Behaviors that Hurt and the Loads to be Carried

In addition to the unavailability of emotion, they are not sure they've been attacked because there is no one there to validate the attack. This is also a characteristic of PTSD in that "the person's support system includes those who encourage denial" (Cermak 40). In consideration of these points, disapproval, dirty looks, .i.sarcasm, and teasing are types of covert attacks because they are (1) unknown or hidden from the child either by the child's need to suspend their feelings (deny their feelings) in order to ensure their survival or (2) because of the denial used by the addict parents and other family members (hiding the enemy). Destructive control behaviors as discussed in this section of the guide are all forms of an emotional or physical attack on the child.

What the uninformed addict doesn't know is that, no one or no thing is responsible for the feelings of someone else. We each physiologically and psychologically generate our own experiences of feeling in response to a stimuli. The stimuli is not the source nor the trained response socialized into the addict. The addict's trained or socialized response is his or her own affair exclusive of the stimuli.

Addict parents assume that because they are "feeling bad," someone else must be at fault. They're unable to accept themselves as being at fault i.e. take responsibility for their own feelings and actions because to be "at fault," when they were growing up as children in their own dysfunctional environments, meant that abuse would occur. As a result of this conditioning, addicts are scared to death of "feeling at fault" for anything. They will blame as an instinctive survival response when they experience the perception of having to survive. Needing to survive includes avoiding injury, pain, or humiliation.

The addict parent pattern taught to them, when he or she was a child was to blame someone else for their actions and for how they feel. And as a result of this unexamined training they continue the pattern by blaming other people for their feelings and actions including their children. Children who carry the load of feeling responsible for the feelings and the actions of their addict parent(s) carry a heavy load. Some loads are so heavy that children of addict parents become sick, commit suicide, and even homicide in order to escape the load. As a result of using this destructive control behavior, the first load that children who were raised as an object of an addiction will carry is:

• The load of feeling responsible for the feelings of their addict parent(s).

Note: The load list is also called the "old baggage" list. Old baggage is an accumulation of past events and psychological double binds which go unresolved and consequently load a person down emotionally and physically.

Since the goal of an addict parent is to not to "feel bad" and they assign that responsibility to the child, the child of an addict parent will never be able to share anything painful about themselves with their addict parent. As stated before, when the child tries to share something painful with their addict parent, the addict parent will react or respond to the sharing of that information in a negative and non-supporting way (discounting). There is a painful and invisible cord of dependency which ties or connects the addict with their object of addiction. As a result of this invisible cord, when the object is in pain, the addict is in pain; which causes them to recoil or pull back from their object of addiction; either that or they use some method of disguising, discounting, or diminishing; causing the object's pain to become invisible or unknown to them (the addict parent).

Addict parents are scared to death of having bad feelings and will repress them at any cost. So what are "bad feelings" to an addict parent? An addict parent considers bad feelings to be any feelings of sadness, grief, fear, anger, disappointment, frustration, guilt, loneliness, shame, or any other feelings of pain (including physical pain). Children of addicts cannot share sadness, grief, fear, anger, disappointment, frustration, guilt, loneliness, shame, or any other feelings of pain. Because of this phenomena, children of addicts are forced to cope with their pain alone. Addicts are unable to cope with feelings of pain. Children of addicts, as a result of this kind of destructive control conditioning, equate having pain with being abused or the need to hide their pain in order to survive (choose to see definition "Survive" in Appendix).

As stated before, the most common reaction of an addict parent to a child's pain would be to try and discount or minimize that pain. When the child shares something painful, usually in the form of a complaint, the addict parent discounts or minimizes what's being said by saying things to the child like:

• "Oh-h-h that doesn't hurt."
• "Just forget about it, look on the bright side."
• "Just ignore it."
• "Don't worry about it."
• "Remember, every cloud has a silver lining."
• "At least you still have . . . . . "
• "You're bugging me; you don't have to bug me now."
• "You think that's bad, when I was your age . . . . ."

Whichever phrase is used, it will be designed to discount and minimize the child's feelings (the child's pain). The addict's objective will be to alter his or her feelings (the addict's feelings) by trying to alter the reality of what his or her child is feeling. In this way they are using the child in a dependency way in order to feel good, better, or avoid "feeling bad." As a result, the child's pain (feelings) goes unaccepted and non-supported by the addict parent and remains repressed and unresolved for the child for years. The child now carries two loads:

• The load of feeling responsible for the feelings of their addict parent(s).
• And the load of their own unresolved grief and repressed pain (coping with pain alone).