I think that there is a stereotype about this type of family, the alcoholic family, one that is unfortunately well-deserved, if misinformed.   It is by definition a stereotype, a generalization, that alcoholic families tend to be violent.  Just as any generalization about any type of family has to be wrong, this one is too.

Each family is unique, crazy in its own way.

And yet, someone like me sees some people for about seventy seconds before thinking, alcoholic family. Maybe you do this, too.

People in 12-Step programs aptly use words like rage-aholic to describe a population of people who don’t drink, yet behave in these stereotypic ways, as alcoholics  do, those who drink and rage, that is.

Who cares where the rage comes from, although surely those of us armchair whizzes will offer etiological opinions.  Bottom line, fix it. And the 12-Step programs do fix it.

At least those who want to make the effort to control their emotional outbursts have more than half a chance at success if they work a program.

We’re talking about anger, of course, the thing that precedes violence, and anger can present serendipitously while a person is under the influence, in alcoholic or otherwise addicted families especially.

Lamps crash, tables fall, walls are never the same. The less-inhibited brain becomes uninhibited under the influence of alcohol especially, which is why ragers tend to be associated with alcohol. But we know very well that a transgenerational phenomena is often the cause.

If your father raged, you might, too, alcoholic, or not.  It’s there in the covert rule book, the family blueprint.  We get permission from our parents to behave as they behaved, even if they say, Do as I say, not as I do.  It’s what we do that talks to our kids.

We’re not doomed to become ragers, not at all, just because we come from a family that allowed it.  Many children from raging families, perhaps alcoholic, perhaps not, are placid, subdued, unemotional, careful individuals and they really never lose it.  (Frustrating, I know).

But they do often lean towards anxiety.  It is scary being a child of a rager, and a child’s brain  is set on a pathway to arousal (anxiety) when subjected to frequent outbursts of rage.  So we see these adult children (or children) in the office and we call them ACOA’s , Adult Children of Alcoholics, and we know that they’re the nicest people in the world, and that they have either been neglected or misunderstood, and perhaps exposed to indecent anger.

On my other blog we’ve been talking about this exposure to violence lately, and something that’s called trauma.  There are  ways to treat it, primarily exposure therapies.  Ironically, by over-exposing people to the snapshots that upset them, the snapshots can blanch out, become over-exposed, and the picture loses its power.  The monster is less monstrous.

White-out.  Snow.

That works sometimes (often, to tell the truth) when the trauma is immediate, or only happened perhaps once, maybe a few times.  It’s a pain that is localized and can be treated as such, with a local.

The trauma that survivors of violent alcoholic families experience is different.  That trauma unfolds every day, or perhaps not every day, but often,  as drama, so many dramas that minimizing memories, over-exposing them, can feel impossible and probably is.

So it is no wonder that people are afraid to come out, to say, I’m from an alcoholic family, or even, a dysfunctional family.  Setting up for a child, children, for  future anxiety disorders (or substance abuse disorders, depression, etc., there are more diagnoses) is something people need to have in mind when they say, A little denial is a good thing.  One or two drinks can’t hurt anyone.

therapydoc