I know dozens of perfectly decent, bright, moral, caring, productive, creative and attractive men and women who have come out of alcoholic homes and into the world believing: "There is something terribly wrong with me. I am not like other people. I am not normal."
From time to time, everyone questions his "normality," everyone feels alienated from others. At one time or another we all have felt --even if momentarily-- like strangers in a strange land.
But those who have studied adult children of alcoholics say that feelings of intense alienation pervade the lives of adult children. One of the lasting legacies of growing up in an alcoholic family appears to be a dim sense of what "normal" is. Because life in an alcoholic home is filled with denial, pretense and confusion, children end up having to guess at how "normal" people act.
And often they guess wrong.
This makes self-esteem a special problem for adult children. When self-esteem is founded on unrealistic notions of what constitutes normal and acceptable behavior, it becomes extraordinarily susceptible to both external and internal threats.
Eddie, a 32 year-old lawyer whose lawyer father was an alcoholic, is a prime example of an adult child who imposes a tremendous pressure on his self-esteem. He truly believes the only way he can be worthy is by being the best at everything he does.
"If I can't excel in an activity," Eddie told me, "I don't want to do it. I want to top the top, be the best that ever was. I think anyone who aims lower than the very top deserves to fail. It's only normal to want to win."
Like many other adult children, Eddie wants to be brave, strong, confident and successful. He wants to be admired and respected. And, certainly, there is nothing wrong with having such desires.
Yet for Eddie, and many other adult children, the desire to excel is at the very root of self-hate and despair. Why? Because the perfectionistic, "Either/ Or" dynamics in alcoholic families leave no room for tolerance, for balance, for acceptance of human limitations.
Children are trained in a thousand subtle ways: Either you are good, or you are bad. Either you are the best, or you are nothing. Either you are the top dog, or you're a son-of-a-bitch. So, what happens is this --
The adult child makes a mistake and says, "I am a failure."
If he needs help, he thinks, "I am a weakling."
If she feels fear, she says, "I am a coward."
If she encounters obstacles on the path to success, she
believes, "I'll never get what I want."
Or the adult child may set up impossible obstacles for success. "If I can't be at the top, I don't want to be anything." One adult child sneered at a master's degree in psychology because the Ph.D. was the only worthy attainment. He failed to complete a dissertation, dropped out of the Ph.D. program and ended up with no advanced degree at all.
Underlying these attitudes is the belief that "normal" people -- the people worthy of esteem -- don't have to struggle to get what they want, and they don't make mistakes or ask for help or feel fear.
An adult child mired in self-hate doesn't realize that courage doesn't mean the absence of fear. Courage is going into the unknown in spite of sometimes overwhelming fear.
Brave people often quake in their boots.
Confident people struggle with self-doubt.
Strong, resolute people sometimes falter, break down.
Successful people make mistakes. (Many would argue that you can't be a success without making mistakes -- and learning from them.)
Strong, confident, brave, successful people are just as awkward, self-doubting and vulnerable as the rest of us. They spill coffee down their shirt fronts and argue with their mothers and feel nervous in front of an audience. They lose their patience and worry about the wrinkles growing around their eyes and wonder if there might be something odd about their sex drive.
This is reality. This is what normal is all about.
Yet being subject to "normal" human blunders, gaffes, and limitations is unacceptable to the adult child who believes that striving for excellence is nothing less than striving for perfection. Rather than being founded on realistic assets and achievements, too often an adult child's self-esteem is based on unattainable goals.
I asked a number of adult children who honestly admitted they suffered from low self-esteem to tell me what they thought it would take for them to start feeling better about themselves. Here are some of the responses --
"I'm going to keep searching and struggling until
I discover the final answers to my questions. I know there is an ultimate
plan and once I find it, then I'll be happy."
-- Linda, age 28
"What I need is greater career recognition. I'm not
as far along as I should be at this point. I'm making fairly decent money,
but I thought I'd have a judgeship by now."
--Tyler, a lawyer, age 39
"If I had my own home -- not an apartment, but a
real house with a garden and my own furniture, decorated just right with
antiques, that would make me feel more equal to my friends."
-- Diane, age 41
"My problem is that my parents are against me and
so is my husband's mother. They always criticize me and try to get me to
do things their way. If I could just get them to accept me, I know I'd
like myself better."
-- Kimberly, age 22
"I feel as though I'm trudging though a long tunnel
of trouble toward a glowing light at the other end. If I can just get to
that light I know I will come out of the end of the tunnel a transcendent
person. I'm going to be whole and happy and I'll have a hell of a lot to
offer the world."
--Quentin, age 33
"What would it take to make me feel good about myself?
That's easy! I need to lose 50 pounds, and get a nose job, and my boyfriend
could stop chasing around the bars!"
-- Trixie, age 24
A consistent theme runs through these very different responses. One woman hopes for ultimate knowledge, another for a nose job. A lawyer wants an appointment to the bench and an apartment dweller wants a house. Very different dreams, indeed. Yet, every one of these unhappy adult children is searching for an external solution to a problem of inner unrest.
For these adult children, self-acceptance is predicated almost exclusively in terms of achievement and success as measured by position, status, money, power, approval by others, or physical beauty. Even Linda and Quentin, who seem to be seeking more spiritual goals, are really locked into a struggle for achievement. For what can be a greater achievement than unlocking the ultimate plan of the universe or transcending the troubles of ordinary mortals.
Self-esteem is our own evaluation of how we compare in worth to other people. Do we have as much as they do? Are we smarter? Better looking? Funnier? Stronger? Sexier? Faster? Meaner? Dumber?
Now, you've probably been told that it's not healthy to compare yourself to other people. And, ideally, that's true. But, being human, we just can't help ourselves. We are social creatures and it's quite natural for us to make comparisons between ourselves and our neighbors.
If we find we compare favorably, then we are disposed to think highly of ourselves. We feel that we are worthy.
If we find ourselves to be abnormal or lacking in some way, then we tend to form a low opinion of ourselves. We feel that we are unworthy.
But what if our comparisons don't have any objective basis in reality? What happens to our self-image when our concept of normal or acceptable performance is based on fairy tales and unrealistic dreams? How can our real self ever measure up to the wonderful fantasy self we imagine we should be?
We forge our personal identity -- our self -- from the raw materials provided us in our early years. As nursery rhymes lull us to sleep, they tell us that little boys are made of snakes and snails and puppy-dog tails, while little girls are made of sugar and spice and everything nice. These are cute ways of interpreting the development of self, but the reality is much more complicated and not always cute.
Our values, our beliefs, our traditions, our histories . . . these are the snakes and snails and sacred unicorn horns that spark the strange alchemy of self-esteem. We are embroiled in a network of influences that includes heredity, learning, circumstance and chance. Somewhere in the midst of a complex chain of interactions, a self-concept forms, a notion of who we are, tightly interwoven with a weltanshauung -- a world-view, a notion of how the world works.
What is a self? Who are we really? Self, said psychologist William James many years ago, is a social concept, and we have as many selves as there are groups of people about whose opinions we care.
Was poet Robert Frost talking about the glimmers of self in an insect, when he saw it pause on a page of paper: "I have a mind myself," wrote Frost, "and I recognize Mind when I meet with it in any guise."
We encounter other selves in many guises, and these other selves provide the social milieu, the rich broth, wherein our own self finds nourishment. And, for most of us, the family provides that growth-promoting context, that nourishment.
But families can also be growth-stunting. As Jane Howard put it in her book Families: "Nothing is or ever was more wonderful, more dreadful or more inescapable than families, nor are there many words more perplexing to define."
Think back to your early years in your family. Close your eyes and let your mind roam for a moment. What do you remember? What were the dominant messages in your family? What lessons on life do you remember most?
What are the raw materials from which you are forging your identity? What are the family rules and role models that influenced and guided your learning and development?
This question is much more difficult to answer than it seems. We have a natural tendency to protect and defend ourselves against pain. And when we start dissecting our roots, we sometimes feel as if we are cutting into our own flesh with a thin sharp blade.
It may require some extra courage to delve into the morass of family memories, but it can be an important undertaking, especially when inquiry proceeds not as an exercise in brooding and blame, but as a means to understand the sources of pain and dissatisfaction, and to discover ways to change, ways of disentangling from the family roots that bind, constrict and strangle growth.
It's fashionable these days to call the family a "dynamic system." There are all kinds of dynamic systems, from schools of fish to herds of buffalo. Our planetary system is a dynamic system, and as the planets speed through our part of the Milky Way, they are held in formation by the sun's gravity. A dynamic system, in short, is an aggregation of members that exert an influence on each other.
A family is a dynamic system of two or more individuals, where members influence each other in many ways, physically, emotionally, intellectually and spiritually. Family systems do not exert influence through some kind of cold, impartial mathematically precise Newtonian gravitation. The binding elements of family systems consist of security, touch, love, warmth, stimulation, caring and feeding -- a constellation of critical factors that make up the human gravity of emotional bonding, attachment.
The early childhood years are a time, says Selma Fraiberg, "when a baby and his parents make their first enduring human partnerships, when love, trust, joy and self-evaluation emerge through the nurturing love of human partners."
Of course, there are other elements of this partnership. Babies and young children influence parents and caretakers through smiling and crying and temper tantrums, among other things. And, in general, older family members influence the younger to accept certain values, beliefs, and traditions as good and right and normal.
As a result, we look at ourselves and at the world through a many-layered filter of family dogma, ritual, faith, and experience. We integrate these family rules into our own personality and code of conduct. This is a normal and natural process. We cannot escape it. The rules we learn in our family may be bewildering, contradictory, or harsh. Regardless of whether we chose to accept them or defy them, we are stuck with them. They become an integral part of our identity.
The alcoholic family is not only a dynamic system, it is as much an educational system as any school with all its accouterments and paraphernalia of learning. And many of life's most important lessons are learned not in the formal schoolroom, under the tutelage and guidance of teachers, principals and aides -- the lasting formative lessons of life are learned in the family system.
The lessons start at birth and continue, in one way or another, throughout life. Consider this: A child reaches for a toy, pauses in mid-reach and checks out mom or dad, as if to say, "Okay? I'm going after the rubber ducky." Or, more slyly: "Hey, I'm takin' over this place, okay?" Or: "I want that -- how about a little help!"
In truly attentive families, much of this shorthand communication gets picked up and accurately translated. In the alcoholic family something quite different happens. The child's playfulness may be resented as an intrusion or nuisance. The parent may misread the child's needs or misplace them with her own, giving us warped and inaccurate feedback so that eventually we come to mistrust the truth of what we do and feel.
The thought crops up: "Something is wrong, dreadfully wrong. I am not in tune with my own family." We feel out of kilter . . . repudiated and assaulted. The School of the Family has taught the child not to trust his own feelings and judgments. The chipping away of self-esteem has begun.
For many adult children, the family is P.S. Dread.
P.S. Dread can be best described as an informal pedagogical system promoting denial, lies, promises, selfish martyrdom, grandiose fantasies, despair and shame.
Oh, love is in there, too. Lots of it. But love gets so mixed up with fear and anger and pride that sometimes we can't tell it apart from a sick kind of emotional dependence and the internal family struggle for control and power. We don't know exactly where we belong nor if we are truly loved.
We learn more than anything that love is capricious, that human attachment is uncertain and sometimes perilous. We learn to hoard love, store it up for the hard times ahead. Love is surely not something to squander.
We don't feel safe in P.S. Dread. We don't feel safe in our families.
Perhaps it was P.S. Dread that poet Alexander Pope had in mind when he wrote, "A family is but too often a commonwealth of malignants." Perhaps it was P.S. Dread that prompted Andre Gide to utter the savage curse: "Families, I hate you!"
And perhaps it was P.S. Dread that anthropologist Ashley Montague had in mind when he called the family "an institution for the systematic production of physical and mental illness in the members."
Adult children may defend their true self by forming a false self, a compliant self.
Such a self, says Judith Viorst, has no agenda of its own. "It seems to be saying, 'I'll be what you want me to be.' Like a tree that has been espaliered so that spontaneous growth is forestalled, it conforms to a shape imposed upon it from outside. This shape is sometimes attractive, sometimes marvelously attractive, but it is unreal."
In her seminal work, Neurosis and Human Growth, psychiatrist Karen Horney wrote vividly about the predicament of adults whose self-esteem is warped in a troubled family. Horney believed that neurosis develops when a person's striving for self-realization is thwarted by adverse circumstances.
And what circumstances can be more adverse for a child than the chaos and turbulence of alcoholic and co-dependent parents?
To cope with natural feelings of isolation and helplessness, the child develops strategies for minimizing anxiety, strategies which invariably lead to a growing sense of alienation from self. These include neurotic pride, denial and reinterpretation of events, vindictive scheming against those who have caused pain, avoidance of risky situations, or procrastination.
The thwarted individual more or less sacrifices the goal of self-realization in favor of the goal of reducing anxiety, of finding safety and security.
We become stuck.
Horney theorized, "Not only is his real self prevented from a straight growth, but in addition his need to evolve artificial strategic ways to cope with others has forced him to override his genuine feelings, wishes, and thoughts."
Dr. Horney could have been speaking directly to an adult child when she said the confused individual ends up not knowing "where he stands or 'who' he is."
But we need some sort of identity. We need a concept of who and what we are. So, because we need a self-image, we manufacture one -- and idealized image which promises fulfillment and a sense of worth. We come to expect perfection from ourselves and from others. We not only expect it, we demand it. "In this process" Horney wrote, "he endows himself with unlimited powers and with exalted faculties; he becomes a hero, a genius, a supreme lover, a saint, a god."
This need for perfection, our striving for an idealized self, becomes what Horney calls a "search for glory."
The search for glory corresponds to an inflexibly high and grandiose evaluation of how we are and should be. It is the notion that we are and should be better than other people, that we are above hum-drum existence and that other people should recognize our superiority. We deserve to get everything we want and anything short of this is totally and completely unfair.
An adult child's glory seeking is often invisible. In fact, many adult children appear to be remarkably modest and self- effacing. Yet, the inner state of mind is aimed at preserving an inflexible self-image of a powerful, totally in-control person. This rigid stance is based on fear and despair, for the glaring discrepancy between objective reality and our idealized self- image of perfection is so great that even minor disappointments can plunge us into the zero level of depression and self-hate.
Nowhere is the paradoxical nature of the adult child's personality more evident than in the area of self-esteem. A large portion of the unhappiness and personal conflict adult children experience is caused by the see-saw of self-esteem between the grandiosity of Glory Seeking and the despair of the Zero Level. There is a direct cause-and-effect relationship between the adult child's feelings of self-loathing and the desire to be superior to everyone else.
When we fail to live up to our impossibly high expectations of how we should be, our self-esteem drops to zero level. We are at rock bottom, psychologically frozen.
An adult child at zero level absolutely believes himself to be a creature of total worthlessness. Not only do we believe ourselves to be nothing, but we are convinced that everyone else can look at us and see our worthlessness. Furthermore, we believe our situation is totally hopeless. We are nothing, everyone knows it, and we will remain this way forever.
As a therapist, I have been privy to the most secret inner thoughts, hopes and fears of numerous men and women who quite literally despise themselves and the lives they are living. They feel like shadow people living unreal and disjointed lives. They feel overwhelmed and numb.
More than anything else, these people tell me they want to feel good. They want to feel better about themselves. They want to be happy. They want me to help them find the key to positive self-esteem.
I used to think I could help raise a client's self-esteem with my displays of unconditional positive regard. I would give them the love and consistent approval they never received as children. I would reinforce their strong points, their accomplishments, their achievements -- all of the things about themselves for which they could be proud. Gently, through a gradual process of natural growth, their true inner worth would unfold, slowly and inexorably, like the slow blossoming of a daffodil, petal by petal, culminating in a full fragrant spring flower.
Working together, we would explore the many facets of self and they would by this natural developmental recapitulation reach the unmistakable conclusion that they were indeed worthy people. And we would all live happily ever after.
Just like the Waltons.
Meanwhile, back in the real world . . .
About ten years ago I began to realize that objective positive feedback has little or no lasting impact on a person wallowing at zero level. Simply put, this means that if you truly believe you are a worthless person, all my telling you that you are a good and valuable person will do is make you think that I'm a bad judge of character.
So, I'm not going to try to raise your self-esteem by telling you what a good person you are. I'm not going to ask you to look at your good points and all the things you do right.
Because it's not your good points that fill you with self- loathing. You hate yourself when you feel you can't do anything right. You want to be admired and loved, but problems keep getting in the way. You feel like you don't measure up, you're not good enough or smart enough or appreciated enough.
Oh, you may be a big success in some ways, yet whatever you do, it's not enough to fill that empty, dead feeling inside, it's not enough to chase away the blackness concealed in your heart.
You probably haven't told anyone about that black rotten spot eating away at the center of your being. It's filled with envy and fear, bitterness and desire. Your most secret feelings and thoughts are stored there, ugly things, so dark, so cold, so mean, it seems impossible that other people can't look right into your eyes and see the badness lurking inside you, skulking in the corners of the rag and bone shop of your heart.
"I celebrate and sing myself," Walt Whitman wrote with exuberance. "Clear and sweet is my soul. . ." But if you were to sing your own soul, it would be a dull and dolorous dirge. It would be a bitter aimless noise, more akin to a wail than a melody.
You may feel like the person in Stephan Crane's poem:
I stood upon a high place,
And saw, below, many devils
Running, leaping,
And carousing in sin.
One looked up, grinning,
And said, "Comrade! Brother!"
A cold hell, a solitary confinement-- that's what your self feels like at zero level. I know you don't want to talk about the secret darkness that makes you hate yourself. Such words bring a stiffening of the body, a turning away of the countenance. Sometimes the terrible reality is accepted . . . with tears.
You think you are alone.
You are wrong.
You think the only way to deal with the darkness in your heart is to hide it.
You are wrong again.
You are suffering, in part, because in P.S. Dread you learned to judge yourself and others with a distorted set of values. Your experiences in your alcoholic family taught you to believe that normal feelings are bad. This meant that in order to be "good" you had to be perfect, so this warped logic led you to believe that perfection was normal.
Since the ideal of perfection is impossible to attain -- let alone to maintain -- self-hate and misery followed.
"Lord," prayed Sir Thomas Browne, "Lord, deliver me from myself."
Alcoholic families kill self-esteem. This is a reality. Once we truly accept that our self-hate is a direct result of the rules and values and behaviors we learned in our alcoholic families, we can transcend our sense of worthlessness. Because once we truly accept this reality, we can change it. We can create a new reality, write a new equation of self.
We can make up new rules.
We can discover new values.
We can change our behavior.
We can accept ourselves.
We can be free, finally, from the torment of self-hate.
© Copyright 1986, 1997, 2003 Gayle Rosellini & Mark Worden
This Web edition is for personal use and not for distribution. Zipped plaintext copies via email on request.
For copies on disk, inquire :: Mark Worden