Why do so many men sabotage relationships and careers? Current cultural stereotypes of men range from bumbling incompetence to aggressive, macho insensitivity. I’ve worked with men in therapy and personal growth workshops for over 25 years, and I’ve identified a type of adult man I call the LATE Men, Lost, Angry Teens, and they are often stuck in an adolescent level of development – literally, LATE to grow into full adult functioning.

We all have four primary internal parts: An Inner Child, a Teenager, an Inner Critic, and a loving, responsible Adult. The Teenager seeks independence, identity, and acceptance with peers. Teens may also become rebellious, angry, confused and withdrawn. Adjustment problems are more likely to occur in distressed or dysfunctional families, where adolescents do not receive the guidance, emotional support, and other resources necessary for healthy maturation and individuation. (more…)

How does growing up in a dysfunctional family affect us as adults? For adult children of addicts, the behaviors and beliefs that enabled us to survive as children can cause us a myriad of problems in adulthood. These patterns are so ingrained and automatic that we do them without even realizing it, and changing any of them can provoke anxiety and fear. They seem like a lifeline, but in adulthood, they become an albatross around our necks.

The degree to which we are affected depends on the level of dysfunction in the addicted parent and the other parent’s ability or inability to protect us. Some people who are addicted to substances are better parents than others. Some addicts may be able to function as a parent some of the time, and even when drinking may try to show an interest in their children. Others may be gone most of the time and be mean or even violent when they are home. A minority of non-addicted parents may seek help and be honest with us about what is happening in our home. They may be mature enough to put their own feelings aside to do what is best for us. Other parents may deny what is happening and try to put us in an adult role, which adds to our harm.

Consequences as Adults
The majority of adults from dysfunctional families find it difficult or impossible to trust people, especially in close relationships. Since they were often emotionally abandoned by one or both parents, they are terrified of being abandoned as adults. Loving someone makes them feel vulnerable, which is very frightening. To avoid this fear and anxiety, they often keep their feelings inside and don’t share who they really are with their partner.

If there is a problem or conflict they don’t talk about it—why would they? They have never seen two mature adults fight fair, so they don’t believe that it is possible. If they make it to therapy, it’s usually because they’re dragged in by their partner. Due to their fear of abandonment, they question their partner constantly about fidelity, even when they have no reason to. This often drives the partner away.

Most adult children of addicts have very lopsided relationships. People with codependency feel responsible for everyone who needs help and tend to attract friends and lovers who under-function. They are totally focused on everyone’s needs but their own, which keeps them from knowing themselves and what they need and want. Self-care is a foreign language. They work very hard and then feel hurt, resentful, and used.

People with codependency constantly question their own judgment. Some may check frequently with others. In therapy, they tend to ask me often if certain behaviors are normal. This lack of confidence in their judgment comes from the hideous scenes that happened in their family: where a parent was drunk, had a manic episode, or some similar incident, and the next day the family behaved as though it never happened.

People with codependency can struggle with self-esteem and feel chronically inadequate. They set impossible goals for themselves and then refuse help, which they see as weak or shameful. They often feel overwhelmed but keep it a secret so that nobody knows they’re suffering until they burst at the seams. Often, this is the crisis that first gets them to a therapist. They may be trying to juggle a ridiculously impossible schedule: they may work full time, go to school full time, have several children, and a dysfunctional partner to take care of. Often, they don’t realize how hectic their own life is, because they never think about it. They are too preoccupied with other people’s lives.

Codependency is a pattern of behaviors and beliefs learned by children of dysfunctional families while they are growing up. These behaviors and beliefs can be helpful to the family unit, because they enable it to survive, and the child learns to depend on those behaviors in order to manage in the family system. Unfortunately, in the long run these behaviors are very harmful to the child.

That’s a lot of words to clarify. First of all, exactly what is a dysfunctional family? It can be defined in many ways. For this purpose, a dysfunctional family consists of one or both parents who have issues that seriously interfere with their functioning as parents and partners. Some of these issues include alcoholism or other drug addictions, mental disorders like bipolar or schizophrenia, or physical abuse. Children growing up with impaired parents in these painful family systems learn codependent behaviors and beliefs because at least one child has to assume some of the duties normally performed by a parent—or else the family is in total chaos. So one child steps up to the plate and begins to overfunction. This child becomes the “family hero.”

If Mom is too drunk to fix dinner, the hero child takes care of it. After dinner, the other children may need help with their homework, to have a permission slip signed, or need someone to talk to about being bullied at school. Again, the “hero child” steps in. The more the parent or parents underfunction, the more the “hero child” overfunctions. The non-alcoholic parent may need a confidante about their problems with the dysfunctional parent, and again, the “hero child” assumes that role. Thus, some of the tasks get done, and the family survives.

The Consequences of Being the “Family Hero”
How does taking on all of this adult responsibility affect the “hero child?” From the outside, they appear to be doing great. Mature beyond their years, they are responsible, want to do what is right, anticipate the needs of others, and do whatever they can to please everyone they meet. Inside, though, they are an endless sea of pain. The “hero child” feels overwhelmed by tasks way beyond their maturity level, and since performing like an adult is impossible, they feel chronically inadequate.

They are so busy anticipating and meeting the needs of others that they lose their sense of self and identity in the process. They work harder and harder to keep everybody and everything under control. Since this is also impossible, the harder they work, the angrier and more frustrated they feel. Of course, they keep these feelings inside. They quickly learn that expressing a negative feeling causes an explosion in an addicted family. The last thing they want to do is add more chaos to the house. Thus, the “hero” suffers through hideous family scenes, and later, everyone behaves as though nothing ever happened. This makes the “hero” feel isolated, crazy, and question their judgment. Since the “hero child” often becomes a confidante for the other parent, the boundaries in their relationships become all mixed up.

All of these behaviors become automatic in the “hero” and persist into adulthood, where they cause all sorts of problems. The “family hero” believes that he is responsible for everybody and everything. He believes that he knows and can fix what is wrong with other people. He believes that the needs of others are more important than his and that he must help everyone who needs it. Boundaries in his adult relationships do not exist. He believes he should not talk about what is going on, that he should not feel, and that he cannot trust anyone. Under stress, the hero overfunctions desperately until he is exhausted.

The next article will explain how these automatic behaviors and beliefs affect the adult “family hero,” whom we will call the codependent. Keep in mind, these same behaviors and beliefs that cause so much pain and suffering in adulthood enabled the co-dependent to survive as a child. We will call them survival consequences, and the idea of changing any of these can be terrifying to the codependent.

Editor’s Note: The following article was written solely by the authors listed above. The views and opinions expressed here are not necessarily those of GoodTherapy.org. Questions and concerns regarding the article’s content can be directed to the authors or posted as a comment below. 

One of the most popular articles we have ever written here was an article titled Freeing the Parents of Adult Alcoholics and Addicts. This lead us to an obvious conclusion: there are a lot of parents out there searching for ways to extricate themselves from the manipulative clutches of their addicted, adult children.

The situation is a difficult one. How do parents who dearly loves their addicted sons or daughters best help their children? Do you continue to meet their unending demands for money or do you go to the other extreme and follow a “tough-love” approach, cutting off all contact with them until they straighten up? Neither works well, and the tough-love approach is difficult to maintain, especially because you love them, and because there may be grandchildren in the mix, too. So what do you do?

Following a middle path is usually best. Offering to pay for treatment, when they are ready, is a good start—assuming the treatment is one of the more effective options, rather than the standard, in our opinion, ineffectual, offerings of the AA/12-step/Minnesota Model.

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Not protecting them from their choices is also a good practice, because they have been protected for a long, long time if you are currently supporting them. Reassuring yourself that this lifestyle is their choice, not some mythical “disease,” also helps you feel less guilty about ramping down financial support.

I watched my own parents go through this same thing with one of my brothers. He was bleeding them dry but they kept supporting him, and I mean really supporting him, to the tune of $5000 a month. They just didn’t seem to understand why he wouldn’t straighten up, stop doing drugs, and get a job. Well, why should he? Heck, if you want to give me $60,000 a year, tax-free, for doing nothing, I might not work either.

Finally, they decided to listen to us (Ed and me), and we put Ed in the middle between my parents and my brother, and he had to do certain things each month in order to get his money, which he had to get from Ed, not my parents. And he was given a schedule showing how the money was going to be decreased each month until it was no longer available. This infuriated my brother. But slowly it started to work and today he is self-supporting and not doing drugs. Because he is working again, not being supported by my parents, he has regained his self-respect and that is an important component in keeping him from going back to abusing drugs.

Obviously, this is not the only way out of this mess, it is just what we came up with at the time and it worked. It worked because my parents had a lot of support from us to stay strong and not cave in the face of my brother’s anger over his perceived mistreatment.

Since then, we have performed similar services for several other families in our area and those have turned out well. If you have a situation with your addicted adult child and need help, please know there is help. You can work your way out of it.

At the very core of our lives is sexuality. Though, as a society, we are not trained to talk openly and honestly about sex. Nonetheless, we grow up recognizing and knowing, intrinsically, the need we have for sex and the roles it plays; with one of it’s main functions being procreation. And, what is the other function of sex? Well, and pleasure, of course.

If only pleasure were such an easy thing for us to comprehend. As a society, not only are we discouraged from talking about the pleasure that sex brings us, we are also led to recognize the detriments of deriving too much pleasure. The lack of ability to openly acknowledge things which bring us pleasure, may also cause us to abuse those same things.

It is known as hedonistic to throw oneself into pleasure all the way, to be unable to find a happy medium. When we begin to neglect our responsibilities—work, family, friends—in search of personal pleasure, we then call this phenomenon an addiction. And, when someone comes to the end of the rope with addiction, they often recognize that the only way to undo the damage is to go into what we call sobriety, or recovery.

When an alcoholic or drug addict goes through recovery, it is possible that sex is at the core; however, it is one topic that often gets neglected. Much of recovery is spent addressing the relationships, which affected and were affected by the addiction, coming to terms with our addictions and understanding ourselves in relation to our higher spirit. All of these are, indeed, important items on the road of recovery. However, it is not every day that the role sex plays in an addiction is explored.

It is important to mention that drug and drinking problems can be sexual problems in disguise. Sex plays a major role for some individuals who become chemically dependent. And, to break down its walls, it’s necessary to understand the effects of sex addiction.

Sexuality is often one of the most fragile areas of a recovering individual’s torn self-esteem. Many of the issues of love and relationships, that come up for addicts in recovery from alcohol/chemical dependency, have something to do with sexuality, once the walls are broken down.

Sexual fears and insecurities may be the force that drives a user to drinking or use drugs in the first place. For example, many professionals point to early sexual abuse as the place where some anxieties began. It has been recognized that childhood sexual abuse is a risk factor in drug dependence. Research indicates that, of all the people in treatment, about half have been raped or abused, while a third are victims of incest. So, as practitioners, we have to recognize that sexual abuse may be damaging to feelings of self-worth, which, in and of itself, is a risk factor for drug use and abuse.

Not only is sexual abuse is a major contributor to addiction. Sexual and gender stereotypes are another. Some of the tried and true gender roles still hold in our society, even though we are seeing progress and change. Many women are still the primary home caregivers, putting the needs of men and children ahead of their own, neglecting their own need for support and intimacy. And, men are often still expected to be the initiators, the aggressors, and the breadwinners forgetting to express their emotions and feelings. Ignoring needs and feelings are risk factors for addiction.

In treatment we learn that preserving sobriety involves more than merely reshaping the habits of drug or chemical use, it also requires throwing away stereotypes and reshaping old attitudes that have been hammered in over the years. In treatment the addict learns to start taking care of his/her own needs. The addict learns that their recovery depends upon addressing feelings and emotions. The individual in recovery must talk about things like sexual abuse, sexual gender roles and stereotypes. And, likewise, must also talk openly talk about his/her sex life.

The key is to deal with sex after sobriety. Avoiding sex may leave an individual poorly prepared to cultivate relationships that don’t revolve around, for example, singles bars and drinking, causing an addict to lose that hard-earned sobriety within months or weeks. Unless treatment addresses both the dependency and sexuality, recovering addicts risk relapse with every close romantic encounter. Most treatment programs do recognize that it takes two to repair a relationship strained by chemical abuse, and will incorporate the partner of the addict in the treatment process.

Though many addicts may feel like doing so in recovery, running away from sex is not realistic; it’s better to put sex in the context of feelings and factors that make up the whole person. Here are some things for the addict to remember when it comes to sex:

1. Talk about sexual feelings of guilt and anger in order to heal. Addicts need to learn to recognize the patterns of feelings, sexual or otherwise, that drive them to drink or abuse substances. Only then are they ready for new relationships, or of rekindling an old one.

2. A recovering addict also needs to move slowly, whether in a new or old relationship. Concentrate on building self-confidence and self-image, first, before building up a sex life. For many, it may be a good idea to wait six months, or even a year, before beginning a new sexual relationship. Couples should focus, first, on sharing time and feelings together before jumping back into bed and into their old, unstable, erratic sex life. Sex therapy is also a good starting point.

3. Start over by focusing on really learning about your own body and feelings. The goal here is to help ease fears that sexual feelings are abnormal or strange. It is important to take the time to really learn (or re-learn) what one likes, sexually. Couples should focus on sensuality and should take the pressure off of sex and orgasm for a while and, instead, do things like take bubble baths, sensual massage, and mutual masturbation, and openly communicate with each other about sex. It is important to recognize that, just like there’s more to alcoholism recovery than not drinking, there’s more to sexuality than just sex.

An addict will very likely need to rewire his/her ideas about sex. Taking time and talking openly about sex are the keys. The addict who discovers that sex can be a bridge to intimacy, satisfaction, and a strong self-image, is likely to find deeper, more honest and satisfying relationships—sexual and otherwise.

In part I of this series, Family Ties: Support for Family Members with Alcoholism, I discussed what happens when members of alcoholic families, who are alcoholic themselves, get sober. The members of these families tend to fall into certain behavioral patterns, or roles, which classically include: the hero, the scapegoat (or identified patient), the mascot, the lost child, and the caretaker. I want to further explore the patterns I have observed in my clinical experience working with individuals and their families, both in my private practice and in a 30-day residential treatment program.

What’s interesting to observe is how the entire family dynamic changes once their loved one gets sober. I never cease to wonder at how a person’s stabilization in treatment often leads to an increase in their family’s anxiety. Thus, as soon as the person completes detox and starts showing signs of improvement, the parent or sibling or spouse of the person will call the staff in a more anxious state than ever. This, of course, is a sign that the family’s homeostasis is changing, which is terrifying to a dysfunctional system (which tends to reject change)—another reminder that, to paraphrase James Masterson, people often come to therapy or treatment to feel better, not necessarily to get better (Masterson & Lieberman, 2004).

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What happens when a family mascot enters the treatment process for alcoholism or addiction? The mascot is someone who lessens family anxiety by providing distraction and deflection, often via humor and comic relief. Here is the “class clown” who can break tension by cracking wise at precisely the right time.

Keep in mind that family members may play more than one role simultaneously; for instance, I once worked with an individual who was a recovering alcoholic—and a stand-up comedian. Quite a good one, in fact. Fortunately, he was able to provide insight and painful emotional truth, along with the laughs. The good news with such a person is that humor is often a filter for truth, so if he/she can step out of the spotlight and get in touch with the pain of addiction, without deflecting it with humor—or to enhance rather than distract from truth—then recovery can begin.

The problem is when the person tries to re-enter the family system. Family members are inevitably going to find themselves unsettled, antsy, perhaps even critical of the clown who sheds the mask. Very often you will hear people say of a recovering mascot, “She used to be so funny, now she’s kind of boring” or “He’s so serious now that he’s sober, what happened to the exciting guy I used to know?” What often happens when a mascot (or any such family member) gets sober, is that the other members (or even close friends and co-workers, etc) are now left with an absence of deflection, or distraction, which creates a void—filled, inevitably, with each persons’ unexamined problems. Now the sibling, parent, or spouse of the mascot no longer has the luxury of distraction, and that anxiety must be contained and processed by a system that is inherently uncomfortable with owning or processing anxiety healthily.

Thus, the mascot may be left with feelings of guilt, shame, self-criticism—the usual feelings that come with early sobriety—magnified by a dysfunctional family system which gives lip service to sobriety but, in fact, isn’t exactly sure how to deal with it. This person may feel they are causing the anxiety in a family, when it’s been there all along: in subterranean form. This speaks, again, to the importance of viewing alcoholism as a family disease in which each person is required to look at his/her “stuff” without passing the buck any longer (i.e. shaming/blaming, etc). For each member, this process will at first feel very uncomfortable. But getting better does not guarantee feeling better, at least in the beginning. Paradoxically, the constant laughter and tension-breaking shenanigans of the mascot, within an actively-addicted family system, has drowned the pain that must now be dealt with head on, if the system is to truly have a shot at health.

Sadly, this did not happen with the sober comedian I mentioned earlier. With sobriety came anger on the part of his spouse, much of which was justified, given the destructive way he behaved in his addiction. However, she refused to acknowledge the fresh start his sobriety provided, declined to get help via al-anon or counseling; in turn, he blamed her for his feelings of guilt, shame, and (eventually) rage. Neither took responsibility, or found healthy support, and word has it that he is now drinking and using with abandon while his wife is hurt, angry, and seeking divorce.

References:

1) Masterson, J. & Lieberman, A. (2004). A Therapist’s Guide To The Personality Disorders. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.