Latest / Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour / Children living in the shadow of addiction. Episode 5. Lost In The Chaos

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Children living in the shadow of addiction. Episode 5. Lost In The Chaos · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee from the Children's Consultancy.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: This is episode five of Children Living in the Shadow of Addiction.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_00: And in this episode, I want to look at the way in which families adapt and how children have to adapt to survive within the family where addiction is present.
• 0:27
  SPEAKER_00: And it's entitled Lost in the Chaos.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Now, every family has a story, but in some families, parts of that story are very carefully hidden.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_00: And the series has explored what it's like to grow up in the shadow of addiction from the perspective of the child rather than from the adults.
• 0:49
  SPEAKER_00: But I think it's important to understand where all members end up positioning themselves.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: In our house, you learn how to read people.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: You learn when to talk and when to disappear, when to make a joke, and when to pretend that nothing is wrong.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_00: After a while you get quite good at it.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: But sometimes I wonder what it would be like not to have to do that.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: When addiction becomes established within a family, the emotional structure of the household often begins to reorganize itself around it.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: The addiction may belong to one person, but the system that develops around it belongs to everyone.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, family systems theory has long recognized that when one member of a family becomes unstable, other members begin adapting themselves in ways that help endeavour to maintain balance.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: And these adaptations gradually emerge, often without anyone recognizing what's happening.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: And most often they'll be unspoken.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: So within such families, certain roles frequently emerge.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_00: Where children are concerned, it could be that one child takes on the role for being responsible or organizing, or the one who performs well at school, the one that reassures others that everything is fine.
• 2:31
  SPEAKER_00: Another child may become the invisible one, quiet, withdrawn, trying not to add further stress to already fragile circumstances.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Another may become the peacemaker, using humor or distraction to diffuse tension when conflict begins to escalate.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes one child may become the rebellious one, the one whose behavior actually draws attention away from the addiction itself.
• 3:02
  SPEAKER_00: And these roles aren't consciously chosen, they emerge as adaptations to emotional instability.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_00: And they sort of help the family system function, but they often require children to suppress their own emotional reality.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Now, alongside these roles, another process often develops within families affected by addiction.
• 3:29
  SPEAKER_00: And it's a process known as enabling.
• 3:31
  SPEAKER_00: Some of you will have heard of it.
• 3:34
  SPEAKER_00: Enabling occurs when family members begin protecting the addicted person from the consequences of their behavior and indeed the reality of it.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: So partners may make excuses, they may manage the financial problems that inevitably arise.
• 4:00
  SPEAKER_00: And these behaviors are not they're not criticisms because they arise out of love and fear and from desperation.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: But over time they become part of the system that allows the addiction to continue.
• 4:17
  SPEAKER_00: Think of the emperor's new clothes.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_00: Children observe those dynamics very quickly.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_00: They see what's happening and they notice the contradictions, but they also sense that the family requires something very specific from them, even though it hasn't been asked for.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Silence, protection, the appearance of normality.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_00: And gradually they find themselves participating in that process.
• 4:49
  SPEAKER_00: Not because they believe the story being told, but because the stability of the family depends upon it, and they don't have the position to be able to confront it.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_00: Some years ago I worked with a 12-year-old boy, and I'll call him Adam.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: Adam's father struggled and had struggled for a long time with alcohol dependence.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_00: And his mother spent much of her time trying to manage the chaos that followed.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_00: Over time, something subtle had happened within the household.
• 5:26
  SPEAKER_00: Adam had become the organizer of the family.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: He woke his younger sister, prepared breakfast, checked that homework was done, and if the father had been drinking, Adam would quietly take his sister into their bedroom.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: If arguments began, Adam would interrupt with practical questions that shifted the conversation.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Teachers described Adam as unusually mature, responsible, reliable, and concerned about other children.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: But what they were really seeing was a child who had learned that the emotional stability of the household depended in part on him.
• 6:15
  SPEAKER_00: Another moment from clinical work involved a fifteen-year-old girl whose father had struggled with addiction for many years.
• 6:25
  SPEAKER_00: She'd witnessed repeated cycles of recovery and relapse.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And each cycle followed the same pattern.
• 6:34
  SPEAKER_00: Sobriety, promises, hope, and then eventually another relapse.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_00: One day in therapy she spoke with sudden intensity.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_00: She said, I just don't understand why he keeps doing it.
• 6:49
  SPEAKER_00: Why he keeps making promises that I know are going to fail.
• 6:54
  SPEAKER_00: He does it every time.
• 6:55
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't he just stop?
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: Why can't he just give it up?
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Just for me.
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_00: Surely, if he loved me, he would do that.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_00: And what she was expressing in that moment was something many children of addicted parents experience.
• 7:13
  SPEAKER_00: A powerful conflict between emotional realities.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_00: The thinking mind was searching for a logical explanation.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_00: If her father loved her, surely he'd stop.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: But her emotional world already knew something different.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: Addiction doesn't obey those rules.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_00: Now my task in that moment was not to resolve the conflict as much as I wanted to try and make it better.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I couldn't.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was my job to hold both realities with her hope, her anger, her love, and her disappointment.
• 7:50
  SPEAKER_00: Psychologically, there is a profound conflict that's created when internal reality and external reality are at odds.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Internally the child may experience fear, anger, confusion and sadness.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_00: But externally, the family system often requires something different.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Silence, protection, maintenance of the family's public narrative.
• 8:20
  SPEAKER_00: In psychological terms and in psychoanalytic theory, this creates a split between internal emotional reality and external emotional reality.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the child learns to hold two versions of the same situation.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: The truth that they experience privately and the story that must be maintained publicly.
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sustaining that split can become deeply exhausting.
• 8:48
  SPEAKER_00: And the parents that once helped the family survive can shape the individual long after childhood has ended.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: When children grow up within these systems, they're not simply observers of addiction.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_00: They become participants in the patterns.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Some become stabilizers, some become protectors, some become invisible.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: But once these patterns are recognized, something important becomes possible.
• 9:22
  SPEAKER_00: The roles that once felt inevitable can begin to loosen, and the emotional truths that were once hidden can finally be spoken.
• 9:34
  SPEAKER_00: And sometimes the most important parts of a family's story are the ones the children were never meant to carry.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because when addiction enters a family, it affects everyone.
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: Helping children and young people, and indeed all family members, to recover from addiction is not something that can be done on their own.
• 10:04
  SPEAKER_00: It almost will always involve specialized services of some kind or another.
• 10:11
  SPEAKER_00: For those who may not be aware, Alcoholics Anonymous have a partner group called Al Anon, and this is for family members.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: Whether or not the addicted family member is receiving treatment.
• 10:29
  SPEAKER_00: But I suppose the central message is once again children internalize what is happening inside families and inside relationships.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: In the final episode, we will look at breaking the cycle.
• 10:45
  SPEAKER_00: We will look at how change can begin.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening.