Some people, mostly young, go a bit wild, and under the influence of peers or drink/drugs or both, commit crime, are easily caught, spend a while in prison, and on release settle down and never get involved in criminality again.
However, those who spend most of their teens and twenties going in and out of detention centres and then prisons are almost always misusers of drugs and alcohol, or compulsive gamblers, or have some other addiction – or neurosis or obsession akin to addiction.
While they know that they are getting into trouble because of their addiction, they often don’t link it to the fact that they may have had, at some point in their lives, traumatic experiences within or outside their families and no opportunity to heal in real time as they grew. (Their reality may be linked to having an idealised view of childhood that I mentioned previously).
Almost always, an addict will consider herself to be a bad person who doesn’t deserve any better than what she has – i.e. a chaotic life of addiction. Chaos and uncertainty may have been familiar within her family. While at a head level many know that they are using drink and drugs to ease pain – they usually do not have a bodily sense of it.
The reason that I like to get away from fault (and blame) is that I believe that much trauma is connected with unexpected and unexplained loss. It is propagated unconsciously through generations – so it is difficult to address. The loss could be death of a loved one who is an important family member, loss of childhood, loss due to imprisonment of a member, loss of identity, loss of personal safety or sexual integrity, or, simply, continually feeling misunderstood or invisible.
What about addiction and the root foundations? Since they are central to growth for all humans (universal) they obviously apply to those who misuse alcohol and drugs too. In my experience, growth is certainly optimised if the practitioner has had direct experience of addiction herself – and grown through it. You can’t kid a kidder as is said!
It is imperative that the person in distress (and, addicts are almost always in distress) thinks that support offered is relevant and supportive – as distinct from irrelevant and punitive.
I believe that there are some populations where ongoing, repeated incidence of trauma is more prevalent than others. Families who have the characteristics that we associate with our Focus Group fall into that category.
This is no-one’s fault – but it is a reality that we need to acknowledge – and then design our responses around that reality.
The fact that large numbers of children who grow up in environments where there are such incidences turn out well is irrelevant.
And; do they really turn out well?
Many adult children who had a parent who was an addict abhor drink and drugs, and may be high achievers, compulsive carers, even, perhaps, obsessive entertainers, etc. But they may suffer from high levels of stress and unconsciously pass on addictive tendencies indirectly through the generations, and are mystified when addiction manifests in their own family.
We dealt with attachment at length above. When parents have been born into families where love, respect and intimacy were kept at a distance, there is a possibility that the messages that they pass on about love and intimacy will not be nurturing – indeed they may be harmful.
Love may be very conditional, and intimacy may be either fraught with danger or inconsistent – or non-existent. Respect may be what you give someone who is stronger, or a Guard, but respecting children might not be high priority. There might be little empathy for the child who is acting out, or falling behind, or totally lost in a world that is changing too fast for him to process the changes.
The long-term effects of such experiences lead to a person not being at ease with himself in the world.
In the next post I will expand on this theme.
Here are some other factors that may be worthy of consideration:
~ Rather than recognising and celebrating gifts they may be viewed as problems to be eradicated quickly.
~ Rather than a child learning to trust, constant worrying and fretting means that he learns to be worried about pleasing the other which then becomes a pattern that he brings into his adult life.
~ Rather than celebrating difference and seeing him as equal to others, he is continually compared to his friends, cousins, siblings etc. and may be parented in a different – usually less tolerant way.
And in such situations, from the practitioner point of view, it can be difficult to notice change – as the pace of change can be very slow.