Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

Something happened to us a long time ago. It happened more than
once. It hurt us. We protected ourselves the only way we knew how.
We are still protecting ourselves. It isn't working anymore.
Symptoms of Adult Children
The symptoms that we develop as a result of what happened to us
run the gamut of psychiatric and stress-related disorders, from
substance use disorders and other addictions to depression,
phobias, anxiety, personality disorders, sexual dysfunction,
intimacy disorders, overactivity, eating disorders, compulsive
behavior and obsessions. We will be the first to agree that not all of
these problems in all cases have as their primary cause some kind
of dysfunction in our families. Alcoholism, schizophrenia, certain
kinds of depression, some forms of anxiety, and some types of
obesity all seem to have well-documented biological roots. But it is
curious to us that in all our years of doing therapy, we have
encountered few, if any alcoholics, for example, who did not also
come from dysfunctional families who were not also re-enacting
that dysfunction in their own current family systems.
In fact, we can think of two people who came from healthy
families but seemed to inherit the biological predisposition to
become hooked on alcohol and they handled the problem in a very
functional way. They both said to themselves, "I think I'm getting
addicted to this stuff." They talked to their family and friends about

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it, and then they sought help to stop the addiction. The difference
for most of us is that we're too dysfunctional to do that.
The symptoms that we develop have certain characteristics that
seem to hold true for most Adult Children.
Our symptoms ...
1. Are part of our denial system.
2. Give us the illusion that we are in control.

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3. Started out as a normal repsonse to some perceived stress.
4. Form as a way of protecting ourselves from a pain that we as
children had no power to remove.
5. Are about the denial of feelings.
6. Are intimacy and relationship "blockers".
7. Are about shame.
Our symptoms are born out of emotional denial and they serve to
maintain that denial. They are ways that we allow ourselves to live
one kind of life while convincing ourselves that we have a very
different kind of life. And while they serve to give us the illusion
that we are in control, they are in fact clear indicators that what we
have really done is to give up healthy control of our lives to
something outside of ourselves.
By becoming trapped in an addiction or phobia, we actually trade
true control over our lives for the illusion of control. It is this
illusion of control that makes giving up our symptoms so
frightening.
The sex addict truly and sincerely believes that if he or she gives
up unhealthy sex, life will crumble in chaos. The relationship
addict, most often addicted to a person who is himself an addict,
sincerely believes that if he or she tries to change in healthy ways,
life will fall apart. The exercise bulimic who keeps his weight
under control by running, who finds his only sense of "psuedo-
inner peace" by running, and who shows all the signs of
withdrawal when he isn't able to run, truly and sincerely believes
that his life will not be worth living without the ability to run.

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Our symptoms all started out as a normal response to some
perceived life stress. It is our opinion that the breeding ground for
them was introduced in childhood, when we were learning how to
live with other people. When those family systems in which we
grew up had some kind of dysfunction, whether it be obvious
(overt) as it was in Sandy's case, or subtle (covert) as it was in
Frank's case, it is normal, logical and reasonable for a child in that
family to protect himself or herself. Just as the physical body will
isolate an infection and protect the rest of the body by creating a
cyst around it if it is left untreated for too long, our childhood
minds will isolate the source of psychological pain in a safe blanket
of denial to maintain some kind of balance.

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