Category Archives: Children of Alcoholics
CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS, EMPTINESS
LEARNING I MATTER
Some people grow up in a family that somehow leaves them feeling rejected, discounted, or like they don’t matter. This is often the case where a parent is involved in alcohol or drugs. The children end up having to physically and/or emotionally fend for themselves much of their childhood. As a result, the children feel they don’t matter. After all, if they mattered, wouldn’t the parent stop abusing the substance and put the needs of their child first?
You’d think so, but that isn’t how addicts handle their addiction. For them, nothing is as important as getting drunk or high. Without their substance, they cannot function, they tell themselves. They don’t want to deal with their feelings about their own lives, their childhoods, their traumas, and the mess they are making of their current lives. They don’t want to deal with their spouse’s feelings or their children’s feelings or needs. Instead, they numb out with their substance. Momentary bliss that dissolves into a more painful reality that the one they left before their last high, soon to be followed by another momentary bliss to escape once again.
Growing up with a parent like that leaves you feeling empty. Where love, concern, and your parent’s ability to hold the emotions you, as a growing child, didn’t know how to handle should be, something is missing. It is just a giant hole in your stomach, your heart, or your soul. Because the truth is, we all need to feel like our parent(s) or parent figures cherished us. We need to feel like we were loved unconditionally. We need to feel secure, knowing that our parents held us in their mind’s eye when we weren’t physically there, never forgetting us, and holding onto us forever. When our parent(s) did not do that, we are missing a large piece of ourselves. And we don’t know how to find it.
This is where life experience and therapy come into play. From our early experiences, we feel that we cannot trust anyone. So, it is hard for us to reach out to others, even professional therapists. We feel we secretly don’t really belong to the groups of which we are members (i.e. work, church, sports team, etc.). We feel like we secretly aren’t like other people and fear others will find out that we have a giant hole inside. So, we stay on the periphery of groups or avoid them altogether to hide ourselves away. And the thought of going to tell a stranger our real feelings is both terrifying and surreal.
But often we need these two things the most. We need to have other experiences with other people to find that we are valid individuals who do matter. We need to meet lots of non-addicts to discover that not everyone is like our parent(s). We need to let ourselves get to know a broader spectrum of people so that we can have better experiences, let ourselves be loved, and let ourselves heal.
Often, we need a professional to help guide us through this maze of frightening possibilities. We need someone else to point out the kindness and caring others extend and to validate to us that those expressions of others are real and really for us. We need to have someone who remembers everything about us from week to week, month to month, so that we learn to tolerate the caring and concern of another.
Eventually, we find that the hole in our soul has grown much smaller. We no longer feel empty. We no longer feel lost. And we come to know we matter.
ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICSEMPTINESSPAINFUL CHILDHOOD
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