Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

Depression
Depression is something that we all experience at one time or
another. It includes feelings of low self-esteem, sadness, feeling
"blue" or "down", being tired, apathetic, eating a lot or not much at
all, sleeping a lot or not much at all and so on. Many long-term
depressions are due to imbalances of neurotransmitter substances in
the brain, so that the brain is not getting stimulated enough.
Antidepressant medications have been very helpful in treating these
kinds of depression. But we see so many cases of depression that
are treated only with medications, when the true underlying
problem is a lot of unresolved "junk" from childhood.
We get depressed when we don't know how to get what we need in
life. We get depressed to punish others. We get depressed to get

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others to help us, so depression can be a way of achieving power
over others. We get depressed when we're afraid to express our
anger. There are all kinds of depression.
For every person who is not on antidepressant medication and
should be, it is our hunch that there are several more who are on
them and won't need to be once they recognize and deal with the
reality of being an Adult Child of a Dysfunctional Family.
Stress Symptoms
Stress symptoms, such as migraine or tension headaches, many
forms of temporomandibular joint disorder (TMJ) (sore jaw joints
from grinding the teeth), ulcers, colitis, skin disorders, backaches,

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muscle tension problems, asthma, etc., are extremely common
among "Adult Children".
They are common because when we "hide out" and try to stuff
what we believe are "inappropriate" feelings, they come out
sideways anyway. Instead of crying, we get headaches. Instead of
telling our spouse that we don't like to go shopping, we go anyway
and get stomach pains. Instead of admitting that we're tired, we
work ourselves into the ground compulsively to show how strong
we are, and develop hypertension. Our bodies react to things
around us whether we like it or not. It is up to us to express those
reactions in healthy, not dysfunctional, ways.
Phobias
Phobias are irrational fears that keep us from going about our day-
to-day affairs with comfort. Severe phobias can keep us from going
about our day-to-day affairs at all. We develop fears of people, of
going outside the house, of working or of going to school. While
the specific phobia may be attached to a single traumatic event, it is
often the rules in our family system that keep us from overcoming
the phobia. And those same rules can help the phobia to expand
and grow into other irrational fears that paralyze us even further.
Anxiety
Anxiety symptoms include trembling or shaking, dizziness, chest
pain or discomfort, faintness, fear of dying or going crazy, hot and
cold flashes, tingling in the hands or feet, sweating, heart
palpitations, jitteriness, jumpiness, tension, feeling tired and worn
out, eyelid twitches, restlessness, cold clammy hands, dry mouth,
upset stomach, frequent urination, diarrhea, high resting pulse rate,

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worry, fear, hyper-attentiveness, distractibility, difficulty in
concentrating, irritability and impatience.
That's a long list of symptoms and most of them can also be caused
by physical problems, which is why it is strongly advised that you
get a complete physical exam before assuming that it is anxiety.
On the other hand, we see many people who go from doctor to
doctor and one expensive test to another looking for a physical
cause of their symptoms, when what is really happening to them is
that they have some deep-seated emotional pain that they are not
looking at. When they face the pain, the symptoms begin to slowly
disappear.

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Our general advice on symptoms is to get a complete physical
examination first, to help rule out physical causes. Should you seek
psychotherapy, we recommend that you tell your therapist that you
also want to explore possible family dysfunction causes for your
symptoms, in addition to just getting medication or behavior
modification treatment.
In our view, symptoms are either biologically caused, or they are
there for a protective reason that is most likely due to family
dysfunction.

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4 
Some Hooks: Addictions in Particular
Because addictive and compulsive patterns of living are so
common among Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families, we
would like to take a brief diversion to identify what some of these
hooks are.
An estimated 28 million Americans have at least one alcoholic
parent.
More than half of all alcoholics have an alcoholic parent.
One in three families report alcohol abuse by a family member. In
up to 90% of child abuse cases, alcohol is a significant factor
(National Association of Children of Alcoholics Charter
statement).
Experts suggest that 80 million Americans are overweight (Turner
& Helms, 1987).
One in three adults still smoke cigarettes (1987 Gallup Poll),
millions of people drink coffee, many addictively so, and injuries
from jogging number in the thousands.
Before their highly addictive nature was recognized by the medical
and psychotherapeutic community, untold thousands had become
addicted to prescription tranquilizers, such as Librium and Valium.

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The average child watches six to eight hours of television every day. By
the time he graduates from high school, the average child has spent more
hours in front of the television set than in school.
It took two years to sell the first 5,000 copies of the A.A. Big Book, the
bible of A.A., first printed in 1939. Now it takes two days (A.A. World
Services, 1985). This, of course, is an uplifting and joyful statistic because
it shows us how many people are now getting help for a disease that was
once thought untreatable, but it also shows how hungry we are for help
with our addictive processes.
We could compulsively cite statistics for another 20 or 30 pages to make
our point, but we won't. We aren't here to use scare tactics or to tear down
American society. There are plenty of other societies struggling with their
own addictive problems. But we do feel that it is necessary to at least
frame addictive agents in broad terms.
To begin, we will simply list for you some of the more common agents to
which we can become addicted based on our clinical experience, current
research and our own personal experience. Feel free to add to our list or
take issue with it if you wish.
alcohol
jogging
prescription drugs
reading
nonprescription drugs
speed/danger
illegal drugs
nicotine
food
caffeine
television
relationships
sex
power
work
sleep
spending
gambling
stress
cults
The first thing to notice about our list is that with perhaps one or two

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exceptions, there is not one item on our list that is harmful or dangerous in
and of itself. There are plenty of people who go to Lake Tahoe, Las Vegas
or Atlantic City for a weekend of gambling and entertainment and never
have a problem with it. There are plenty of people who drink alcohol
moderately, and for whom alcohol never becomes a problem. Even stress,
in and of itself, is not dangerous. In fact, without some stress in our lives,
life would become very boring. So it is not the addictive agent itself that is
the focus of our message, except that it is very important to realize that