Assignment Six Flashcards
Considering the codependent elements found in many marriages of adult children of alcoholics, there’s no surprise that they experience little true intimacy. True or false?
True.
Unacknowledged anger may be displayed by withholding sex, money, and or approval and affirmation. True or false?
True.
Name the two problems in intimacy that the adult children of alcoholics might have?
Communication and sexual dysfunction.
Give two major aspects of boundary problems that may occur in parenting children of adult children of alcoholics.
Unrealistic expectations and inappropriate boundaries.
The “littlest gosling”stayed in his family pond. True or false?
False.
Write concerning counseling for healthy marital and parenting relationships:
Codependency issues are intensified in marital and parenting relationships. The Scripture speaks of the two as “one flesh.” But to approach such an ideal, men and women must be capable of maintaining healthy, independent relationships which are marked by mutual respect. There’s a level of commitment to each other expected in no other adult interaction. I choose to maintain this union even if you don’t meet all my needs. Evangelical Christian adult children of alcoholics are 32.8% reported having been divorced, compared with 9.7 of Christians from non-alcoholic homes. Some place a spouse under the heavy burden of anticipating and meeting all the adult child’s previously unmet needs. “At last, I found someone who will really love me for just being me. Someone will be there for me, someone will really care about my happiness”. In marriage, the fear of abandonment may be exhibited through unrealistic demands for total devotion and undivided attention from the spouse. ACOA who receive a spouses frequent attention and displays of affection often have difficulty retaining the safe feelings of being loved. The Chinese food syndrome: when you eat Chinese food, an hour later you are hungry again. The normal disagreements in marriage relationships alert adult children of alcoholics to the threat of perceived abandonment. They may deny feelings. This defense strategy erects barriers,not bridges. ACOA’s frequently marry individuals addicted to work, gambling, alcohol, and/or other chemicals. Fear of abandonment may be the thing that binds adult children of alcoholics to spouses who become violently abusive and or sexually promiscuous. The less – trusting adult children hope, at the very least, their pervasive sense of loneliness will be diminished within a marital relationship. Distrusting adults fear this self – disclosure necessary to attain the genuine intimacy which can reduce these feelings of loneliness. Those adult children of alcoholics who typically trust totally and immediately inter marriage with exuberant expectations that cannot be met by any mere mortal. These adults experience their worst fear – abandonment. Which ever trusting style an adult child of an alcoholic employees, they begin marriage with unrealistic, hidden agendas which omit the fact that their spouses have their own, separate ideas.
Boundaries:
“My desire must dictate your appearance and behavior because you are an extension of me and I can feel good about myself only when others approved of both of us.”
When personal boundaries are weak and unclear, a spouses success is perceived by the adult child of an alcoholic as enhancing his or her own worth. They believe that if they stop concentrating on rescuing their parents, the family would disintegrate and it would be their fault. So these adults never cease parenting there parents.
“You really are an extension of me because you reflect my ability to make wise personal choices and I can feel good about myself only when others approval of both of us.” “Therefore it is essential for me to control you so that I will feel good.”
They enter into marriage as a renovation project, to fix the partner. They often are confused by the intensity of their desires to control their own spouses. They would do well to connect their urgent need to control situations and people with the lack of control that prevailed in their chaotic childhoods. There is a difference between influence and control.
Intimacy:
Intimacy is expressed both sexually and non-sexually; a couples communication pattern is the clearest non-sexual expression of marital intimacy. They must believe that each member is free to disclose true thoughts and feelings without fear of personal rejection. In alcoholic families, people talk at each other rather than with each other. They lack the basic communication skills such as an empathetic listening and the use of “I” statements.
Sexual dysfunction:
When there are shouts or sullen stares in the living room, there will be sexual dysfunction in the bedroom. There is the thought that sex is dirty, degrading, and embarrassing, saved only for procreation. If there have been instances of sexual abuse from home, the memories may intrude on the marriage bed, leaving the abused adult child of an alcoholic parent non-orgasmic or impotent. If a bedroom was filled with distrust, anger, and attempts to control, there will be little freedom in intimacy.
Unrealistic expectations:
Adult children of alcoholics have unrealistic expectations of themselves. They want to be more than good parents, they want to be perfect. They regret the loss of their childhoods. They need to realize that it is now their children’s childhood and not theirs. There are inappropriate boundaries. More than any other person in any other relationship, one’s child is seen as an extension of oneself. There are problems in setting boundaries for the children, and problems and establishing boundaries between the adult child and his or her children. Parents need to establish boundaries for their children’s behavior and attitudes. The approval addiction is rooted in the fear of abandonment.
Establishing boundaries between parent and child:
When codependent parents lean on their children for support and share their deepest problems with them, it is a form of emotional incest. An adult child experiences a sense of abandonment and may use his or her children to fill the emotional role of the spouse. Parents are to look to each other as sexual partners, confidants and best friends. To use another adult outside the marriage to fill these roles is physical or emotional adultery. To look to children within the family to fill them is physical or emotional incest.
Releasing:
By the age of 21, the parents should have 0% of the control and responsibility while the young adult has 100%. If parents are frustrated by their toddlers, they may need to examine their need to control everything. The stronger the need to control the child, the more likely the parent is to feel a lot of stress during the child’s adolescence. The less controlling parents welcome the changes in their children and the release of some parental control and responsibility. When boundaries are weak between adult children and their offspring, a child’s development and departure from the home is experienced as a deep personal loss rather than a sign of growth.
List 10 guidelines in assisting parents, who are the adult children of alcoholics, to change their marital and parenting relationships:
Review and apply counseling strategies from Chapter 11. Assign books on marriage and/or parenting. Refer to a marriage and family therapist as needed.
Offer hope for change.
Counter guilt with truth.
Understand the difference between doing the best I can and the best I know.
Seek healthier marriage and family models.
Attend seminars and classes on marriage and/or parenting.
Teach parents to “release their arrows.”
Address the issue of an alcoholic spouse.
Make Jesus Christ the center of the home.
Discuss counseling for new family roles:
People can make healthier choices about their relationships with their parents. The adult children of alcoholics fear abandonment. By remaining preoccupied with their parents and families, they minimize the painful feelings of further abandonment. Even when adult children begin recovering from the effects of parental alcoholism,they may remain preoccupied with their alcoholic families. Still more strange – and painful – for the adult child is the feeling of being disloyal to the family and the accompanying sense of parental abandonment experienced as they begin their recovery process. As the adult child breaks out of the family denial of alcoholism, They stand alone in the warm light of the emerging truth.
The adult child’s new awareness of truth will usually be experienced by parents as an accusation of total failure. Siblings of the adult child frequently do not see themselves as adult children of alcoholics.
Adult children’s recovery is not going to make their parents automatically recover. This truth is emeshed with painful, codependent issues of controlling, unclear personal boundaries, and fear of abandonment. Recovering alcoholic children will want to lay aside their confining childhood rolls and develop their own valid entities. They begin to be less tolerant with the outrageous alcoholic behavior.
With regards to figure 13–1: the right side is the best case scenario in response to changes in a recovering adult child. Less than paradise: just because a parent is sober and actively recovering the family will not be transformed into a problem -free paradise. The adult child of the alcoholic needs to adjust their expectations to the duration of their parents sobriety. Relating to a newly sober parent is very different from interacting with one who has maintained sobriety for years. The left side of figure 13–12 depicts an initial detour which may occur when one or more family members notices changes in the recovering adult child and perceive that the adult child is defecting from the family.
Old roles and simulated denial:
If an adult child recants the professed recovery with its new, reality – based view of the family, they enter a charade of simulated denial. They are not free to pursue their own personal recoveries. They are not comfortable pretending they do not see the family as organized around alcohol.
Eventually they decide they would go crazy if they continue to play the family’s game. They choose truth instead of the families denial of it.
New roles and new choices:
The middle paths in figure 13–1
Illustrate two possibilities for choices when parents are actively alcoholic. First the recovering alcoholic child may standalone against the denial of the entire family. Or, some other family members may also break out of the denial and join the adult child in recovery.
When the adult child stands alone:
The AC must establish some personal limits which reflect new attitudes and choices such as lending money, and interaction with drinking parents.
Clarifying purposes:
Dysfunctional alcoholic families often fail to provide safety, security and stability for children. Preservation of physical and emotional well – being for adult children and their loved ones is one purpose for setting limits. They don’t have to continue to expose themselves and their children to danger. Much of the limit setting will be to clarify the boundaries of responsibility that are blurred or nonexistent and most alcoholic families. It is disrespectful to assume responsibility for another adult life or for protecting that adult from the consequences of their own behavior.
Enabling:
It is a kind of protecting and “mopping – up” behavior that actually enables an alcoholic to avoid facing the consequences of their alcoholism. Enabling actually promotes the mental, moral, spiritual and physical destruction of the alcoholic. Enablers need to repent of this as sin.
Determining specifics:
And finances: well the adult child lend money to parents or borrow from them? Will they pay drinking parents rents, thus freeing money for liquor?
Visits to parents home:
some adult children find it impossible to visit if the parents are actively drinking.
Visits by parents in the adult child’s home:
Most adult children set limits or even exclude them.
Personal and family recovery choices:
As the adult child breaks denial, recovery progresses. The family sees the changes. There are two possibilities one: denial is maintained and the recovering adult child is isolated. Or two: others break denial and an intervention is conducted. Relationships between any in group one and two is broken. For any in group one there are two possibilities: one, the family recants recovery and maintains the old rules, or two: they pursue personal recovery with the adult child.
for any in group two, alcoholism progresses or the alcoholic moves to recovery.
List seven limits that need to be set in creating new family rules:
Finances. Visits to parents home. Visits by parents in the adult child's homes. Grandchildren. The family contract. Loving detachment.
List eight counseling guidelines for adult children of alcoholic parents who are forming new family roles:
Emphasize some previous counseling strategies.
Help with setting limits and making new choices.
Balance limit setting with the need to honor parents.
Introduce the concept of “hurt proofing.”
Introduce the concept of “truth breaks” (rehearsing insights about the alcoholic family history that reestablishes responsibilities and prevents enabling and codependence)
Face the “death of the dream.” (grieving).
Find healthy, surrogate “families.” meaning other groups that assist recovery but do not become a license to reject parents.
Emphasize the importance of prayer and hope.
