{"id":6261,"date":"2010-03-09T13:00:50","date_gmt":"2010-03-09T20:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/?p=6261"},"modified":"2013-12-18T15:20:16","modified_gmt":"2013-12-18T23:20:16","slug":"recovery-addictions-family","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/recovery-addictions-family\/","title":{"rendered":"Family Roles in Addiction Recovery, Part III: The Lost Child"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AThe final alcoholic family role<\/a> I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d like to discuss in the context of recovery is the lost child<\/em>. This is the child who stays under the radar, invisible, quietly decamping to his\/her room, disappearing behind a stack of empty booze bottles or cloud of marijuana smoke. To paraphrase D.W. Winnicott<\/a>, for a child it is normal to hide, but a tragedy not to be found.<\/p>\n

What happens when a lost child<\/em> gets clean and sober? To understand this, we have to look at what happened to make this child \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lost\u00e2\u20ac\u009d to begin with. This child, in a way, becomes, almost literally, a skeleton in the family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s closet. The child\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s disappearance serves the dysfunction of the family<\/a> in that this child will never divulge the family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s skeletons. There are many \u00e2\u20ac\u0153elephants in the room\u00e2\u20ac\u009d in such families; sometimes untreated addiction<\/a>, other times abuse or neglect. The family\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s collective shame<\/a> must be hidden; the lost child<\/em> serves as a kind of metaphor for what is repressed. When a child like this stays lost, he learns that his needs don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t matter, and so the adaptive hiding strategy becomes a way of life, later to be soothed and narcotized by the powder, needle, or bottle (as well as a series of codependent<\/a> relationships).<\/p>\n

The ambivalence this child struggles with in new-found sobriety arises from the advantages and disadvantages of the lost role. On the one hand, this person has protected his\/herself from the vortex or volatility of the chaotic family dynamic. He\/She has not had to enter into the fray and risk attack, injury, or humiliation<\/a>. Invisibility becomes the best form of defense<\/a>.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, he\/she lives with a kind of emotional<\/a> anorexia and is a prime target for a host of destructive behaviors: self-harm<\/a> (cutting, burning), eating disorders<\/a>, sexual compulsivity<\/a>, codependence, addiction, and so forth. This child wants to be heard, needs to be heard\u00e2\u20ac\u201dbut is terrified of being heard. Being heard means facing the feelings beneath the cloak of invisibility, and risking the judgment and\/or abandonment<\/a> of the family members who rely on him\/her to stay quiet. Such a person carries heavy feelings of shame, guilt, rage, isolation<\/a>, and a longing for (and terror of) human connection.<\/p>\n

The question of whether the family can be helpful or destructive, as the child gets sober, hinges, not so much on the degree of the family’s past dysfunction, but on their current willingness to get honest and authentic. This family support, of course, is preferable to the\u00c2\u00a0lost child<\/em>, more so than accusations of the child being bad by forcing them to look at long-hidden family secrets.<\/p>\n

The family may consciously yearn for his\/her sobriety while unconsciously<\/a> defending against their own shame and guilt. I once knew the father of a l0st daughter<\/em>, newly sober (my client); he was often enraged at her for a variety of puzzling reasons, until I discovered that he himself was an alcoholic who was terrified of having to face his own problems. His words said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153get healthy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d but his behavior said \u00e2\u20ac\u0153let\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s keep things as they were.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n

It only takes one relatively balanced member of the immediate family who is willing to align with this newly sober lost person<\/em>, and live in honesty rather than deceit, to bolster the addict\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s support system. Having just one family member on board who loves and accepts the addict, who is not overly threatened by his\/her recovery, can bolster a sense of hope. This actual relationship can shed light on the addict\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s (usually futile) attempts\u00e2\u20ac\u201dprior to sobriety\u00e2\u20ac\u201dto find surrogates for lost family members.<\/p>\n

Of course, the addict\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s partner<\/a> or family members often cannot or will not accept their loved one\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s condition and desire to change, and are threatened by the prospect of recovery. They may defend this terror by insisting on seeing addiction as a moral failing or weakness. Still, the addict has a chance of success, as always, though the recovery work proves more formidable: this is a case that requires immediate support-building, as the lost person<\/em> begins speaking the truth and breaking the bonds of repression. Like all addicts, he\/she will require the support of a sober community, therapy, and intensive recovery work. Being rewarded with love<\/a>, acceptance and higher self-esteem<\/a> is often strong inspiration.<\/p>\n

It is still amazing to me how threatened alcoholic family members become as their loved one becomes healthier; as order is threatening to chaos, health is threatening to the ideology of sickness, which casts a black pall over everything and fosters a sense of futility. Thankfully, recovery can lift the black veil of these (mis)perceptions, when the addict is truly ready to surrender and begin the slow, sometimes grueling, but always worthy, path towards wellness<\/a>. This can happen without the aid and support of loved ones, but recovery comes easier when family, too, is willing to change.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Darren Haber, MFT – The role of the “lost child,” in family relations, is one of invisibility and lack of support, making finding allies in sobriety difficult.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1061,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[447,393,25],"class_list":["post-6261","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-addictions-compulsions","tag-family-problems","tag-psychotherapy-issues"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6261","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1061"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6261"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6261\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6261"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6261"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goodtherapy.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6261"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}