It’s not just the addict or the main dysfunctional person who needs help to become whole or well again—the effects ripple out to all who are invested or a part of that person’s life.
So it makes sense that if you grew up in a home where there was active addiction, lots of dysfunction, or stress, you probably were impacted by it. Especially if you were a kid when it was happening. You probably had to find your own way to live amidst unpredictability. Kids can be resilient adapters, yet often it comes at a cost.
The symptoms of untreated trauma, unresolved stuff, unhelpful habits, patterns you default to, often become more and more troublesome as you age; as you attempt to start or maintain relationships, forge your own path, or start your own family. Old feelings and sensations get stirred up, you may know you don’t want to repeat the past, yet are at a loss around how to break the cycles.
If you are interested in learning more about how childhood trauma or distressing events can show up in adults, I’ve listed below some common characteristics people develop in response to growing up around addiction, dysfunction, and/or the aftereffects of experiencing trauma.
Ideas compiled from my own work with clients, from the work of Dr. Tian Dayton, Ph.D., Dr. Bessel Van der Kolk, M.D., and from ACOA 12-step literature.
Difficulty with Self-Regulation Big emotional or behavioral swings, going from 0-10 quickly; feeling overwhelmed and flooded with big emotion, to then shutting down or numbing out. Hard to know how to stay in the middle—often because no one modeled it for you growing up.
Hypervigilance/Negativity Bias Scanning people, places, and things for signs of danger or threat in order to protect yourself—this reflexive ‘being on guard’ or ‘waiting for the other shoe to drop’ can lead to anxiety, worry, and more relationship conflict. Someone or something might not actually be dangerous—you may overreact to a situation or person due to a perceived tone, expression, or action. As a kid, you may have had to be on guard at home, checking to see what mood a parent was in, to then decide how you needed to be in order to feel safe, get your needs met, or avoid.
Easily Triggered, Reactive You may be more sensitive to stress, especially stress within a relationship. Therefore, you may overreact to conflicts that could be dealt with calmly and pragmatically. You may have witnessed lots of fighting, yelling, or conflict growing up, so reacting quickly feels familiar and somehow comfortable.
You may get triggered or activated by a stimulus or emotion easily. Navigating traffic, dealing with a slow computer, getting your defiant kid’s shoes on, being criticized, hearing loud noises or yelling, or feeling helpless, confused, or not in control—those current feelings or events may be somehow reminiscent of an earlier event or trauma, which can then quickly bring on a stronger reaction than appropriate.
Constriction/Rigidity Growing up in a home that did not tolerate emotional expression, operated from a place of numbness or denial, or that defaulted to a ‘stiff upper lip’ or ‘we don’t talk about that’ creed, may result in you showing a restricted range of feelings or behaviors in your adult life—ones that you are comfortable feeling or expressing. You may need to feel like things are under control, stable and predictable, which can lead to less spontaneity and more inflexibility.
Difficulty Trusting Growing up in an environment that was unreliable, unpredictable, or abusive, you may have lost the ability to trust, or have faith in, people, groups, institutions, yourself. You may especially not like, or trust authority figures, yet also may want those authority figures to love you. Oftentimes, alongside difficulty trusting is a tendency to isolate. If you can’t rely on others, may as well go it alone. Challenges around being vulnerable, forming and maintaining relationships, and communicating wants and needs are common.
Denying or Defending To manage fear, pain, or feeling trapped, you may have instinctively utilized certain psychological defenses as a kid, that you may still continue to use, perhaps without even knowing it.
Denial (it didn’t happen) Dissociation (checking out) Repression (stuffing down or pushing away the feelings) Minimization (it really wasn’t that bad) Projection (launching our pain onto someone) Splitting (someone or something is either all good or all bad).
Relationship Challenges If you have experienced a trauma or repeated dysfunctional pattern within the sphere of a primary relationship (mom, dad, caregiver, sibling) you may re-create those dysfunctional patterns you imprinted growing up. Something in the present may reflect something unresolved from the past.
You might be a ‘people pleaser’ or seek approval from others, you might look for someone else to help you feel better, or OK about yourself. You might have a really hard time being vulnerable or intimate with another person. You might have a hard time accepting or asking for help. It might be hard to take in love or support from another person. You might try to rescue people. You might be really afraid of being abandoned or left, and you may work very hard to prevent that from happening.
Shame and Guilt Shame (per Brene Brown’s definition) can be thought of as ‘I am bad’. Guilt can be thought of as ‘I did something bad’. Oftentimes, growing up in an addicted or dysfunctional home, shame and guilt are so pervasive that they can affect your whole makeup. From having a lack of zest for life, impulsivity, inability to make decisions, isolating, feeling unworthy of being loved or giving love, experiencing body sensations—a tense shiver, caved in shoulders or chest, head down when walking. All of these elements often lead back to shame or guilt.
Depression, Despair, Hopelessness Isolating can increase depression. Feeling alone in your experience—and possibly silenced by stigma or secret-keeping—can increase despair. Also, having a hard time regulating big surges of emotion can lead to feeling that you’ll never be able to escape feeling so bad or that this pattern is never-ending. Because we lived in chaos and often experienced trauma, our limbic system (which regulates mood) has been whacked out for quite some time. There are ways to calm our limbic system and re-wire what feels automatic!
Self-Medicating, Impulsivity, Drama Self-medicating with substances, food, work, exercise, shopping, shows, can make the pain go away in the short term. And in the long term, it creates more problems than it solves. You may be impulsive or drawn to ‘drama’ or excitement. It may seem natural and normal to ride the surges of energy that these things bring. And sometimes, in dysfunctional homes, drama takes the place of showing love.
Unresolved Grief and Loss There are so many losses involved in addicted or dysfunctional homes. Often intertwined with sadness and grief are anger, resentment, and depression. You’ve lost parents you could rely on, family members may have died from addiction… the losses are many. It is important to eventually grieve what happened (or what was never able to happen). You may feel surges of grief around the holidays, birthdays, seasons, or rituals.
If you made it this far, you might be feeling some feelings. I want you to know this is normal. I wrote a lot of heavy information—my intention is to help you feel more educated about what the effects are and how they might play out in your life.
Some next steps to feeling better are to start figuring out solutions, maybe by finding a person you feel comfortable with—someone who gets it—who can listen, offer suggestions and encouragement. That could be a therapist, counselor, support group…
If you have unresolved issues from the past, trauma therapy can help. Reach out to me through my contact form to start your healing journey.