Family Dynamics

 

I have a new respect for this disease.

I’ve been watching what the disease does to the alcoholic’s family lately. When I was drinking and using, I didn’t have the perspective to observe what it was doing to mine. But now, I have been talking to a lot of mothers and sisters and husbands and dads. I hear the frustration and the sadness, the resignation. I also hear hope. And love. Everyone is tired, who is in the life of an active alcoholic. Everyone is walking on eggshells.

The alcoholic’s family dynamics and the toxic fallout

As the mother of a 14 year old (and a 12 year old, who is watching her sister), I am just starting to experience the nights of waiting up until my daughter comes home, playing detective by calling her friend’s parents and making sure all the kids’ stories match up, driving to pick them up when I am dead tired, worrying and wondering. My kid is a good kid, all things considered. But the few times she has given me a really good scare were the worst moments in all of my life. And those few times have made me hyper alert all the time, which is exhausting and consumes much of my time and headspace. Its only starting, and there is no telling which way it will go.

So I can’t imagine what it must be like to be on the other side of it, being the mother of a 24 year old, ten years of this anxiety and fear that I am just beginning to experience. In fact, I took a mother aside recently and told her- “I give you props, I really do. I can’t believe what this must have been like for you.” Her child is in his early twenties. Her face is careworn and her eyes are kind. She has recently come to understand how she played her part in the family dynamic that has been so toxic for everyone involved- she tells me she has been an Enabler all these years, trying to help but doing more harm than good by doing so. She isn’t an alcoholic, but she loves one, and that puts her in a compromised situation. And she further did her part in the dance by constantly fixing the situations her son got into, making it all okay. He would fall down, but she would get the bruise.

I then spoke to another mother and father, who are very angry and hurt at their daughter’s relapse. I try to encourage them into family groups, to look at the dynamics. I also register the discomfort this brings up for them- alcoholics are not the only ones who hang onto their habits. The question “Who would you be if your daughter was not an active alcoholic?” Can bring up both positive and negative feelings. As much as they may hate that their family spends a great amount of time discussing the ‘black sheep of the family’, they get something out of it, too. She is like the bonfire around which they constantly gather. And the Black Sheep gets to be the continual fuck up, which is a major tool of the Disease. Being the Fuck Up is disempowering to sustainable sobriety, so that alcoholic has a further investment in staying in that toxic dynamic and behaving in ways that reinforce the designation of Black Sheep/ Fuck Up. Since the family has learned to revolve around this Black Sheep, the family has to learn how to exist without that focal point. And vice versa.
I also had a conversation with a Husband of an alcoholic. He didn’t even realize it when he said to me, “If she gets better, she won’t need me.” He had become the one who cleaned up the house when she destroyed it in a blackout, and when she woke up, she didn’t remember. The house was spotless, the sheets did not have any mess on them any longer, and she didn’t remember the state she had left it in. He was miserable in this role, and yet he was willing to hang onto the misery because it gave him a role in which he was needed. It was sad to come to understand this particular dynamic; it was so insidious. It looks like love, and the intentions are good, but its like a non-detectable poison gas that eventually corrodes both people. Both people support the slow death, and both people need help.

Finally, I have recently witnessed the anger and resentment of the family towards the alcoholic. I know of a family that is furious at their son for his relapse. They want nothing more to do with him. When they discovered he had relapsed yet again, they stormed into his house, yelling into his face. I think anyone can understand it- after a period of 9 months of peace, the family is thrown back into the worry and despair again, and they don’t want it. They have had years of picking him up from jails and hospitals. The sad thing here is that their son has a debilitating, life threatening disease. It often takes many relapses for a person to finally ‘get it’. If it were a matter of will power, it wouldn’t be considered a disease, but a character flaw, a weakness. I was there when all the yelling happened, and it made me sad for all of them. Now that the man in question is a couple of months sober, the family is still refusing to see him. I hoped they would come forward and stand beside him, but they’ve had enough. He has a lot to prove to them, and it may take years.  I am not that family, but I am sure it hurts to turn their backs on their son and brother.  As much as it hurts to be the one who is shunned from the family. Everybody hurts.

I now really understand why we have another 12 step program, the one that Bill Wilson’s (one of the founders of AA) wife started- Al-Anon. Its for the people who are involved in the lives of alcoholics. When they say its a family disease, they don’t mean that its passed down from generation to generation- they mean it permeates into all the primary relationships, and everyone becomes invested in the alcoholic’s disease in one way or another. I have heard some people, when Al-Anon was suggested, say, “Wait, why do I have to go do this work? He/she has ruined my life for years, and now you expect me to go do work?” Well, yes. Yes and yes. Because it is a family disease, the whole family needs healing. It isn’t work, its relief, its a solution, and its available.

For anyone involved with an active or newly sober alcoholic, there is support for you. Take it. There is work to do. Do it. There is nothing more important in life than the healing of family dynamics, than the ongoing health of loving and sustainable relationships.