted parents fully reject any responsibility.8 They become dependent on others for functioning. This is because they never had someone show them how to healthily identify, label, and communicate their needs. And because they rely on others for almost anything, it’s common for these children to grow up feeling like they can’t do anything right.

Years after the child has left home and become an adult, they may carry anxieties about themselves and relationships that they do not fully understand. Even loud voices, a raised eyebrow, flashing eyes or a change in mood can send the ACoA sailing back into a place inside of them where they feel anxious and threatened all over again. Because these children got hurt in relationships, it’s relationships later in life that tend to trigger them. But because of the psychological defenses they used as kids, they don’t make the connection.

For the family that is in denial about the progressive illness of addiction in its midst, telling the truth can be ostracizing. Family members can quickly turn against the one who tries to make the growing problems of dysfunction and addiction evident. 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, 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.