Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

repeating itself. She became desperate and suicidal. And she was
lucky ... because the hospital staff where she was admitted after
taking an overdose of sleeping pills was able to pick up on her
chemical dependency very quickly.
Distraught but relieved to have someone finally take care of her the
way no one ever had when she was growing up, Sandy Dorset
gladly accepted the hospital's recommendation that she enter
chemical dependency treatment, and it was there that her life truly
began.
Her road to recovery has not been an easy one. As with many
alcoholics, stopping the alcohol intake itself was not nearly as hard
as she thought it might be but the pain of dealing with the
underlying dependencies (co-dependencies as we now call them),

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Page 15
with the tremendous amount of relearning that has to take place
and of having to face head-on the emotional tortures of growing up
in an abusive alcoholic family was at times more than she thought
she could bear. Her husband had divorced her by now, and yet she
kept on working and struggling and confronting her fears, angers
and hurts.
She began attending Adult Children of Alcoholics Al-Anon groups
in addition to her A.A. groups and continued her gradual but steady
climb out of the depths of despair. With each new step out of the
darkness, she seemed to find healthier and healthier friends. Her
weight, which had climbed to 150 pounds above normal at the
height of her crisis, slowly began to come off. Her daughter was
growing up to be a happy, well-adjusted child. For the first few
years following treatment, Sandy dated irregularly but never
seriously. She had a job and her daughter to look after, and her own
recovery to manage. In her early thirties she met a man who truly
was different. He was caring without taking responsibility for her
problems. He got crabby on occasion but it never went beyond that.
They would fight about things but would get them resolved and go
on, none the worse for wear. They each spent time alone as well as
together. And they each had their own A.A. meetings to go to.
Sandy and her second husband have been married now for 15
years. While they have had their ups and downs as any couple
does, the nightmare of her first life has turned into something quiet,
comfortable and whole. Although the nightmare wild never
completely leave her, it has taken a realistic place in her past and
serves as a constant reminder that whenever she gets under too
much stress, or feels too insecure, or feels like her emotions are

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overwhelming, there is a healthy way for her to respond. Sandy
Dorset is living now.

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3 
Who Are We? What Are Our Symptoms?
Who are these adult children of dysfunctional families of whom we
speak? Where do they live? How much money do they earn? What
kinds of problems do they have? Who are these people anyway?
''They" are us.
At least 9095% of us, as we will show later on. Many of us are
adult children of alcoholic parents who fit the characteristics listed
in Janet Woititz' bestselling book Adult Children of Alcoholics
(Woititz, 1983). Or we are women or men who "love" too much, as
described by Robin Norwood (Norwood, 1985).
As Terry Kellogg (1986) states: many of us are not just the victims
of alcoholics or child abusers or spouse beaters, many of us become
alcoholics, child abusers and spouse beaters ourselves whether we
are male or female.
As adult children of dysfunctional families we operate in a world
of extremes always seeking that healthy balance, the Golden Mean,
but always seeming to fall short the mark. The pendulum

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swings to one extreme and we feel lonely, isolated and afraid. We
tire of this, and it swings to the other extreme, where we feel
enmeshed, smothered and angry. Then it swings back again. This is
true in many areas of our lives, until we get into a solid recovery
program.
On our way to conduct a workshop in Texas a few months ago, we
generated a list of our own which might help to begin to describe
the troubles that plague Adult Children:
1. We are people who hit age 28 or 39 or 47 and suddenly find that
something is wrong that we can no longer fix by ourselves. It may
coincide with the normal stage crises described by Levinson
(1978), Gould (1978), Sheehy (1974) and others, but its intensity
and accompanying pain and confusion suggests that there are Adult
Child issues beneath the surface.
2. We are people who gaze at our peers on the street or at a party
and say to ourselves, "I wish I could be like her or him."
3. Or we say, "If only he knew what was really going on inside of
me, he'd be appalled."
4. We are people who love our spouses and care deeply for our
children, but find ourselves growing distant, detached and fearful
in these relationships.
5. Or we feel that everything in our lives is perfect until our sons or
daughters become chemically dependent, bulimic, run away from
home or attempt suicide.
6. We are the underemployed, never seeming to be able to achieve
our true work potential stuck in jobs we loathe because we're

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confused, afraid or lost.
7. We are the chemically addicted, the sexually addicted and the
eating disordered.
8. We are the migraine sufferers, the exercise bulimics and the high
achievers with troubled marriages.
9. We are the social "stars" who feel terribly lonely amidst our
wealth of friends.
10. Some of us grew up in chaotic families and were weaned on
alcoholism, incest and physical, emotional and spiritual abuse.

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11. Some of us are especially paralyzed now because the
dysfunction we experienced was so subtle (covert) that we can't
even begin to put a finger on what it was that happened to us.
12. Some of us were compared to a brother or sister who did well
in school.
13. Others were led to believe that we could only have worth and
value if we became plumbers or doctors, electricians, lawyers or
psychologists.
14. Some walked on eggshells throughout childhood because the
family was poor, Dad worked two jobs, More raised five kids
pretty much by herself, and everyone was tired and on edge most
of the time.
15. Many of us were emotionally neglected because no one was
physically there for us; or because they were there for us with
material things but were absent emotionally.
16. Some were spoiled and smothered out of misguided love;
seduced to stay in the nest years after our friends had gone out into
the world and begun their adult lives.
17. Many of us are afraid of people, especially authority figures.
18. Others of us frighten people, especially our loved ones and
demand that our loved ones live in our isolated worlds controlled
completely by us.
19. We are people who despise religion or who despise atheism.
20. We let others use and abuse us or we use and abuse others.

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21. We are people who have only anger, or only sadness, or only
fear, or only smiles.
22. We try so hard that we lose; or try so little that we never live
life at all.
23. We are men and women who look "picture perfect" (Fry, 1987).
24. We are men and women who hit skid row and feel like we
finally belong somewhere.
25. We have depression or we have rage.

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26. We think ourselves into emptiness or we feel ourselves into
chaos.
27. We are on emotional roller-coasters or in emotional vacuums.
28. We smile while slamming the kitchen cabinets shut because
we're really angry or we slam the cabinet angrily when we're really
sad.
29. We abuse ourselves but take care of everyone else.
30. When we are unhappy, we are terribly afraid to acknowledge it
for fear that someone will find out that we are human; or even
worse, that we are even here at all.
31. We have trouble relating to our sons, our daughters or both.
32. We can make love, but we can't get emotionally close or we
can't make love at all.
33. We constantly watch others to try to find out what's okay and
what isn't.
34. We feel less than some and better than others but we rarely feel
like we belong.
35. We get stuck in lives our hearts never chose.
36. We hang onto the past, fear the future and feel anxious in the
present.
37. We work ourselves to death for unknown purposes.
38. We are never satisfied.
39. We fear God or we expect God to do it all for us.

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40. We fear or hate people who are different.
41. We get into friendships that we can't get out of.
42. We get hooked on things.
43. We project our inner conflicts onto our children.
44. We are embarrassed about our bodies.
45. We don't know why we're here.
46. We suffer as much as we can.
47. We see a police car and feel like we've done something wrong.
48. We sacrifice our dignity for false security.

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49. We demand love and rarely get it.
50. We wish for things instead of going out and getting what we
want or need.
51. We hope for the best, expect the worst and never enjoy the
moment.
52. We feel like the rest of the human race was put here to make us
feel intensely uncomfortable while eating at a restaurant alone.
53. We ask, "Where's the beef!", but unlike Clara Pellet in the TV
commercial, we aren't getting paid to ask. And nobody answers.
54. We run away when we fall in love or we abandon ourselves for
the relationship.
55. We smother those we love, we crush those we love or both.
56. Some of us will turn the tide of history by our actions, and
some of us will live in obscurity.
57. We will grow up to hate our parents, or we will keep them on
the pedestals that we put them on when we were little, but we will
rarely let them be the error-prone humans that we all are.
58. We feel guilty about the way our brothers or sisters were treated
compared to us or we feel jealous and slighted about the way they
were treated compared to us.
59. We hate Dad and overprotect Morn or we hate Morn and
overprotect Dad.
60. We were sexually abused by someone when we were five years
old but blame ourselves, telling ourselves that we should have

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known better at age five.
61. Some of us had a parent who was chronically ill when we were
growing up.
62. Some of us had a parent who was mentally ill when we were
growing up.
63. Some of us had no parents at all when we were growing up.
64. We are survivors, who deep down inside pray that someday life
will be more than just mere survival.

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65. We are lovers of life whose little child is locked inside of us,
waiting to be set free.
Regardless of our symptoms or circumstances, we are Adult
Children of Dysfunctional Families because: