Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

These symptoms form as a way of protecting us from a pain that we
as children had no power to remove. From the early beginnings of
denial grows a pattern of splitting ourselves in two, like Sandy did.
She was the competent, high-achieving child on the outside and the
frightened, hurt, lost little child on the inside. The longer this
dysfunction went untreated, the more adept she became at denying
her true feelings. And the more we deny our feelings, the worse we
feel.
And so our symptoms are about the denial of feelings, too. We shut
off the hurt and the fear. We bask in the praise of "outsiders" who
can only see the public image that we present. We take pride in
being "the strong one" or "the rebel" or the "cutie pie" and all the
while we are dying inside because we feel that no one really knows
who we are, and they probably don't. Thus our symptoms are also
intimacy or relationship disorders.
By supporting our denial and by helping us to maintain our "family
secrets", they also keep us from ever getting close to anyone else in
healthy ways. We always have to keep our guard up in the hopes
that no one will find out what's really inside, which means that our
symptoms are also about shame. They are about the shame of
"being found out", of being "discovered", of being emotionally
naked in front of others and being laughed at, criticized or rejected.
The list of symptoms that can develop in Adult Children of
Dysfunctional Families is quite long. In many of us, there are
several of these present at the same time. We have never met a
compulsive overeater, for example, who does not have an
unhealthy dependency on food. We have rarely seen a spouse of an
alcoholic who is not literally addicted to the relationship with their

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spouse, who is not compulsive in several other areas of life, who
does not have an unhealthy dependency on other people or things
and who does not have problems with depression.
It is not the label one puts on people that determines what kind of
family problems they will have or what kind of parents they will
make. It doesn't matter to the child whimpering in her bedroom
after being screamed at by her frustrated lonely mother whether or
not her mother is labeled a relationship addict, a co-dependent or a
compulsive overeater. What matters to that child is the fact that
Mom and Dad aren't happy, that Mom and Dad scream at her all
the time, that Mom and Dad put her in the middle of their fights
and that Mom and Dad won't let her feel her real feelings.

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While our list is not all-inclusive, we believe it does provide a
picture of what happens to so many of us Adult Children.
Some Symptoms Developed By Adult Children
Emotional/Psychological
1. Depression
2. Anxiety/panic attacks
3. Suicide or suicidal thoughts
4. Obsessions and compulsions
5. Chemical addictions
6. Low self-esteem
7. Personality disorders
8. Phobias
9. Hysteria
10. Sexual dysfunction
11. Suspiciousness
12. Intimacy problems
13. Dissociation
14. Flat affect
15. Difficulty concentrating
16. Excessive anger

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17. Low frustration tolerance
18. Passive/aggressive personality
19. Extreme dependency
20. Inability to be interdependent
21. Inability to play or have fun
22. Inability to be assertive
23. People-pleasing
24. Approval seeking
25. Identity confusion

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