Powerlessness, an internal and external lack of strength, skill, authority, ability, or resources to change, rectify, improve, or escape from a person or circumstance, is a concept that is virtually identical to adult child syndrome. It is, to some extent, the essence that caused its creation.
“Adult children are dependent personalities, viewing 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 partners they can pity and rescue. The reward is a feeling of need or avoidance.” feel 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 held by a sense of parental power that gives logic and structure to their lives. With this foundation and strength, they can build a self and create loving intimacy through their own sense of power. Children of alcoholics have an overriding power. a feeling of helplessness at not being able to stop the destructive effects of family alcoholism.”
A strong indicator of such a dynamic is a spiraling and unmanageable life, even in adulthood, in which a person has no mastery over it and instead feels as if 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 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 time.
“When children have been wounded 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 beyond their control, such as the family environment into which a person is born, behavior fueled by alcoholism and dysfunction of their parents or primary caregivers, and any number of other 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 all can occur unconsciously and will most likely continue to do so unless their origins are identified and desensitized, they all create childhood helplessness in adulthood.
However, the powerlessness of being pitted as a helpless, destitute child against an out-of-control and potentially harmful adult with the disease of alcoholism that neither understands can’t be overstated.
“I learned in Al-Anon that I will not stop another person from drinking because I am powerless over alcoholism,” counsels Al-Anon’s “Courage to Change” text (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992, p. 14). “…I gradually learned that nothing I did or didn’t 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 their Higher Power, causing the sufferer to cross their boundaries, become entangled with it, and graft their diseased soul onto the child’s healthy one. It leaves that child abandoned and feeling even more powerless.
However, there are many reasons why a child may not understand this concept and consequently makes considerable, if futile, efforts to repair or cure his sick parent.
First, 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 assessed otherwise.
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 the physically and psychically damaging guilt, belittlement, hate, and shame of 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 he was forced to live in in order to increase his own safety and sanity.
While all of these motivations were logical and appreciative, especially for a powerless child who tried to exert whatever corrective influence he could, they were futile.
“One of the first Al-Anon sayings I remember hearing, known as ‘the three Cs,’ 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 as much with my siblings, my parents have not become alcoholics, in fact, 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 to get alcoholics to 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. once it works.”
However, releasing an adult child’s defenses and false sense of control is like falling out of the sky without a parachute and proclaiming it to the world as you plummet to the ground. He only intensifies his fear and sets him up for the catastrophic outcome. These pseudo-solutions were all he had and admitting his helplessness now is nothing short of a return to vulnerable victimization.
While physical distance and temporary separation, such as when an adult child moves away from his or her home of origin, may minimize his flare-ups and provide a temporary increase in stability, they will continue to exert their effects until his illness has been dissolved through healing. Recovery. -in other words, wherever he goes, so he continues his education.
“When I was a young daughter of an alcoholic father, I had no power,” according to a testimony in “Hope for Today” (ibid, p. 59). “I was powerless over every criticism that came out of his mouth and I was powerless over every punch he landed on me. In order to survive that upbringing, I developed many defenses. When I no longer needed them, these defenses became character flaws. As an adult,! I was still powerless against the effects of my father’s abuse!”
Paradoxically, the moment when a person identifies his helplessness is the moment when he recovers his first grain of strength, because he crosses the line from victim to victor, provided he does so with the support of a Higher Power, as happens with the first step of any recovery program, 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 connection, perhaps still tenuous, with his Source, which lifts, dissolves, strengthens and restores, breathing in the life of true power and the light of the disease of the alcoholism and the dysfunction it suffers from. he was exposed during his upbringing soaked and darkened.
Powerlessness thus ends where a person’s reconnection with a 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: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992.
“Hope for today.” Virginia Beach, Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002.