What exactly is an adult child? Is he a miniaturized adult who somehow never crossed the border from childhood? Was his maturity and development somehow stunted? Does he behave differently? What could have caused all of this to begin jav moon with?
“The term ‘adult child’ is used to describe adults who grew up in alcoholic or dysfunctional homes and who exhibit identifiable traits that reveal past abuse or neglect,” according to the “Adult Children of Alcoholics” textbook (World Service Organization, 2006, p. xiii).
“(It) means that we respond to adult interactions with the fear and self-doubt learned as children,” it continues (p. 3). “The undercurrent of hidden fear can sabotage our choices and relationships. We can appear outwardly confident while living with a constant question of our worth.”
CAUSES OF THE ADULT CHILD SYNDROME:
Numerous early-life circumstances, combining in complicated ways, produce the adult child syndrome.
Adult children chronologically age, for instance, but their emotional, psychological and neurological development is arrested.
They lived in unstable, unpredictable homes-of-origin, sometimes in danger of the very parents who were supposed to be there to protect and nurture them, during very uneven power plays.
Their parents were not emotionally available and were thus unable to provide the needed and nourishing warmth, validation, praise, and love.
They were sometimes abandoned in ways that transcended the traditionally physical ones.
Unease and tension habitually hung in the air of their homes. So thick was it, that you could almost have cut it with a knife.
The disease of alcoholism or dysfunction, perpetuated from one generation to the other, ensured family member denial, along with the unspoken rules of “don’t’ talk, don’t’ trust, and don’t feel”-in other words, everyone agreed not to see and not to challenge what was apparent on deeper levels of consciousness.
Any detriment or abuse the adult children were subjected to was justified because of their own inadequacy, flaws, and unloveabiity.
They were forced to live in survival modes, hypervigilant for shame, blame, or attack, and often did not get their needs met by parents who were unable to do so.
Parental bonds were often tenuous or altogether broken, since children cannot connect with their caregivers when they are shattered or deficient.
Subjected to possible abuse and trauma, which sometimes led to post-traumatic stress disorder later in life, they squelched whatever was done to them, never having understood, processed, or resolved it. Each time the original infraction increased and intensified, like a rolling snowball. Later in life retriggers only intensified its effects, leading to disconnection from themselves and potential dissociation to avoid their volatile feelings.
Triggers, even at advanced ages, returned them to the powerless times when they had been confronted with a parent or primary caregiver and when they had lacked any tools or defenses to combat these interactions.
The disease’s origin, which usually remains unknown throughout their lives unless corrective action is taken, occurred with the infection of alcoholic toxins during the first incident of parental betrayal, creating vulnerability to a potentially unsafe environment. Captive, they were unable to either escape or combat the situation.