Adult Children of Alcoholics: Healing from Childhood Trauma

adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome

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. Now, your past experiences and intense anger makes more sense. The team at Wisdom Within Counseling can help you grow your healthy relationship skills and self-worth skills. From there, you can gain positive coping tools to heal anxieties about having to be perfect.

Rehab for Adult Children of Alcoholics

Overall, due to growing up around so much alcohol, now, you may also be a functional alcoholic. People who are consistently being wounded emotionally and are not able to address or process these feelings openly and honestly may develop rigid psychological defenses to manage or ward off pain. 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. You may start to fear your own anger, needing to control it at all times. Through rehab and therapy, you can develop the skills to be able to mindfully react to feelings without feeling threatened.

Sign up for skills to improve your mental health

  • From mind, body, and spirit connection, you can develop clearer communication skills after childhood trauma of living with alcoholic parents.
  • Each counseling session, you can talk as well as use art, yoga, music, and creative therapies.
  • ACoAs often need to mourn not only what happened in their childhoods, but also what never got a chance to happen.
  • You may start to fear your own anger, needing to control it at all times.
  • As a creative therapist in Niantic, Connecticut, our team specializes in complex PTSD.

Consequently, the traumatic memories can be difficult to access through reflective talking alone (Sykes Wylie, , 2004). This can be interpreted by the therapist as what may appear to be resistance but in reality is related to a loss of access not only to repressed feeling, but also to any understanding of what actually may have occurred. When asked to tell their story in therapy, a client may draw a complete blank. For this reason I find psychodrama, which allows memory to emerge through action and role play, is an ideal form of therapy–if done properly–for trauma resolution. Van der Kolk feels that “if clinicians can help people not become so aroused that they shut down physiologically, they’ll be able to process the trauma themselves” (Sykes Wylie, 2004). Many ACoAs have trouble both forming and maintaining healthy relationships,15 especially romantic ones.

Looking Back On Your Childhood With An Alcoholic Parent Is A Whirlwind Of Emotions From Anxiety To Anger

The combination of these factors can contribute to PTSD, the symptoms of which may lie dormant in the adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome unconscious for years. This can open up lines of communication that have been shut down, helping you and your family heal the ways in which you relate to each other. Learning healthy conflict resolution alongside loved ones can help your relationship function more positively. 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. According to a study by the National Association of Children of Alcoholics (NACOA), there are over 11 million children in the U.S. under the age of 18 living in families with at least one alcoholic parent.

Many ACoAs will continue to feel responsible for the happiness and well-being of everyone around them—an impossibly big task. The outside world becomes a scary place when you have a parent addicted to alcohol. Your parents may have taught you to keep their secrets so they wouldn’t get into trouble. Or maybe you couldn’t confide in your friends or teachers for fear of losing your family or getting into trouble yourself.

  • People who have felt traumatized may alternate between anxious clinging and taking refuge in avoiding connections with other people.
  • Also, a young child, you felt really shy and thought this was normal.
  • When your parents got drunk, you felt like you did something wrong.
  • As an adult, though, you can learn to manage and change specific behaviors that no longer help you, which can improve your overall well-being, quality of life, and relationships with others.
  • One of these types, termed Awkward/Inhibited by researchers, was characterized by feelings of inadequacy and powerlessness.
  • Not only is the child scared and hurt, but the person they would normally go to for comfort and solace is the one who is scaring and hurting them.
  • At many rehabs, you can find support groups for people experiencing the same issues.

Some rehabs also offer Al-Anon meetings, specifically for loved ones of people with addiction. And childhood trauma tends to stay with us in many forms, sometimes without us realizing it. Many ACoAs experience the symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a result of their childhood.

Understanding Adult Children of Alcoholics

Providers who advertise with us must be verified by our Research Team and we clearly mark their status as advertisers. You’ll find others who understand what you’re going through and can support your healing journey. Al-Anon and other organizations offer virtual meetings for your convenience. Residential rehab programs give you access to multiple therapies and a supportive community to help you in your healing journey.

Emotional Dysregulation

adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome

They are essentially free and by their tradition are not connected with any sort of commercial enterprise. The support, understanding and sense of community “in the rooms” can provide hope, healing and a renewed sense of life. In the absence of a stable, emotionally supportive enviornment, you learned to adapt in the only ways you knew how.

adult children of alcoholic trauma syndrome

Underlying Unhappiness? Working With A Therapist For Adult Children Of Alcoholics Can Help

The ACoA Trauma Syndrome is the book I have wanted to write all my life, because it has been my life’s work to heal myself from this strange condition that until 1980 had no name. We used to think that if you left home in body, your mind left home, too. 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. So, working with a therapist for adult children of alcoholics at Wisdom Within Counseling helps you gain self-worth tools.

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. In addition, one-to-one therapy can offer the kind of personal attention and tracking that will help the ACoA to slowly form new, trusting bonds. Oftentimes, the more dysfunctional a family becomes, the more isolated it becomes from other families.

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