Recovery for Loved Ones II

22 April 2023

Last week we got part way through an exploration of what it’s like to love someone with addictive behaviours.  In the introduction, I noted that people with addictions or those who love them, can lapse or relapse.  Lapsing is a momentary setback to previous unhealthy behaviours; relapse is a full-blown return to that unhealthy way of life.  From the ground covered last week, a lapse for a family member or friend would be enabling, nagging, controlling etc. whereas a relapse would be failing to pursue your own life and values instead devoting yourself to actively directing as many parts as possible of the addicted person’s life. 

This is an important description as it gets us to where we want to go.  If we don’t know what ails us, we also don’t know what health looks like.  That’s the purpose of Al-Anon, SMART Recovery’s Family + Friends (F+F) meetings etc.—they exist to help those who have been enabling to learn to enable recovery, not addiction.  This follows a sentence I have used many times in meetings when asked what to say when a loved one asks for more than you’re comfortable giving: I love you and I’m willing to support your recovery but not your addiction.

Last week three sources were cited, 1) the book Get Your Loved One Sober (GYLOS), based on Community Recovery and Family Training (CRAFT); 2) an independent study on families with addiction, Shanmugam (2021), and 3) the laundry list of Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA). We’ll take them up in reverse order. 

I found the laundry list to be an extraordinary read the first time I saw it.  Knowing that this is a subset of the F+F membership, many of those 14 ACoA attributes apply.  I’ll list them and then we’ll discuss those that apply to the F+F community.

“The Laundry List” (14 Traits of an Adult Child)

1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We were frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics [sic], marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We become addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
10. We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us. 
13. Alcoholism [addiction] is a family disease; we became para-alcoholics and took on characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

Tony A., 1978

First, this list was generated by one man who had lived the life of an ACoA for years and talked with many others with the same issues.  These are not empirically supported or derived points based on either randomized clinical trials or qualitative approaches.  That said, neither is King Lear or Wuthering Heights yet they both tell us a tremendous amount about the nature of human conditions.  I believe that laundry list has the same virtues (if considerably less style!) as those literary precedents.

This weekly blog space hasn’t room to explore all 14 points, so I’ll pick a few key points characterizing that way of life and discuss those.  Points 1-3, 8, and 13-14 will do it.  Again, starting from the bottom and working upward point 14 emphasizes our stance as re/actors not actors.  This implies that we don’t know what we want and/or haven’t the courage to reach out directly.  To act is to be.  To be is to know who you are and to respect it.  Moving to point 13, I don’t disagree about alcohol use disorder being a family issue, but I think it is more accurately described as a cultural disorder.  People raised with addiction become acculturated to being, reacting, and emoting in response to the actions of the addicted person or the reactions of the addicted person’s loved ones. 

There are many instances of children and spouses who walk away from these families and do extraordinary things (Cf. Jay, 2017, Supernormal: The Secret World of the Family Hero).  Yet, they don’t fully leave the laundry list behind, despite their best wishes.  That, I would argue, is because of the acculturation.  Part of that acculturation is the need for what I call the dysfunctional family vortex.  I see this in people who have become dependent on excitement, whatever the source.  That excitement fills a void of being that arises from not knowing who one is and what one ought best do—much easier to react to the latest shit storm.  Trouble is, life goes by fast, resentment of an unidentifiable wrongness builds, and you’re a bitter, middle-aged, human being who doesn’t know how she got there or how to leave.  Which brings us to points 1-3.

Isolation, loss of identity, and fear of personal criticism is a terrible combination.  The isolation prevents one from discussing and recognizing the aloneness, the pain, and the apparent lack of options.  Part of this is a compulsion to stay and help the others who are also suffering.  There are volumes on this, but I will say only that a well-lived life is one of coming to terms with who you are.  You do not become you by hanging on to a sinking ship for the sake of others.  In fact, much of the success I have seen in families happens because one person seeks and finds a measure of reason and sanity which can outline a path for salvation for those still trapped in the dysfunctional vortex.

Now imagine being isolated because you think your family is the only one going through this hell and you’re ashamed to admit or discuss it.  Because you have kowtowed to the irrational demands of the addicted loved one, your identity has never been acknowledged or nurtured—you’ve learned to take care of others, not yourself.  Add to that deeply wounded soul a morbid fear of criticism and you have a perfect formula for discouraging a person from ever taking the risks that are a necessary part of striking out alone, getting an education, or reaching out to others for support. 

As best I can see it, there must be an absence, a going away to become, before one can relate—as a full human adult—to an addictive family of origin. 

Dan Chalykoff, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying) is (very) near completion of an M.Ed. in Counselling Psychology and accreditation in Professional Addiction Studies.  He works at CMHA-Hamilton and Healing Pathways Counselling, Oakville, where his focus is addiction, trauma, burnout, and major life changes.  He writes these blogs to increase (and share) his own evolving understanding of ideas.  Since 2017, he has facilitated two voluntary weekly group meetings of SMART Recovery.  Please email him (danchalykoff@hotmail.com) to be added to or removed from the Bcc’d emailing list.

References

Adult Children Alcoholic/Dysfunctional Families.  (2006).  Adult Children of Alcoholics.  Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization.

Jay, M. (2017). Supernormal: The secret world of the family hero. Twelve, Hachette Book Group.