Powerlessness, an internal and external lack of strength, ability, authority, capacity, or resources to change, rectify, improve, or escape from a person or circumstance, is a concept that is virtually identical to the adult child syndrome. It is, to some extent, the essence that caused its creation.
“Adult children are dependent personalities, who see abuse and inappropriate behavior as normal,” according to the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (World Service Organization, 2006, p. 18). “Or if they complain about the abuse, they feel powerless to do anything about it. Without help, adult children confuse love and pity and choose mates they can pity and rescue. The reward is a feeling of need or avoidance feeling lonely for someone else.” day. Such relationships create reactors, who feel powerless to change their situation.”
There is a big difference between those who grew up in a loving and stable home and those who endured a chaotic and dangerous one.
“In a normal home, children … internalize the strength of their parents,” continues the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (ibid., p. 89). “They feel securely supported by a sense of parental power that gives their lives logic and structure. With this foundation and strength, they can build a self and create loving intimacy through their own sense of power. Children of alcoholics have a paramount power. feeling powerless for not being able to stop the destructive effects of family alcoholism.
A strong indicator of such a dynamic is a spiraling and unruly life, even into adulthood, in which a person has no mastery over it and instead feels as though they are a victim of it, as they once were. in the childhood. Unable to feel responsible and participate, he skirts the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, becoming trapped in the protective cocoon of the inner child that he was unconsciously forced to create in order to spiritually escape danger and function with the brain’s rewired survival traits to further encourage. a sense of security in the present tense.
“When children have been hurt by alcoholism and cannot find relief from their pain, they are forced to deny their reality and isolate themselves,” warns the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (ibid., p. 359). “The experience of being powerless to control the events that harm us as children leaves us with a deep sense of alienation, not just from others, but from our own openness and vulnerability.”
Impotence can be subdivided into external and internal aspects. The former include the actions and reactions of others and situations and circumstances out of control, such as the family environment into which a person was born, the alcoholism-fueled behavior and dysfunction of their parents or primary caregivers, and any number of factors. natural. disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. The latter implies the lack of internal resources to escape, protect or defend those situations or reactivations later in life that return an adult to his moments of helplessness and lack of resources, immobilizing him, but flooding his body with the stress hormones he needs. . could not take advantage at that time. Repeated reactivations result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Circuit aspects can encompass people (authority figures reminiscent of parents), places (similarities to a person’s home environment), and things (also rekindling similar circumstances). Although they can all occur unconsciously and most likely will continue to do so unless their origins are identified and desensitized, they all create childhood impotence in adulthood.
However, the helplessness of being pitted as a helpless and resourceless child against an out of control and potentially harmful adult with the disease of alcoholism that no one understands cannot be overstated.
“I learned in Al-Anon that I will not make another person stop drinking because I am powerless over alcoholism,” advises Al-Anon’s text “Courage to Change” (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992, p. 14). “… I gradually learned that nothing I did or did not do would convince my loved one to be sober. I understood it intellectually, but it took time before I believed it in my heart.”
Alcoholism quickly severs a child’s connection to his Higher Power, causing the person suffering from alcoholism to cross his boundaries, become entangled with him, and graft his diseased soul into the child’s healthy one. Leave that child abandoned and feeling even more powerless.
However, there are many reasons why a child cannot understand this concept and consequently puts in considerable, if futile, efforts to repair or cure his sick parent.
In the first place, as a child, he believed that the reason for his caretaker’s neglectful, accusatory, and abusive behavior was his own, that is, that he was flawed, unworthy, unpleasant, and needed to be “disciplined” appropriately for his needs. deficiencies he did not have the psychological, neurological, emotional, or intellectual development to have otherwise assessed.
Desperately in need of his parents’ love, nurturing, and support for his own development as a person, he secondly employed whatever strategy his young mind could devise to obtain it.
Third, by trying to minimize his exposure to physically and psychologically damaging guilt, belittlement, hatred, and shame from his caregiver, he tried to reduce the detriment to which he was exposed.
Ultimately, he attempted to stabilize the father who created the dangerous, chaotic, and unpredictable environment in which he was forced to live in order to increase his own safety and sanity.
While all of these motivations were logical and complimentary, especially for a helpless child who tried to exert whatever corrective influence he could, they were to no avail.
“One of the first Al-Anon sayings I remember hearing, known as ‘the three C’s, embodies the concept of powerlessness over alcoholism,” according to “Hope for Today” (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002, p.7). “‘I didn’t cause it’ relieves me of any lingering guilt I may feel. If only I had been a better son, worked harder in school, done more chores around the house, or not fought so much with my siblings, my Maybe parents have not become alcoholics, in reality, their suffering from the disease had nothing to do with me.
“‘I Can’t Control It’ gives me permission to live my life and take better care of myself. I no longer have to spend my energy trying to manipulate people and situations so that alcoholics drink less.
“(And finally), ‘I can’t cure it’ reminds me that I don’t have to repeat my crazy behavior over and over again, expecting different results. I don’t have to keep giving a last-ditch effort to stop drinking, hoping that this time it works”.
However, releasing the defenses and false sense of control of a grown child is like falling out of the sky without a parachute and proclaiming it to the world as you plummet towards the ground. He only intensifies his fear and prepares him for the catastrophic outcome. These pseudo-solutions were all he had and admitting his powerlessness now is nothing less than a return to vulnerable victimhood.
While physical distance and temporary separation, such as when an adult child moves away from his or her home of origin, may minimize his reactivations and provide a temporary increase in stability, they will continue to exert their effects until his illness has been dissolved by healing. recovery. -in other words, wherever he goes, so goes his education.
“When I was a young daughter of an alcoholic father, I had no power,” according to testimony in “Hope for Today” (ibid, p. 59). “I was powerless against every criticism that came out of his mouth and I was powerless against every blow he dealt me. To survive that upbringing, I developed many defenses. When I no longer needed them, these defenses became character flaws. As an adult, I was! I was still powerless from the effects of my father’s abuse!”
Paradoxically, the moment a person identifies their powerlessness is the moment they regain their first grain of strength, because they cross the line from victim to victor, as long as they do so with the support of a Higher Power, as is the case with the first step. of any program of recovery, which states: “We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.”
Standing on the threshold of help and healing, the adult child rekindles his first, perhaps still tenuous, connection to his Source, which lifts, dissolves, strengthens, and restores, breathing the life of true power and the light of the sickness of the alcoholism and the dysfunction it suffers from. he was exposed during his upbringing drenched and darkened.
Powerlessness thus ends where reconnection with a person’s Higher Power begins.
Article Sources:
“Adult Children of Alcoholics”. Torrance, California: World Service Organization for Adult Children of Alcoholics, 2006.
“Courage to change”. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Headquarters of the Al-Anon Family Group, Inc., 1992.
“Hope for Today”. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Home of the Al-Anon Family Group, Inc., 2002.