ADULT CHILD: Time to find a new normal

Those that have some experience with recovery are familiar with the term Adult Child. An Adult Child is a person who grew up in a dysfunctional home and adopted maladaptive internal language, regression, and ineffective thinking and behavior to cope, and has carried those traits into adulthood.

Common characteristics of the adult child include a sense of inferiority or wrongness, and internalized self-blame and self-doubt.

Other common traits exist amongst Adult Children: isolation and fear, approval seeking and loss of identity, caretaking behavior or becoming an alcoholic or addict, victim mindset and attraction to those we can “fix,” hyper-responsibility and tendency to focus on others so we don’t have to focus on ourselves, feelings of guilt, drawn to excitement, uncertainty about love and its expression and reception, in ability to express emotions, low self-esteem and critical self-judgement, dependent and fearful of abandonment, and reacting rather than acting. All of these traits are paraphrased from the “Laundry List” in Adult Children of Alcoholics literature and can be found by visiting their website, at https://adultchildren.org/

I chose to share information about the Adult Child this week because it is a topic that has helped me make sense of my past: Hello, my name is Sarah, and I am an Adult Child. While I do not wish to discuss my story in depth here, I can briefly summarize: the defense mechanisms I needed to survive my childhood are still very much part of who I am. I used the thinking and behaviors to get by in my home, and they seemed very normal to me. Once I got older, went to therapy, and read some self-help books, I learned the recovery phrase, “Normal is where you grew up.” What that means is that the things I lived through as a child were my normal, and what you lived through was your normal. As adults, we can see just how not normal it was in hindsight, and also that the thinking and behavior allowed us to survive but may not be serving us well in the present.

Knowing about these traits can help us to begin to tease out their origins and dismantle the irrational thinking related to them. We can see that they kept us safe in the past but that they can be very harmful in the present by directly impacting our interpersonal relationships at home, at work, and within the community. When we learn about this, we see that we are not alone and that there is help out there. We can let go of fear and shame and become the people we truly are.

For those that are interested, search for Adult Child of Alcoholics or Codependent’s Anonymous meetings online, read literature about these issues (I suggest Claudia Black as well as searching Adult Children at any bookstore or library), and talk to a therapist if you are able. If you are an Adult Child, please know that you need no longer live a life that feels out of control or that is frightening. We are adults now and we are exactly who we need to be to help that inner child feel safe and loved.

Sarah Mears-Ivy brings 12 years of experience in the field of human sciences and advocacy.