The ACOA Trauma Syndrome

by Tian Dayton, Ph. D.

  Dick chimed in, assuring me that he already had a plan in place to pay off this debt and that he would have it taken care of in, say, three years. Here is a couple who had been essentially out of control from day one, playing out their lack of relationship sobriety.

  We might surmise that shopping engages Sandra in an adrenaline and or dopamine cycle. But when at home alone, sitting in a room with bags full of unnecessary purchases and no audience all that is left is a letdown—and a pile of unpaid bills and sometimes unattended relationships. Then a moment of panic at this self-­created “emergency.” The way for Sandra to feel better is to reengage in the self-medicating “relief” behavior.

  The Wealth and Privilege Trap

  Gary, who came with his family to a program where I was consulting, loves his work. Most of his waking hours are spent at the office or on an airplane, or recovering from those activities. He loves his family, too, who feel proud of his success and grateful for the money he earns and the many privileges that his success affords them.

  Gary’s wife, Katie, loves him. She finds herself, however, increasingly attracted to her contractor who is so much a part of her life. It’s so easy to talk things over with him. He’s nice; he has fun, masculine energy; he’s around. Katie feels guilty, but it’s fun to fantasize about Frank. She misses her husband, but telling him that would do no good. He can’t do anything about his long hours and all the travel. She wonders if he ever goes out when he travels.

  Conner and Brooke, their children, wonder if there is a gap growing between their parents. They love them both: Mom’s in charge, but when Dad comes home on weekends or for a vacation, they like spending time with him. But he seems so busy. So far away and so very wrapped up in what he does. Conner worries that he should do this kind of work, too, but at seventeen, he isn’t sure he can see himself working like this or even wanting to. Besides, his dad is so successful, how could he ever get to wherever it is that his dad has gotten to? Conner would love to talk to his dad about all of this, but his dad seems so distracted when he is at home, like he carries the office around in his head even when he isn’t there.

  Katie sees Conner withdrawing from his dad but doesn’t want to say anything to insinuate herself; after all, it’s their relationship. And she doesn’t want to think about how Gary is gone—these days, she’s so used to it that she’s not even sure how it would feel to have him around a lot. She is used to being in charge. Used to running things. It’s simpler in a way. But lonely. Thank goodness she and Brooke are so close—she has a built-in friend. What a great daughter. Loads of friends, great grades. And Brooke is always so upbeat.

  On weekends Katie and Gary go out with friends. Katie often drinks a little too much these days. And now when Monday comes, well, why stop? Gary doesn’t get home till so late that she barely sees him. She enjoys a glass or two of white wine while she is cooking dinner. And maybe one with dinner to sort of fill the evening and help her to relax with the kids. Sipping a glass as she falls asleep is soothing. Why not?

  Sometimes Brooke feels like she is losing her best friend, but when she tries to talk to her dad about her mom’s drinking, he doesn’t do much. He says he’d deal with it, but Brooke isn’t sure. And when she tries to talk to her mom about it, she doesn’t get very far before her mom starts to complain about how much her dad works and tears up, and Brooke feels caught in the middle of two people she loves.

  But Brooke and Conner have a lot of freedom and their parents are easy to get around, which isn’t all that bad.

  And Mom spends more time in her bedroom.

  And Dad spends more time at the office and in front of the computer when he’s at home.

  And the house feels pretty empty, but Brooke and Conner can hang out downstairs with their friends or at the pool house and no one ever really bothers them. So it’s cool, that way.

  And their parents give them the credit card—money is just around.

  This house is beautiful. Everyone who sees it thinks so. And Brooke and Conner seem so lucky. They have everything.

  Conner discovers pot. He hides it, which isn’t all that hard. And so what, Conner thinks, Dad isn’t around and Mom and Brooke have each other, and I don’t want to work on Wall Street anyway.

  The Trap of Privilege

  Children who grow up with privilege can feel confused by their pain. They are, after all, so fortunate. And the world often agrees with them. Their pain is somehow invisible, hidden beneath a veneer of affluence, status, and all that comes with it. Rich surroundings that look and feel full, nice clothes that allow children of wealth to appear to have it together looking, even though they may be falling apart on the inside, can deceive all concerned, including the person in the mirror looking back at his own elegant reflection. They feel deprived of something they want but guilty about feeling it, because what do they have to complain about?

  But some of the factors that are part of a trauma-engendering home can be exaggerated in affluent homes. The power imbalance can be greater. If parents are successful, it makes them taller in the eyes of their child. And it sets the bar higher in the children’s minds in terms of their own ability to eventually become as big or bigger than their parent, which is every child’s natural wish. So there can be a sense of defeat, especially if the children do not wish to identify with their parent or if their parent tends toward narcissism and does not want anyone, including their own children, to get as big as they are.

  Next there is the trapped feeling. Children of wealth can ironically have less access to outside support than their less advantaged counterparts. Their worlds tend to be circumscribed; their privilege surrounds them and holds them in a narrow orbit within which their parents may have an extended arm of control and power. After all, what teacher really wants to confront a big, powerful person who carries the aura of prestige and success? Or is a major donor and pals around with school board members? This also holds true for other potential sources of outside support, like church, synagogue, tutors, or paid caretakers. And wealth can be isolating with its big houses and property. There is less need to be part of an interdependent community where dinners are family-oriented because it’s easier and cheaper not to get a babysitter and kids get dragged along on parents’ errands or stay with a neighbor or friend. Children with less privilege may paradoxically have more spontaneous freedom, less isolation, and less loneliness.

  When families such as these are also alcoholic, they have much to lose by letting the cat out of the bag and may go to great lengths to hide the disease of addiction from their communities and even from themselves. And they can afford it. The addict’s bottom can be very low because the family can financially afford to “sponsor” their use. If the main wage earner is the nonaddict, the using can go on indefinitely because there may be no financial consequences. With privilege goes expectation. Wealthy families are often “looking-good” families; so are many types of successful families at all levels of the social and economic scale. Religious and military families, for example, can have very stringent ­standards, and can trap children in a similar manner if they put rules above personal needs and looking good above being good..

  Additionally, being the child of someone whose primary focus in life is that of attaining wealth and/or status can be a ­disillusioning and disheartening experience. The family wealth or status can become a primary source of identity which family members develop a deep dependency. If we grow up with wealth from childhood, that dependency is wrapped around each stage of development. Money can be a great drug, a mood manager, a high. Separating the person from the identity as someone of wealth, privilege, and perceived (and often real) power can be like separating the person from their substance. Children of privilege can despair at ever doing anything that will match the success of the wealth-getter, and the wealth-getter may well only value those sorts of pursuits that lead to amassing wealth.

  From
Compulsivity to Balance

  The desire to manage compulsive behaviors or an inner world that is out of balance reflects a self-affirming step toward personal growth and greater self-awareness. It is important that we understand that these behaviors developed slowly and over time. And that some of the issues that we are avoiding or self-medicating may have begun as far back as our childhoods. It is equally important to understand that our solutions will be slow and require long-term commitment, and to understand that commitment itself will become its own reward—developing each day in us a little more patience, self-awareness, self-love, acceptance, and comfort living in our own skin.

  Once we understand that self-medication is an unconscious attempt to manipulate our own body chemistry to feel more pleasure and less pain, to keep our own foot on the “dose delivery” pedal, we can flip it on its head. We can learn to manipulate our body chemistry in self-constructive—rather than self-­destructive—ways.

  PART IV:

  Healing the ACoA Trauma Syndrome

  The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.

  He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

  He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.

  Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

  Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

  Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

  —King James Version

  TWELVE

  Recovering from the ACoA Trauma Syndrome:

  Reclaiming the Disowned Self

  Some people’s lives seem to flow in a narrative; mine

  had many stops and starts. That’s what trauma does. It

  interrupts the plot. You can’t process it because it doesn’t fit with what came before or what comes afterward. A friend of mine, a soldier, put it this way. In most of our lives, most of the time, you have a sense of what is to come. There is a steady narrative, a feeling of “lights, camera, action” when big events are imminent. But trauma isn’t like that. It just happens, and then life goes on. No one prepares you for it.

  —Jessica Stern, Denial: A Moment of Terror

  Change is not only intellectual. When it comes to trauma, we need to create a new body to live in. We need to learn to take good care of it so that it stays healthy and emotionally fit. We need to resolve the kind of hidden pain that locks us into triggered, knee-jerk reactions that, once set into motion, have a life of their own. Change comes when we have sat in the pain long enough and fully enough so that we can feel it, can open our mouths and talk about it, see it for what it is, reorder and understand it, and then walk out of it. This does not mean that we won’t feel bad, hurt, angry, or triggered about our past again. It just means that if and when we are triggered, we won’t catapult into an unconscious place from which we can only act out, shut down, or dive straight into self-medicating behaviors.

  Eventually, our “triggered place” will feel somehow less compelling, less like “all” of us, less like we want to give it so much (or so suspiciously little) of our attention. Change occurs when we have a choice about whether or not we care to direct our attention toward or away from what is being triggered, when our triggers no longer run us, and when we’re able to manage the feelings that they bring up with our own skills, when our spontaneous reaction to a situation that used to baffle us changes (Moreno 1953). Change also comes when we learn to do something different, to make choices in our thinking and daily routines that interrupt a downward spiral and create an upward one.

  We heal one feeling at a time, one thought at a time. As each feeling arises, we unpack it and look at the thinking, meaning-making, and behavior it gives rise to; we give the feelings air, voice, and freedom of expression. We make new, mature sense of them with our adult mind. We learn from them, and we grow up on the inside. Emotional maturity rather than an act of will is, in this sense, a natural outgrowth of deep work—an awakening into another point of view and a letting go of the past in order to live more fully in the present (T. Dayton 2007).

  The ACoA trauma syndrome is baked into the psyche of the CoA during crucial periods of child development, which is why healing takes time. It’s a peeling back the layers of the onion one at a time, stage by stage, examining the thinking, feeling, and behavior that were learned and became engrained at each stage of development. Physical sobriety is fairly straightforward, and abstention or regulation are its mainstays, but emotional sobriety can be more elusive.

  Why Experiential Forms of Therapy

  Are Necessary for Healing Trauma

  Talk alone does not reach the parts of the brain that process trauma (van der Kolk 1994). Healing trauma requires a combination of therapy and lifestyle changes. Because emotional and sensory memory are processed by and stored in the body, the most successful forms of therapy for trauma are experiential. Experiential forms of therapy and therapy “supports” like journaling, exercise, guided imagery, walking, yoga, and breathing have been finding their way into treatment programs for decades because they work. Psychodrama—a role playing/experiential method of therapy—has become a therapy of choice in addressing the mind/body issues of trauma. Experiential therapy and psychodrama can allow us to bring ­emotions that may be in some way numb or hard to access toward a conscious level where we can hopefully feel, unfreeze, and talk about them.

  One of the problems with shutting down feeling is that we begin to live in our heads. We tell ourselves a story about what we think we’re feeling or what we think we should be feeling rather than feeling our genuine emotions and allowing words to grow out of them so we can accurately describe our inner ­experience. When we can feel our feelings and then translate them into language, we can use our reasoning ability to play a role in regulating our emotional experience.

  Trauma can leave us feeling shattered inside. Valuable pieces of ourselves are frozen, hidden from view, or split off from our conscious awareness and have not been adequately integrated into our working model of our “selves.” Dealing with, giving voice and movement to those shards of self that hold valuable feeling and sensory memories, so that they can be reseen, reinterpreted, and reintegrated into the adult self with mature understanding and reasoning attached to them, allows us to feel whole again and to better understand ourselves.

  Creative arts approaches to healing, like writing, psychodrama, sociometry, music, and guided imagery, allow the traumatized mind to find a voice in a nonthreatening way. They include right-brain processes. The right brain envisions the whole; it synthesizes the big picture so that the trauma story can emerge in a different kind of voice. I have incorporated all of these approaches in my model Relationship Trauma Repair (relationshiptraumarepair.com), which is in use in treatment centers, clinics, and private practices around the country. The model’s group exercises offer hundreds of tiny moments in which clients can warm up to their own story, translate feelings into words, share them, and then reach out and connect with others in the same emotional boat. It uses journaling and guided imagery to teach skills of emotional processing, emotional literacy, and self-regulation. I have also designed a creative arts self-help website (visit www.emotionexplorer.com) that offers users may of these approaches online.

  Therapy for ACoAs needs to involve processes that allow us to warm up to frozen feelings in relative safety and then talk about them. ACoAs need to feel, then speak. When we say “tell me about your trauma,” we may be putting someone who has been traumatized in the humiliating and embarrassing position of feeling emotionally stupid. Some may be able to talk with feeling and fluidity, having not blocked their own feelings, others, who have less conci
ous awareness of what might be stored within them, might either give it their best guess, sign on to the therapist’s version of what happened, read as if from a script of symptoms, or stare at their therapist and say, “Well,” and (unfortunately all too often), “Let me think about it.”

  Healing from Sexual Abuse

  When Kathy came to our group, you might say she “lived in her head.” The kinds of body/mind memories and ­flashbacks of childhood abuse that haunted her were so disturbing that she just didn’t want have to feel and remember them. But they plagued her nonetheless. Their constant, gnawing presence within her made her feel different and not a part of the group. She worried that group members would find her story sickening. She always looked a bit startled and on guard. She struggled with feeling like an underachiever, with organizing herself, with poor self-care and overeating. About a year into our group, Kathy began to feel comfortable enough to let her story come out.

  The following psychodrama is of severe sexual abuse. I include it because it clearly illustrates how much can be repaired through role-play. The story is in Kathy’s own voice; she now wants to tell her story because she has had enough of hiding it.

  The only time he allowed me to open my mouth was when he wanted to put his gigantic penis in it. Gigantic because I was three and my father was a grown man, six feet, four inches tall. I’m not sure what the smile on his face was about: having an orgasm or suffocating me as close to death as he could. When he wasn’t doing that, he was screaming at me that I had ruined his life and he would kill me . . . he said when I was sleeping he would come and kill me. Those things made him feel so much better; that’s how it looked to me, anyway. They made me freeze and disappear and be afraid to let people know that I was alive.