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Adult children of alcoholics often have challenges at work, in close relationships and in relationships.
At Parterapi-parterapeut.dk you can get help in the form of individual psychotherapy or family and couple therapy if you have challenges in the relationship.
The problem is that adult-children of alcoholics often lack a sufficiently functional image of a healthy model for a relationship and a family. As well as what is appropriate.
It is unfortunately quite common and is often due to the fact that they grew up in a more or less dysfunctional childhood home, or that they became too responsible and mature too early.
It is both a loss and a grief that can appear together with shame, perfectionism, stress, anxiety, depression, abuse, loneliness and feelings of wrongness.
It is very different how and to what extent the challenges manifest themselves. Sometimes two adult children of alcoholics find themselves together, and in other cases there is only one in the relationship.
Other adult children of alcoholics together with a heavy user, abuser or addict. It is also called co-dependency.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk has over 15 years of professional experience with adult children of alcoholics and helps, among other things, with developing structure, focus, competences and relationships.
Get help to heal the old wounds at the same time as the love and mutual support develops in the relationship.
It’s about getting better at navigating life and the chaos of relationships and turning stumbling blocks into stepping stones.
If you are the adult child of an alcoholic, you grew up in a family where one or both parents or primary caregivers drank too much alcohol. Or drank alcohol in a way that was inappropriate for you and your family.
Your parents do not have to have been alcohol abusers, addicted to alcohol or alcoholics. Many times alcohol consumption has been sparse or intermittent. Often the drinker is himself the adult child of alcoholics.
Nor does it have to have been alcohol that was the substance of abuse. It may also have been medicine or other solvents and drugs incl. hashish and stronger forms of drugs.
Some adult children of alcoholics live in total abstinence. Many drink moderately. Others end up having alcohol problems themselves in the relationship.
The relationship heals and the solution is love.
The love in the relationship and the love for oneself.
This means strengthening both the relationship and self-love. It is about developing self-love, self-care and self-regulation through self-esteem, self-acceptance, self-expression, boundary setting and problem solving.
It is a process of being seen, heard, spaced, understood and recognized. The best framework for this process is the couple relationship and support from a professional and neutral couples therapist with insight into the dynamics of addiction and co-dependency.
As an adult-child of alcoholics, you are not alone, and you are not the problem. It is a system where everyone is equal and each has their own role in relation to the problems. You two create the system, and it is the joint dynamic that is the focus of couples therapy.
Couple therapy aims at both of you becoming better at seeing, recognizing and handling your individual and shared dynamics. As well as the relationship challenges.
Through couple therapy, you create, among other things, self-awareness and insight. As well as making a journey towards finding your true self and building a healthy inner core without co-dependency.
Together you develop a greater and mutual tolerance, support and love, as a driving force for your process. Without these insights and qualities, the system can, on the contrary, strain you and the relationship.
This is the reason to invite your partner to couples therapy instead of coming alone. Together, via couples therapy, you can also create the life and family you dream of and long for.
It is about building a bridge from the problems and the pain, over the communication and the solutions. To a shared future of love, healing, joy and growth. In this way, you create insights, tools and competences that you benefit from in all of life’s relationships as well as at study and work.
Cf. The Norwegian Institute for Public Health, 2008, has 585,000 Danes have harmful alcohol consumption and approx. 140,000 are dedicated alcohol addicts.
In addition, it is estimated that for each alcohol abuser there are approx. 4 people who are negatively affected psychologically and socially by alcohol abuse. Typically the partner and children as well as close family members and friends.
The Danish Health Authority alone estimates that there are 122,000 0-18-year-old children every year who grow up in families with alcohol problems.
181,000 of the 19-35 year olds and 329,000 of the 35+ year olds say they grew up in families with alcohol abuse.
At the same time, it is estimated that 75% of all families are dysfunctional to one degree or another, with patterns similar to those known in alcoholic homes. Not all adult children of alcoholics have problems or have recognized their adult-child problems.
Age is not decisive either. You can be 13 or 73 years old. However, most feel the challenges and recognize that they are an adult child of an alcoholic aged around 25-45.
That’s why Parterapi-parterapeut.dk offers not only couple therapy and imagotherapy, but also family therapy and family discussions.
For many, the situation in the childhood home meant that they sharpened their senses.
They became helpers – especially good at weathering the moods, dangers and problems in the home as well as the needs of others. They took responsibility and became over-responsible and premature adults.
They became isolated to one degree or another and please with a fluctuating degree of self-esteem, identity and self-esteem. In a pattern where criticism was easily taken personally and mistaken for a threat or an attack. Often with explanations, defenses or counterattacks in response. Thus they themselves became violators.
In many ways they became like victims – victims of circumstances. With an over-focusing on others and others’ feelings, wishes, problems, weaknesses, inadequacies and mistakes. Critical and self-critical. Reacting in a mix between the victim, helper and abuser roles.
When they finally trusted themselves and their perceptions, thoughts, feelings and needs, they felt guilty and gave in to others. They became reactive instead of active.
Often fast and violent and some even outwardly reacting, as if in a shift between niceness and explosion. They often let others take the initiative as dependent personalities with fear of being vulnerable, rejected and abandoned.
The partner rarely knows unless the partner is himself the adult child of an alcoholic. At best, the partner reacts neutrally, and at worst, the partner’s reactions are escalating or hurtful.
The relationship and treatment must therefore be considered and handled as a system where insight and learning come over time.
Read more about the consequences of alcohol for the adult children of alcoholics in adulthood and in the relationship.
It is the interaction between two parties that creates the dynamics in the relationship. The background is the patterns that arose early on, which later in life, unnoticed, become part of the character – the autopilot.
Back then they were useful and part of survival. As adults, they become inappropriate and struggle in relationships, friendships, studies and work.
Some live very strictly, but miss more love, life and joy. Others live life, as in a rollercoaster, with changing partners, friendships, studies and jobs.
So even if the adult-child-of-alcoholic problem is not a disease, it may well lead to problems and disease:
If you grew up in a home with dysfunction, abuse, addiction and co-dependency, it can be difficult later in life to establish a good, close and stable relationship with a partner.
This is mainly due to the early behavioral imprinting and the mental working model for the relationship. As a result, it can be difficult to commit to a permanent partner and family and to maintain and develop the relationship, the relationship and the family when things go up and down.
Others become overloyal and may attach too quickly, unconditionally and for a long time.
It is also expressed in challenges around effective communication, problem solving, negotiation, decision making and conflict resolution.
In general, it can be difficult to understand, accommodate and handle the situation and understand what is up and down, in and out, good and bad or right and wrong.
Many also suffer from overwhelming thoughts and confusing emotions. Ambivalence, indecision and procrastination. Sloppy and quarrelsome or perfectionists and shy of conflict. Irresponsible or overresponsible. Black and white or fluctuating.
It can be painful and confusing to live with – until you acknowledge it, understand it and get it treated. Both for yourself and your partner.
It is a collection of repetitive creative adaptation, action, coping and survival patterns as well as character traits that continue through adulthood until it is recognized and processed.
It must be emphasized that no two adult children of alcoholics are alike. Many of the behavior patterns appear in different strengths and combinations. And with the opposite sign.
Many of the same behavior patterns are also found in other adults who did not grow up in families with alcohol at all. There can be many other reasons for the underlying dysfunction.
If the adult-child problems are not taken seriously and processed, there is a risk of consequences. There is, for example, a probability of connection with other diagnoses and psychological challenges such as:
The solution is that you help each other to define, develop and create a good and healthy image of your relationship, relationship and family. Where there is room for flexibility, conflicts and personal boundaries.
At the same time, it’s about supporting each other in developing commitment and secure attachment without over-responsibility or unhealthy loyalty.
The solution therefore also consists in you learning to draw your antennae back to yourselves, so that you get out of the symbiosis. A journey that requires commitment, persistence, patience, kindness and warmth. One day at a time.
The problem arose, re-emerges and is healed in the relationship and process. Therefore, the problem is also best solved in the relationship and through the process. The best treatment is therefore process- and relationship-oriented psychological treatment. Preferably in the form of couple therapy, imagotherapy and family therapy.
A process where you move from contact and dialogue, through insight and competences to action and change. At the same time as you forgive, let go and continually develop greater openness, gratitude, satisfaction and joy in life.
Many children and young people of alcoholics develop a degree of insecurity, a sense of wrongness and a sense of loneliness, which often characterizes them and their relationships for the rest of their lives.
The pain and the feeling of abandonment in the childhood home were typically so overwhelming that the child repressed it and the problems psychologically.
It may therefore take time to recognize one’s adult-child problem and to understand all the nooks and crannies, aspects and consequences of the adult-child problem and behavior of an alcoholic.
Being emotionally abandoned also means that you have ended up abandoning yourself early in life. In the daily life of adulthood, this can manifest itself in problems with approaches and rejections.
Other challenges can be difficulties with too long (feeling) antennae, chaotic emotions or thoughts. In the case of later rejections, failures, experiences of loss and crises, emotions can be aroused and defenses weakened. It can also happen when there is a loss or a threat of loss of an object, symbol or place such as his home or his job that gives rise to the reaction.
People who suffer from attachment and abandonment trauma are then often thrown into new forms of crises, which typically consist of a mixture of anxiety, sadness and anger on the one hand. As well as failure, loneliness and inadequacy on the other side. Often in a desperate mix between the feelings, reactions and behavior patterns of childhood and adulthood. Typically the same patterns as the body’s survival patterns – fight, flight or freeze.
These are reactions that can be triggered in the relationship, daily life and couple therapy, but all reactions that must be analyzed, supported and handled in the process and during couple therapy.
A therapeutic course for adult children of alcoholics:
Depending on the needs and the concrete adult-child problems, a general course for adult children of alcoholics is supplemented with maintaining, developing and preventive imagotherapy and access bars body therapy. Yoga and yoga therapy can also help with stress relief, body awareness and self-regulation.
You can also use a relationship test or combine with e.g. psychotherapy, grief therapy, treatment of stress, anxiety and depression, relational treatment of alcohol problems in the relationship and family therapy.
Since some adult children of alcoholics have challenges with closeness and intimacy, there is also the option of supplementing with sexological conversation therapy.
The dysfunction in the childhood home can be about many different things.
Sometimes alcohol wasn’t the problem at all.
It is really about the closeness, security, support and culture in the home.
That is, whether your primary caregivers and home have provided a sufficiently healthy, safe, secure and loving base for you. Whether you have had enough of what exactly you needed.
The dysfunctional behavioral patterns and relationships typically arise around addiction and co-dependency. But in principle in all situations where parental ability is impaired.
In other words, the same patterns that can arise in the event of critical or long-term illness, hospital admissions, prison stays, secondment, travel activity, placements outside the home and adoption, as well as psychological problems.
Circumstances surrounding medication, physical illness, disability and suicidal issues may also have given rise to the dysfunctions.
Other situations that can create the same patterns, without alcohol being involved, can e.g. be:
Narcotics
Gambling addiction
Sex addiction
Assault, threats and violence
Eating disorders
Addiction to work (workaholic)
Absence incl. travel activity and postings
Roughly speaking, situations that mean that the parents have either not been present in the home.
Or conditions that have limited the parents’ ability to parent and that have made it difficult to have sufficient emotional contact between the primary caregivers and the children.
Situations that have meant that the child has not been sufficiently seen, met and acknowledged.
The challenge now is to one degree or another to unlearn the old habits. As well as re-educating oneself in some new and healthier relationships such as e.g. the couple relationship and couples therapy.
So, figuratively speaking, it is partly about supporting the inner child in healing, growing and thriving, as well as silencing the critical parent and installing a new and more caring parent.
No one is perfect and we cannot avoid making mistakes. Not even as parents. Conversely, it should of course not be an excuse to do your best or to subsequently clean up what has gone wrong.
Statistically speaking, a lot of alcohol is drunk in Denmark, and since for many there is a con
In the childhood family, many adult children of alcoholics invented a role.
Partly to fit in with the family and survive. Partly to cover up the problems, the parents and their alcohol abuse.
The roles were often unconscious and unconsciously encouraged by the parents, through positive reprimand and praise.
The roles were also part of the psychological defense and a mechanism for not being present in the present.
It can, for example, be roles such as:
These are often roles from early childhood that follow the adult child of the alcoholic for the rest of their lives.
Often the roles are recreated in any family situation, as well as in teams, projects, associations, school and work.
If the adult child of the alcoholic is unaware of his role, he can act out in all sorts of dysfunctional ways.
If you and your partner are, on the other hand, aware of your roles, you can learn to tame them and use them constructively via couples therapy.
Or you can get help via couples therapy to restructure your roles and redefine your relationship and reaction.
nection between their relationship problems and alcohol consumption, Parterapi-parterapeut.dk meets clients with relational alcohol problems on a daily basis.
However, very few people have become alcoholics, but surprisingly few actually know how much they drink and how little it takes for it to pose a risk to themselves or a problem for their relatives.
Relational problems in themselves cause stress and pain. Emotional pain can i.a. arise in connection with criticism, infringement, failure and loss as well as feelings such as:
Family and relationship problems can lead to increased alcohol consumption. Likewise, alcohol consumption can create and maintain relational problems.
As it often happens gradually and unconsciously, it unfortunately takes a long time before the problems are recognised, expressed and dealt with. But it’s never too late to seek therapy.
According to Dr. Gabor Maté is all dru
The adult-children of alcoholics became co-victims.
As children, they learned to suppress feelings and needs, resulting in low self-esteem and self-confidence. Some thus very mentally focused and intellectualizing, often with cognitive studies and jobs.
Often rationalizing or perhaps even defensive and manipulative with a lack of perspective in the present and life. But a stickler for agreements, rules and laws. As well as a constant look towards the future, despite the many unfinished situations in the past.
Feelings and thoughts are often chaos. Some adult children of alcoholics are therefore more emotional than mental and so choose e.g. a career as an artist where they can use and express this.
Most adult children of alcoholics are characterized by doubt, indecisiveness, decision confusion, fickleness and ambivalence. Many walk almost constantly with an anxious or clutching feeling in the stomach, as well as an indefinite, unresolved and deep sadness. Sometimes it causes anxiety.
Either they can’t relax and have fun until all the tasks are done, or there is a party all the time. Work before pleasure or pleasure before work.
They may smile even though they are crying inside and feel hollow or empty. Although everyday life and career seem to be functioning well.
Many are therefore afraid of being exposed, or that the whole thing will one day burst.
Some have sleep problems or stressful stress reactions and others maybe anxiety, c-ptst, ptsd, depression or burnout. Many have challenges with a fuse that is too long, which can suddenly burn out.
In relation to their relationships and relationships, the adult child of alcoholics can often be reluctant to be abandoned. Or chiefly responsible for keeping it all together.
When the adult children of alcoholics then feel safe, many can quickly enter into a very intense and enthusiastic relationship. Then to suddenly and abruptly reject and withdraw or to create a conflict where they themselves end up being rejected or rejecting themselves.
It can be a bit of a roller coaster, but psychotherapy and couples therapy can help create control, self-regulation and balance.
gs of abuse, whether opiates, cocaine, hashish or alcohol – painkillers.
Alcohol and the behavior that consumption entails can therefore be equated with painkillers and drinking can be equated with self-medication.
The pain we try to medicate ourselves against can be physical as well as psychological, relational and attachment-related.
There is no difference.The pain is experienced in the same part of the brain.So when we feel emotional and relational pain, the same parts of the brain as in physical pain will be activated.
Some of the types of pain we regularly encounter in family and relationship contexts are when we feel hurt, alone, rejected, isolated and without support, compassion and love.
It also includes the situations where we suffer loss and deprivation. As well as when we don’t feel seen, heard, recognized and accepted. Often difficult emotions such as guilt, shame, sadness and anger are involved. Alcohol and anger in particular go hand in hand.
The pain can come from boundary violations, old wounds and attachment traumas. New pain as well as reactivated pain (re-traumatization) – past emotional wounds that are scratched open and old behavioral patterns that are reactivated.
It explains the pain, sorrow and anger, as well as joy and healing, that the relationship and the family can be a source of.
Family therapy and couple therapy provide opportunities for responsiveness, openness, clarification and recognition as well as problem solving, healing, development, change, growth and joy.
When the underlying causes are removed, the underlying causes of alcohol consumption disappear. As the consumption decreases, the new relationships and the new life can be created with the support of the therapist.
In adulthood, the adult children of alcoholics often find it difficult to feel and to trust themselves and what they feel. As well as in relation to the partner and other relationships.
Since the adult children of alcoholics have typically had an ambivalent relationship with their parents and the parental role, many adult children of alcoholics also have problems with other authority figures.
It can, for example, be a boss, the banker or a case manager, but it can also be the partner or other support and carers.
In those situations, even the partner can inappropriately come to look like a crooked authority figure, a parent or other family member. It can trigger old and new conflicts.
It is important to be open to this and to talk about and work with it during the process and in couples therapy itself. So you can find new and more effective response patterns as well as repair, forgive, reconcile and move on.
The fluctuating trust and self-confidence as well as respect and self-respect can also mean that the adult children of alcoholics find it difficult to notice and set limits at the same time that they are often overly or irresponsible. Or over/undercompensating.
It presents challenges in navigating vulnerable, emotional and conflictual situations. As well as balancing the love or responsibility between themselves, the partner, the children, friends, colleagues and the boss or case manager.
Many also have a tendency to love those they cannot reach or those they cannot save. Many adult children of alcoholics therefore end up forming couples with other adult children or marrying an alcoholic.
Many adult-children of alcoholics develop a degree of insecurity, distance, feelings of wrongness, feelings of abandonment and feelings of loneliness that often characterize them and their relationships for the rest of their lives. Unless they get the job done with it.
They often feel hollow, empty, isolated, alone, lonely and different. Don’t know who they are, what they want in life and with their relationships. They may lack purpose, goals and direction. Some may be very goal-oriented, but it is not always rooted in their true selves and values.
Later in life, it can be the cause of a mid-life crisis or otherwise give rise to an abrupt awakening, crisis and need for emergency therapy.
The pain and the feeling of abandonment in the childhood home were typically so overwhelming that the child repressed it and the problems psychologically. It may therefore take time to recognize one’s adult-child problem and to understand all the nooks and crannies, aspects and consequences of the adult-child problem and behavior of an alcoholic.
Being emotionally abandoned also means that you have ended up abandoning yourself early in life. In the daily life of adulthood, this can manifest itself in problems with approaches and rejections. Other challenges can be difficulties with too long (feeling) antennae, symbiosis, chaotic emotions and thoughts.
This often causes challenges with close and long-term relationships. In this way, the dynamics and loneliness can bite themselves in the tail.
Many adult children of alcoholics are bored with regular life and superficial contact such as small talk, formal meetings and cocktail parties.
Most adult children of alcoholics instead seek intimacy and intensity in their lives and relationships. They often call their relationships (as well as jobs) turbulent, a rollercoaster or revolving door relationship.
Many are themselves at risk of alcohol abuse. Partly due to the family’s paradigms, playbooks, the early mental and visual imprints around alcohol.
For others, it’s quite the opposite because they live in total control. It is basically the same. Just a reverse or counter reaction to the chaos they come from or would experience if they let go.
Through relational psychological treatment such as couples therapy, you can gain insight into how your partner’s and your own paradigms, playbooks, dynamics and experiences with insecurity can still control your life. Through this awareness, you can achieve greater responsibility, self-esteem and control over your life.
The experiences and imagos we hold often seem like unfinished situations that we keep going back to until they are healed and completed. This is what is called repetition urge and repetition compulsion.
Couple therapy and imagotherapy both heal and close the old wounds and help you understand why the same patterns keep arising in the current relationship.
Some adult-children become completely abstinent.
Others have relationship problems.
For some, the alcohol takes up more than the relational problems and sometimes a psychological or physical addiction may also have arisen.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk draws on many years of experience as a professional alcohol therapist and treats relatives and adult-children of alcoholics. Eg. from Tuba, Blue Cross and the Chain.
In addition to family and couple therapy, supplementary individual talks can also be offered – lifestyle talks, psychotherapy or actual alcohol treatment.
You therefore do not need to go from therapist to therapist, but can find the entire solution at Parterapi-parterapeut.dk.
Yoga is a good method to get into the body and de-stress as well as to strengthen the regulation of the nervous system.
Yoga is also good for many physical and mental challenges.
Many adult-children are therefore happy with yoga. Yoga is also a form of self-care, self-love and healing.
You can have yoga and meditation separately, as part of the therapy or together with your partner.
The therapist at Parterapi-parterapeut.dk is examined RYT 200 Yoga Teacher from India and trained by Indians.
Parterapi-parterapeut.dk also offers Access Bars, Access Body Processes and body therapy.
It both heals, loosens and opens up for both parties. It can take the edge off pressure and crises and create the basis for a more fruitful dialogue.
Uniquely, Access Bars are extremely stress-relieving while reducing drama and chaos.
If you as an adult-child suffer from stress, anxiety or depression, Access Bars can reduce it by approx. 80%.
You can get Access Bars together with general. talk therapy. So two treatments in one and for the same price.
In time, you can also become certified in Access Bars yourself. Then you become your own therapist.
To share is to heal.
Move from pain to healing.
In the couples therapy room, you can create a neutral place to be.
A place where you create freedom to express all pain, anxiety and worry and free yourself from the anger, guilt, shame and other remnants of the past. So that you no longer need to be trapped by the past and the autopilot. The old paradigms.
As you learn to accept yourself and each other, you can heal the old wounds and the child in yourself. Then you can slowly begin to replace the inner critical parent with a more caring parent. In this way, you can create self-support and a safe platform to brand yourself.
Along the way, you can share insight, experience, learning points, strength and hope with each other. Thereby you become more aware and responsible for your dynamics and reaction patterns from the present as well as childhood. Regardless of whether it is one or both of you who is the adult child of an alcoholic who struggles for closeness or loves too much.
You can slowly teach yourself new and better ways of thinking, acting and living. So you will be free to communicate better, solve problems and make decisions. So over time you become more active and less reactive.
Together you can do what you could not do alone. Through couples therapy and the relationship, you can heal, grow and free yourself from the past – together.
You don’t have to deal with the method itself. The most important thing is that there is evidence that the treatment works best if you come together with your partner or your primary relationships, such as your parents.
If you have not yet made peace with your parents, and if you are still in contact with them, you are very welcome to family therapy. If your partner and family don’t want to or can’t, you are welcome alone. But it is always best to take the first consultation together with the partner.
At the first consultation, you can get an overview of the situation and the need.
Then we can talk about what kind of process is best for you. There is rarely a quick fix when it comes to the adult-child-of-alcoholic problem, but most people quickly get from crisis to stabilization. No two processes are the same either.
For most, the process goes from 1) problem or crisis to stabilization and 2) from stabilization to development and prevention.
Ultimately, the goal is a loving and conscious life and relationship, where you can:
The prerequisite for therapy and couples therapy with adult-children of alcoholics is that you come regularly, take one day at a time and trust the process, take responsibility and commit. The basis is help for self-help.
The yield depends on you being prepared, focused, hard-working and suitably ego-strong. That you are ready means, among other things, that you are recognized, stable and stable enough to meet, that you can participate in couples therapy. If not, it may require preparatory therapy.
Conversely, if you have already been in individual therapy, you must prepare for the fact that couples therapy is different, and that the things you have already taught yourself can be seen in a different light.
Couples therapy costs not only money, but also time and energy. Process requires openness, endurance, spaciousness and flexibility. It is important to understand that process, results and change take time. Sometimes it goes faster than others. At the same time, learning typically also requires unlearning. It can involve the release of new and old pain and grief, stagnation, setbacks, relapses and temporary drops in self-confidence. Almost like an arrow in a bow – it has to return before it can come forward. Since the adult-child problem is largely about relationships, you must also be prepared for challenges in relation to the process and couples therapy.
The challenges that may arise along the way are therefore welcomed and dealt with in the relationship, the process and the therapy itself. If challenges arise in the therapeutic relationship, it is recommended that a follow-up or final meeting be held so that an appropriate experience or conclusion can be created. At that meeting, the unfinished business can then be completed and the process often accelerates thereafter.
So with these supportive words for the process – welcome!