by
I have talked to hundreds of adult children of alcoholics and I've heard thousands of stories of bitterness, rage, guilt, pain and loneliness.
Amazingly, underneath the uniqueness and individuality of each situation, I have seen a likeness, a commonality of attitude and world-view that is shared by every adult-child who is conflicted, angry, resentful and unhappy.
I say amazingly because adult children invariably believe the awful anxiety, fear and confusion haunting their lives is peculiar to them alone. They feel singular in their agony, fearful and ashamed of . . .
. . . of what?
It's hard to put into words, but the feeling is real. It's like a slow burning ember, a smoldering sensation of dread, an inkling or intuition of trouble. From time to time it fades away, then it flares again, a feeling of sick tension, an actual physical pressure somewhere between the belly and the throat telling you something bad is about to happen.
And you can't control it. It's just there.
Have you experienced this emotional and physical state? It's common among adult children.
Does that surprise you?
Most adult children are relieved to find they are not alone, that many, many other people have experienced and survived these feelings, and have gone on to lead healthy and happy lives.
There's a little chagrin, too. A touch of unexpected embarrassment. I mean, it's kind of shocking to discover you've been suffering in secret shame, hiding the fact that you practically feel like an alien from outer space, only to discover there are thousands -- hundreds of thousands -- of other men and woman who are going through very similar emotions.
Is nothing sacred?
Are we not unique in our misery? Isn't our own personal brand of suffering so extraordinary and unusual that it's almost beyond the reach of puny human understanding?
Perhaps.
And perhaps not.
Looking For Explanations
I've actually had people look at me in awe when I describe the feeling of dread -- of badness -- that is so common in adult children.
"How did you know?" Deanna whispered. "How could you know? I've never told anyone. Are you . . . are you psychic?"
Deanna was almost insulted when she discovered I possessed no supernatural powers, no special ectoplasmic connectedness with the Spiritual Force. You see, she felt her pain was so unique and incomprehensible that it was beyond the understanding of another ordinary person.
A person like me.
Because our feelings and behavior baffle us, we have a tendency to lean toward the exotic or the unorthodox to explain why we are the way we are.
"Mars is retrograde right now and that's very bad for a Virgo and a Capricorn," Carla explains. "That's why Tom and I are fighting so much lately."
"During the French Revolution, in one of my past incarnations, I was guillotined for stealing a loaf of bread," Leslie says, rubbing the back of her neck. "That's why I get these terrible pains."
"I'm not feeling well because my aura is muddy."
Statements like these indicate we are looking outside ourselves for explanations and solutions to our problems. This is called externalizing, and I've found it to be a common trait among adult children.
We have no control over the planets or what happened two hundred years ago or the color of our aura. (I'm told mine is yellow and I'm not sure if that's a compliment to my character or an insult.)
We can change nothing but ourselves.
This is important for us to keep in mind because in our search for explanations and solutions, we must focus our attention on those things over which we can exercise some power.
And we must be prepared to face some discomforting facts about the world and some unpleasant truths about ourselves.
One of the most important things we can learn is that there are many things in the world that we can neither control nor change.
We can't change the past.
We can't control the behavior of our parents or other loved ones.
We can't always get our own way.
All uncomfortable facts. But useful, fundamental to any serious efforts to change.
If you want to, you can keep butting your head up against the wall trying to control and change things over which you have no power, but you are going to end up being one miserable and frustrated individual. A sorehead -- in more ways than one.
But there are alternatives-- alternatives to frustration and facile explanations. We can look closely at our paradoxical behavior, keeping in mind Karen Horney's warning that we should "not be too easily satisfied with ready-at-hand explanations for a disturbance."
A Pattern Of Paradox
Adult children seem to move from one crisis to the next, rarely pausing to notice the process going on underneath. Yet only by understanding the larger patterns in our behavior do the individual incidents and events begin to make sense.
A prominent pattern for many adult children is paradox.
A paradox is something that is seemingly absurd and self-contradictory, yet is in fact true. The term adult-child is a paradox, yet we understand its meaning without explanation.
Rhonda provides a good example of paradoxical behavior: For years she suffered from the paradox of love-hate. As a young girl, Rhonda had developed a very close and loving relationship with her mother, a woman who seemed like a rock of stability in a homelife made stormy and chaotic by the father's drinking.
"Mother and I shared many secrets and confidences," Rhonda recalls, "and together we protected the younger children from some of the worst aspects of dad's alcoholism."
While Rhonda was away at college, her father entered treatment and sobered up. "It seemed like an answer to a dream. Finally, my mother and younger brothers could have some peace and happiness at home, a blessing I had never known."
Throughout the next few years, Rhonda developed a new and satisfying relationship with her father. Sober, he was witty, charming, responsible, and caring.
But a new problem arose . . . her mother.
"I began to notice that during my visits home, my mother sulked and made cutting comments whenever I spent more than a few minutes conversing with dad. Alone in the kitchen with her, I had to listen to a long list of complaints and if I refused to sympathize, my mom retreated into a hurt silence."
The visits home became a nightmare. Rhonda dreaded them, yet she felt compelled to return. It was her duty, she felt, to bring a little light and joy into the house, for the sake of her younger brothers, if for no other reason. She also felt a need to help her mother, to make her stop being so negative and unhappy.
"I still love her dearly," Rhonda told me, "but she's driving me crazy. All she wants to do is talk about the past. She just can't accept that things are different now. I try to talk to her, but she's so set in her ways, it's no use. I hate myself for feeling this way, but I can't help it. She makes me so mad!"
Rhonda started to cry. "Sometimes," she sobbed. "I wish she'd just die and leave the rest of us in peace."
Notice that Rhonda's statements imply that her unhappiness and conflict are her mother's fault. If only her mother would change, Rhonda thinks, everything would be all right. But the resentment and guilt and self-hate that Rhonda feels are not her mother's problem. They belong to Rhonda.
And if her mother dies?
No matter how much you'd like to believe that death or distance means you no longer have to deal with your feelings about your parents, you are wrong. The feelings you have for your parents -- both good and bad feelings -- remain alive in your mind and close to your heart.
Love-hate is only one characteristic of the patterns of paradox common in adult children.
TEST YOUR PARADOX POTENTIAL
Answer 'Yes' or 'No' to the following questions:
1. Do you feel an inner rage that you don't dare show to other people because it is too powerful to unleash?
2. Do you hide frequent fears behind a facade of bravado, keen wit, or chronic pain?
3. Do you frequently feel like your parents or spouse is always trying to control you when they can hardly run their own lives?
4. Do you long for warm and caring relationships, yet feel left out or overwhelmed by other people?
5. Do you suffer from feelings of low self-esteem because other people fail to appreciate all that you have to offer?
6. Do you resent your parents' alcoholism and co- dependency while suffering from compulsive behavior yourself, such as eating binges and fad dieting; reliance on marijuana, tranquilizers, or alcohol; compulsive spending or gambling?
If you answered 'YES' to any of these questions, you can safely assume that you are plagued by paradoxes.
Paradox and Self-Esteem
The adult-child's life is filled with contradiction and ambivalence, by love-hate, pride-shame, greedy-giving. The experience of feeling these intense paradoxical emotions perpetuates your confusion and sense of alienation.
Pride prevents you from stepping back and making an honest and self-critical analysis of your own negative behavior.
You remain blind to the process going on underneath, to the larger pattern that clearly shows you are the perpetrator of your current unhappiness.
But can you really fool yourself?
The subtle knowledge that you are daily violating your higher values with your inexplicable feelings of hate and greed fill you with shame and self-contempt.
How can you like yourself? How can you have high self- esteem when deep inside your heart you are concealing so much anger, resentment, and pettiness?
Now, think about this for a moment. What I'm telling you may shock and offend you, but it's something you already know intuitively.
You know your inner self better than anyone else does.
Your feelings of low self-esteem are an accurate reflection of your inner reality. You don't like yourself because no matter what kind of bright and shiny face you show to the world, you know your heart is full of negativity, bitterness and anger.
No amount of success or money or recognition can make you feel good about yourself if your inner reality is a dark mass of justification, blame, denial and paradox.
Examining the complex nature of the adult-child's paradoxical personality is not an easy task. Nevertheless, that is one of the main purposes of this book. It seems vital and necessary, since self-critical analysis is an indispensable part in the process of self-change.
Without the knowledge that comes from fearlessly inspecting our most negative characteristics, we end up dooming ourselves to repeat in ignorance the patterns of the past that have brought us only hate, fear, loneliness, and pain.
Isn't it time to give up our petty egos, to forget the fear of appearing vulnerable, weak, and less than perfect? We are, after all, only human.
And happily, humans possess the wonderful capacity to make changes. In fact, as Aldous Huxley put it: "There's only one corner of the universe you can be sure of improving, and that's your own self."
© Copyright 1986, 1997, 2003 Gayle Rosellini & Mark Worden
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