21st Jan 2008
Children of alcoholics. Part 3 - emotional life
In the first article in this series we started discussing the consequences of parental drinking to the family members. The secondary article focused on physical stress alcohol consumption by parents causes to their children.
Now it’s time to discuss how emotions from an environment where alcohol abuse takes place affect the children of alcoholics for their entire life.
Alcohol abuse in the family causes intense emotional abuse to the children. Usually the fact that a child cannot remember what happened to him at very early ages it is associated with lack of sensibility at those ages. This is a mistake. A child lives threats and fears at a much higher intensity at early ages than the adults. He is subject to emotional stress much more than an adult is. Only that the child will not remember later the facts that caused the stress. But the feelings lived in infancy are very well recorded.
A Clinical case-
An acquaintance of mine admitted that he had beaten his wife when he was drunk before the divorce and that he had a 3 years old child at that time. I asked him if his son was the witness of those violent scenes. He answered: “Yes, he was the witness but that was no problem because the child was little and he didn’t understand anything”. However, when clinically investigating his boy who now is a 19 years old young man, he was exhibiting obvious signs of emotional abuses he was submitted to as a child.
Let’s see what is happening in such situations: first of all, the breast-feeding baby is tightly close to his mother. He feels all the threats his mother is exposed at, as if these threats were addressed to his own life. He understands not only when his mother was threatened and aggressed but he even perceives them with such high intensity, an adult isn’t able to imagine.
Another clinical case:
A clerk, an alcoholic, was frequently provoking violence in the family. His wife says that one day when her husband was sober he told her: “Look how the little one is reacting!” …and then the man simulated that he was moving towards his wife with his hands raised up threatening her. The baby who was only a few months old, and who was swaddled in his bed and was looking to them, immediately started to cry.
The baby’s painful memories are not disappearing over the ages. Although as he was growing up he won’t be able to evoke what happened at that time. But in an associative way, the emotions related to this trauma in infancy will invade the person’s mind on various occasions. The person will occasionally notice that he is invaded by intense, unusual emotions or that he reacts in a much more intense way, loosing his temper in situations in which the others would be indifferent. For instance when someone is talking to him in a loud and angry voice, the ancient quarrels in the family he was a witness of, are unconsciously appearing in his memory.
Before we move on with explanations in the next article, I want to hear from you… what are your experiences in this area ?
In the first article in this series we started discussing the consequences of parental drinking to the family members. The secondary article focused on physical stress alcohol consumption by parents causes to their children.
Now it’s time to discuss how emotions from an environment where alcohol abuse takes place affect the children of alcoholics for their entire life.
Alcohol abuse in the family causes intense emotional abuse to the children. Usually the fact that a child cannot remember what happened to him at very early ages it is associated with lack of sensibility at those ages. This is a mistake. A child lives threats and fears at a much higher intensity at early ages than the adults. He is subject to emotional stress much more than an adult is. Only that the child will not remember later the facts that caused the stress. But the feelings lived in infancy are very well recorded.
A Clinical case-
An acquaintance of mine admitted that he had beaten his wife when he was drunk before the divorce and that he had a 3 years old child at that time. I asked him if his son was the witness of those violent scenes. He answered: “Yes, he was the witness but that was no problem because the child was little and he didn’t understand anything”. However, when clinically investigating his boy who now is a 19 years old young man, he was exhibiting obvious signs of emotional abuses he was submitted to as a child.
Let’s see what is happening in such situations: first of all, the breast-feeding baby is tightly close to his mother. He feels all the threats his mother is exposed at, as if these threats were addressed to his own life. He understands not only when his mother was threatened and aggressed but he even perceives them with such high intensity, an adult isn’t able to imagine.
Another clinical case:
A clerk, an alcoholic, was frequently provoking violence in the family. His wife says that one day when her husband was sober he told her: “Look how the little one is reacting!” …and then the man simulated that he was moving towards his wife with his hands raised up threatening her. The baby who was only a few months old, and who was swaddled in his bed and was looking to them, immediately started to cry.
The baby’s painful memories are not disappearing over the ages. Although as he was growing up he won’t be able to evoke what happened at that time. But in an associative way, the emotions related to this trauma in infancy will invade the person’s mind on various occasions. The person will occasionally notice that he is invaded by intense, unusual emotions or that he reacts in a much more intense way, loosing his temper in situations in which the others would be indifferent. For instance when someone is talking to him in a loud and angry voice, the ancient quarrels in the family he was a witness of, are unconsciously appearing in his memory.
Before we move on with explanations in the next article, I want to hear from you… what are your experiences in this area ?
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