A person who grew up under the care of an alcohol addict as a child may struggle with further problems in his or her adult life. These types of people are known as adult children of alcoholics, or DDA for short. It is also the name of a syndrome that describes the symptoms characteristic of people who suffer from the trauma of their caregivers’ alcohol abuse. What exactly characterizes people with the DDA syndrome, what are their symptoms and how can they cope with it?
The alcoholic and his impact on the family
Alcohol addiction has an extremely destructive effect on a person, and the situation also takes its toll on the person’s immediate environment, the family, and especially the children. Alcoholism of one or both parents (as well as other close family members) can cause huge problems in a child’s life and the formation of an inappropriate attachment style. Alcohol disease has a significant impact on children. With substance addiction, children in such a family are often neglected and abused by their parents. They may also be neglected by caregivers or relatives who are unaware of the addiction. This neglect can lead to developmental delays and emotional trauma that can last into adulthood.
Children of addicts are also more likely to have mental health problems, including depression and anxiety. Children of addicts are also less likely to do well in school and are more likely to engage in risky behaviors such as drinking or smoking. Unfortunately, a child’s troubles don’t end when he or she reaches adulthood and moves out of the family home.
What is the DDA syndrome?
DDA, adult children of alcoholics, DDA children – all these names stand for a syndrome that affects people who grew up in homes where caregivers were addicted to alcohol. Who are the DDA ? The term “adult children of alcoholics” is a psychosocial label used to describe the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family. Often, the term also extends to other dysfunctions the child encountered during their addiction. These include, for example, sexual abuse or violence. Growing up in a situation of constant danger and without proper role models usually leads the child to bring from the family home entrenched inappropriate cognitive patterns…. Indeed, alcoholism is a disease of the entire family. The aforementioned patterns extend to various aspects of life – they touch on emotions, contacts with other people or ways of coping with difficult situations. Such mechanisms may have made it easier for the child to function in the substandard conditions of the family home, but they make life outside of it much more difficult.
The history of this syndrome goes back to the 1970s in the United States, where the first support groups for those affected were formed. They brought together people who shared a disturbed sense of security, a sense of inferiority in childhood. Children raised in such an environment experienced anxiety, constant tension and a frequent sense of shame. The child also felt a sense of rejection or invalidation of his or her needs, as the parent’s dependency was always at the forefront of the family’s life.
DDA syndrome – symptoms
The adult child syndrome is a set of symptoms that are perpetuated throughout life. They result from growing up under the care of an addicted parent and remain with the child for a long time, even into adulthood. In families with an alcohol problem, one’s own needs cannot be talked about. The children’s own needs are secondary,there is no way to talk about their feelings, because it is impossible to be isolated from the problems in the family.
Children growing up are not immune to psychological trauma. The feelings of guilt and shame of those who come from alcoholic families affect their entire adult lives. Adult children have often lost trust in themselves but also, most importantly, in other people. DDA traits are primarily strategies that helped the child survive in a dysfunctional home. Symptoms of the syndrome may include fear of losing control, fear of change and fear of participating in conflict situations. A DDA child may also experience an excessive sense of responsibility for his or her surroundings, and often struggles with the desire to control every aspect of his or her life, especially social life. In doing so, he wants to provide the sense of security he lacked as a child.
The adult child may also very often experience unwarranted feelings of guilt, and he is also unable to relax, unwind and thus rest. He or she lives in constant tension, which has been with him or her since childhood. DDAs are more prone to addiction and may suffer from depression, anxiety or other mental health problems. They may also have difficulty maintaining healthy relationships or building a stable career. Studies have shown that many children of alcoholics have difficulty understanding their place in the world, which can lead to self-esteem problems.
Alcohol problem and relationships
Children from alcoholic families are often confused about their own identity, and this can lead to low self-esteem. They tend to have relationship difficulties and may be prone to addiction.
Adults whose parents have struggled with addiction often become their own biggest critics. They demand perfectionism of themselves and fail to appreciate their own efforts and their results. They are never good enough in their opinion. It is also very common for such people to constantly experience their reality from the perspective of the victim they were in childhood. They reflexively adopt her role and point of view. DDA people may experience difficulties in intimate life – it happens that they have trouble with intimacy or enter into dangerous relationships, allow themselves to be humiliated by relationships. Adult children of alcoholics are also characterized by a great need for acceptance and quickly become attached to people who show it to them. DDAs are often terribly afraid of the rejection they may have previously experienced from their addicted parent in childhood, and have difficulty expressing assertiveness. They also subordinate their lives to other people extremely easily, ignoring their own needs. They try to please them in this way, thus avoiding the imagined conflicts and abandonment that they believe constantly threatens them. DDAs also constantly feel the fear that someone will know the truth about them and the addicted parent they are ashamed of.
DDA and addiction in adult life
It is very difficult for a person who grew up in such an environment to break out of the circle of addiction and learn to live without it. Many people who are adult children of alcoholics struggle with alcoholism themselves, even if they never saw their parents drink or take drugs.
This is because, as a child, they learned to cope with stress and emotional pain by drinking or taking drugs, which can lead them to do the same as adults.
A study by the National Institute of Mental Health found that 25% of children who grow up with a parent who is an alcoholic may also develop an addiction.
Why do DDAs hurt?
An abusive relationship with an addicted parent in childhood can also translate into interactions with other people in adulthood. Often a DDA in a relationship can be described as hurting and abusive to loved ones. This is because such a person has difficulty forming healthy relationships. This is because the person did not have a pattern of such a relationship in the family home. The relevant question here is how DDAs love. Their love is different from that of people who have not experienced childhood trauma. This is because people suffering from this syndrome enjoy every expression of interest given to them by others. They desperately crave the acceptance of their surroundings and at the same time live in constant fear of rejection. They also have trouble trusting another person. They constantly intuit that they will hurt them just as their parents did. Another issue is the syndrome of
DDA and their own children
Adult children of alcoholics enter adult life with a very well-defined vision of what parenting is like. They may find that they transfer their doubts, fears and established patterns to their relationship with their own child, and instill in him or her, too, the insecurities in which they themselves have lived for years. Such people need new role models, new experiences that will neutralize their past experiences. Only in this way, they will be able to build a secure attachment with their children.
Therapy. How to get out of DDA?
Recognizing one’s self with the adult child of an alcoholic syndrome does not make one crossed out and have to deal with the consequences of one’s parent’s addiction for the rest of one’s life. Since the 1970s, there have been support groups that bring together people suffering from living with a drinking parent who have a huge psychological problem. Various types of psychotherapy are also possible. A large number of patients with the DDA syndrome opt for a permanent type of interventions. With therapy you can solve the problems of getting to your own feelings, therapy is a process that will help you unlock your emotions. You can start talking openly about your emotions and needs. It seems a very appropriate choice, it may be schema therapy, which is not directed only to the cognitive, reasoning area. Schema therapy examines patterns from the past and helps work through difficult experiences. It is often stressed that the diagnosis of adult alcoholic child syndrome alone is not a diagnosis of the disorder. The accompanying symptoms, however, usually require consultation with a specialist to help the sufferer work through the problems associated with the addicted parent. DDA therapy may prove to be a way to relieve tension and break the cycle of erroneous patterns repeated by successive generations. In the course of therapy, such a person learns new mechanisms for coping with reality, experiencing it, as well as building a self-image from scratch and working on self-esteem. In the course of therapy, it is important to recognize the patterns afflicting the person, find their sources and replace them with new mechanisms. Therapy can be conducted individually or in groups. One can then meet among people who share similar experiences and childhoods spent in the shadow of a parent’s addiction. Sharing emotions and stories with people who understand a situation because they have experienced it themselves can often be a healing experience for adult children of alcoholics and help them overcome their problems. It is also worth remembering that DDA is often accompanied by medical conditions such as depression, personality disorders or anxiety, which should also be treated.
Change in adult life
Adult Children of Alcoholics, then, is a term for people who experienced the problem of an alcoholic parent or experienced other dysfunctions in childhood. This syndrome is characterized by a number of distinctive symptoms, which are a direct result of the difficulties experienced in childhood and the traumas brought from it. Adult children of alcoholics have problems finding their way in everyday life, because the strategies familiar to them from childhood, e.g. withdrawal, freezing with an addicted parent, are not effective in the reality that this parent is no longer present. DDA syndrome can be dealt with to improve one’s own quality of life. It is worth starting to work therapeutically to break the pain of loneliness, slowly finding trusted relationships and true good love.