I am the adult child of an alcoholic. My father is a recovering alcoholic and has been sober since I was 9 years old. The major stressor in my life as a young child during a critical development period was chaos. My father drank from the moment he got off of work until he went to bed. At the time I thought my dad was just unhappy with his current job, and so he often took a new job. Now, I guess I realize he was often fired. Due to this we moved often, money was always an issue, changes in schools, changes in friends, moving away from support systems, fighting between my parents. Just chaos. In order to cope I often played make believe. I had stuffed animals that I played with, and as I got older I became a very good student and problem free child just to not be a greater burden. As an adult, I am now an extremely codependent person. I have tremendous people pleasing tendencies. I have been through counseling and various types of therapy to learn skills to be an assertive person, and establish "normal" ideals of family and marriage. I used to react in anger to almost every emotion, but happiness because that is what was modeled for me. However, I would become very frightened if others became angry. Overall, my emotional and biosocial development required a lot of work as an adult to combat the negative effects of my upbringing. Unfortunately, children around the world contend with alcohol abuse. Thankfully, in the United States there are programs such as
Al-Anon
Alateen
Children of Alcoholics Foundation: www.coaf.org
National Association for Children of Alcoholics: www.nacoa.org/
In India, the desire to leave poverty and gain affluence in the community is leading children to develop school stress. The stress of passing final exams is causing many students to commit suicide. By March of 2008 over 100 students had committed suicide, "leaving the
country, and especially its parents, wondering
whether the final deathly toll will exceed the
2006 mark when a staggering 5,857 Indian students
attempted suicide due to exam blues, according to
the National Crime Records Bureau" (Lal, 2008).
It seems as though poverty, hunger, and crime are the primary stressors and the end result is school anxiety leading to suicide and depression. Student crisis lines have been established for students to call and seek help or advice in order to combat this new challenge.
Reference:
Lal, N. (2008, March, 20). Killing stress for India's best and brightest. Asia Times. Retrieved May 25, 2012 from www.atimes.com/atimes/South_Asia/JC20Df01.html
Mandy its great that you recognized you needed help as an adult and made efforts to get therapy. Its not easy growing up in a household that wasn't a place of solace and stability. Its amazing how stress can lead to killing oneself. The pressure the children of India must feel to succeed is a tremendous burden for them to go through. I am glad that there are hotlines for children to call, but I feel there should be more done to reduce the suicide rate of children.
ReplyDeleteHey Mandy, thank you for sharing your very personal story. I can identify with most of what you said. I too tend to be a people pleaser thanks to my background. I have read about the suicides in India too, it is horrendous. To put the stress these students experience into perspective with a mind boggling fact - for every child counted in the USA, India has that many students just on the Honor Roll! They have to achieve in order to succeed the competition field is huge!
ReplyDeleteMy dad was an alcoholic as well and it would scare me when he would come home drunk and angry because he never knew how to express his feelings when he was sober. Drinking made it much easier for him to say what he was really feeling. I never understood how drinking could cause so many problems but he recovered from drinking by going through a twelve step program and I was very proud of him for that. I believed that while he was here he made an impact on my life by showing me that all things are possible if you have support and determination.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing this. I am starting to realize how much this happens within families. Alcoholism is a disease ( I believe) that is very hard to overcome for some reason. As an adult now I find my own mother is struggling with this after my parents divorce. At any rate it is so hard on children.
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