Powerlessness, an internal and external lack of strength, skill, authority, ability, or resources to change, rectify, improve, or escape a person or circumstance, is a concept that is virtually synonymous with the adult child syndrome. It is, up to a point, the essence that brought about its creation.

“Adult children are dependent personalities, who see abuse and inappropriate behavior as normal,” according to the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (World Service Organization, 2006, p. 18). “Or if they complain about the abuse, they feel powerless to do something about it. Without help, adult children confuse love and pity and choose partners they can pity and rescue. The reward is the feeling of being needed or of avoid feeling lonely for another person. day. Such relationships create reactors, that they feel powerless to change their situation. “

There is a big difference between those who grew up in a stable and loving home and those who endured a chaotic and dangerous one.

“In a normal home, children … internalize the strength of their parents,” continues the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (ibid, p. 89). “They are supported by a sense of parental power that gives logic and structure to their lives. With this foundation and strength, they can build a self and create loving intimacy through their own sense of power. Children of alcoholics have a feeling helpless because of not being able to stop the destructive effects of family alcoholism. “

A strong indicator of such dynamics is a spiraling and unmanageable life, even in adulthood, in which a person does not dominate it and instead feels like a victim of it, as it once was in childhood. Unable to feel in the cause and become a participant, he borders the boundaries between childhood and adulthood, remaining stuck in the protective cocoon of the inner child that he was unconsciously forced to create in order to spiritually escape danger and function with the traits of reconfigured survival of the brain to further foster a sense of security in the present.

“When children have been hurt by alcoholism and cannot find relief from their pain, they are forced to deny their reality and isolate themselves,” advises the textbook “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (ibid, p. 359). “The experience of being powerless to control the events that harm us as children leaves us with a deep sense of alienation, not only from others, but from our own openness and vulnerability.”

Impotence can be subdivided into external and internal aspects. The former include the actions and reactions of others and out-of-control situations and circumstances, such as the home environment in which a person was born, alcohol-fueled behavior and dysfunction of their parents or primary caregivers, and any number of natural situations. disasters, such as hurricanes and earthquakes. The latter implies the lack of internal resources to escape, protect or defend those situations or reactivations later in life that return an adult to his moments of helplessness and lack of resources, immobilizing him, but flooding his body with the stress hormones that he . he couldn’t take advantage of it at the time. Repeated reactivators result in post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

Circuit-breaking aspects can encompass people (authority figures who remind parents), places (similarities to a person’s family environment), and things (that also rekindle similar circumstances). Although all can occur unconsciously and will most likely continue to do so unless their origins are identified and desensitized, they all create infantile impotence in adulthood.

However, the helplessness of being faced as a helpless and resourceless child against an out-of-control and potentially harmful adult with the disease of alcoholism that no one understands cannot be overstated.

“I learned in Al-Anon that I am bound to fail to make someone else stop drinking because I am powerless over alcoholism,” advises the Al-Anon text “Courage to Change” (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc. .., 1992, p. 14). “… I gradually learned that nothing I did or did not do would convince my loved one to become sober. I understood it intellectually, but it took me time before I believed it in my heart.”

Alcoholism quickly cuts the connection of a child with his Higher Power, causing the person suffering from it to cross his limits, become entangled with it and graft his diseased soul into the healthy one of the child. It leaves that child abandoned and feeling even more helpless.

However, there are many reasons why a child could not understand this concept and consequently made considerable, though futile, efforts to repair or cure his sick parent.

In the first place, as a child, he believed that the reason for his caregiver’s negligent, guilty and abusive behavior was his, that is, that he was flawed, unworthy, unlovable, and that he needed to be properly “disciplined” for his shortcomings . He did not have the psychological, neurological, emotional or intellectual development to have assessed otherwise.

Desperately in need of his parents’ love, nurturing, and support for his own development as a person, secondly he employed whatever strategy his young mind could use as a motto to obtain it.

Third, by trying to minimize his exposure to the physically and psychically damaging guilt, contempt, hatred, and shame of his caregiver, he tried to reduce the harm to which he was exposed.

Finally, he attempted to stabilize the father who created the dangerous, chaotic and unpredictable environment in which he was forced to live in order to increase his own safety and sanity.

While all of these motivations were logical and complimentary, especially for a helpless child who tried to exert as much corrective influence as he could, they were useless.

“One of the first Al-Anon sayings that I remember hearing, known as ‘the three Cs,’ embodies the concept of helplessness over alcoholism,” according to “Hope for Today” (Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002, page 7). “‘I didn’t cause it’ frees me from any lingering guilt I may feel. If only I had been a better son, worked harder in school, done more chores around the house, or didn’t fight so much with my siblings, My parents may not have become alcoholics, but in reality their suffering from the disease has nothing to do with me.

“’I can’t control it’ gives me permission to live my life and take better care of myself. I no longer have to waste my energy trying to manipulate people and situations so that alcoholics drink less.

“(And finally), ‘I can’t cure it’ reminds me that I don’t have to repeat my crazy behavior over and over again, expecting different results. I don’t have to keep giving one last exhausted effort to stop drinking, hoping that this once it works. “

However, unleashing the defenses and false sense of control of an adult child is like falling from the sky without a parachute and proclaiming it to the world while plummeting. It only intensifies your fear and prepares you for the catastrophic outcome. These pseudo-solutions were all he had and admitting his helplessness is now nothing less than a return to vulnerable victim status.

Although physical distance and temporary separation, as occurs when an adult child moves away from his home of origin, can minimize his reactivations and provide a temporary increase in stability, they will continue to exert their effects until his illness has been dissolved by means of the Recovery. -in other words, wherever he goes, so his education continues.

“When I was a young daughter of an alcoholic father, I was powerless”, according to a testimony in “Hope for Today” (ibid, p. 59). “I was powerless over all the criticism that came out of her mouth and powerless over every blow she gave me. To survive such an upbringing, I developed many defenses. When I no longer needed them, these defenses turned into character defects. As an adult , I was still powerless against the effects of my father’s abuse! “

Paradoxically, the moment in which a person identifies his impotence is the moment in which he regains his first grain of strength, because he crosses the line from victim to victor, as long as he does so with the support of a Higher Power, as happens with the first step. of any recovery program that says, “We admitted we were powerless over alcohol, that our lives had become unmanageable.”

Standing on the threshold of help and healing, the adult child rekindles his first, perhaps still tenuous connection with his Source, who lifts, dissolves, strengthens and restores, breathing the life of true power and illuminating the disease of alcoholism and the Dysfunction that he was exposed during his soggy and darkened upbringing.

Powerlessness ends where reconnection with a person’s Higher Power begins.

Article sources:

“Adult children of alcoholics”. Torrance, California: World Organization for Services for Adult Children of Alcoholics, 2006.

“Courage to change”. Virginia Beach, Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 1992.

“Hope for today.” Virginia Beach, Virginia: Al-Anon Family Group Headquarters, Inc., 2002.