I have been amazed at how many of us come forth from a good 5th step and immediately say, “I sure have a lot to work on.” We climb to the sixth step and realize that we have nothing to work on, unless our Higher Power indicates such to us. The 6th step is counter-intuitive. I am eager to get working on my defects but my Higher Power is telling me to hold my horses until He gives the command, pointing out which shortcoming He wants to lengthen and what he wants from me.
On April 29th, Claudia Black, Ph.D. and national expert on the family disease of addiction, will be presenting a workshop sponsored by The Retreat titled “Transforming Families: From Script to Choice.” This workshop will explore different ways families respond to addiction and alcoholism, including the scripts children adopt in reaction to this situation. This month’s blog post briefly describes one of these adopted roles, the “Mascot.”
Mascots are often identified as the “family clown.” They have adapted a knack to distract from the tension that is often created where addiction is present, and, hence, relieve some stress and pain for themselves and others in the family. These children have learned to avoid hard feelings, whether consciously or unconsciously, through attention seeking, humor, or acting out. The Mascot’s goal is to distract from the difficulties families dealing with addiction often face.
Due to the amount of time they spend acting, these children can lose touch with their authentic self, and can carry this role of actor into their adult years. Some adult Mascots find themselves unable to face challenging situations. They avoid conflict because their coping skill didn’t allow for learning how to take important matters seriously. As a result, Mascots are susceptible to acting inappropriately, crossing boundaries, and missing important social maturity markers.
Mascots also risk the potential of measuring self-worth by how others see them. They long to be liked, and become confused when they are not the center of attention. They may feel uneasy in the absence of drama and may create a diversion in order to feel normal. Mascots are prone to struggle with intimacy issues because they’ve learned to protect themselves from their feelings.
However, Mascots have also developed the gift of being adaptable and flexible in dealing with whatever life throws their way.
There is hope. Join us at our workshop on Friday, April 29th, when Claudia Black will share insights on how to change the Mascot’s role, and all of the roles that have been mentioned in this blog in the last few months. We hope to see you there! Here’s a link for more information, or to register for this exciting, Claudia Black, Ph.D. and national expert on the family disease of addiction opportunity, follow this link!
The National Council of Alcohol and Drug Dependence founded Alcohol Awareness Month in 1987 in an effort to reduce the stigma widely associated with alcoholism by spreading information about alcohol, alcoholism, and recovery. Each year, numerous groups around the country work to break down barriers to treatment and recovery to make the option of seeking help more readily available to those who suffer from this disease.
Sobriety makes everything different, but it takes more than just the passage of sober days to bring about change. The idea behind my book, “Being Sober and Becoming Happy” is that first we take the Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous to get our drinking to stop. Then, if we keep taking those same Twelve Steps, in sobriety, and apply them to everything we do, we end up happy. I’ve had enough time to try this theory out, and to measure the results.
When I was drinking I was always angry about something. I just got off the phone with the new car dealer. I dropped off my new car to have a plastic sealer applied to it, because there wasn’t time to do it on Saturday when I bought it. The service manager called to say there was a tiny dent in the bottom of the door, which needed a paint touching up. He said I must have hit something with the door. I don’t think I did. I think the dent must have been there when I got the car and I just didn’t see it when I looked it over.
When addiction is present in the home, and the subsequent instability and inconsistency in relationships that accompanies it, the reactions that different children have is varied, yet predictable. Claudia Black, Ph.D. and national expert on the Family Disease of Addiction, identifies one of these childhood roles as “The Adjuster.”
Children in homes where addiction is present tend to adopt relatively predictable family of origin roles or scripts. These roles allow children to draw positive attention, and sometimes are designed to avoid any attention at all. Each role seems to be focused on a universal primary relationship goal: an attempt to not feel pain. Our kids often play their roles with such fluidity that they go unnoticed. They do their best to help the chemically dependent home they are living in feel safe and structured.
The Responsible Child is the adolescent who acts like an adult. They try to produce predictability, tame tensions, and organize the outcomes. On the extreme end, these kids are planning and preparing meals. They may be cleaning the household, or making sure the doors are locked at night. If there are younger siblings, they may be checking backpacks for homework folders and ensuring that assignments are completed.
We alcoholics tend to look down on New Year's Eve as “amateur night.” We often stay off the highways, believing them to be filled with dangerous, untrained, drinkers who have no tolerance for alcohol. We like to believe that when we drank and drove, we did it well. There is a little bit of truth in this, because we did develop a tolerance for alcohol, but mostly it is what the Big Book calls “gutter bravado.” Our tolerance just allowed us to drink more, and we were just as foolish as anyone else.
This year, 2015, is the first year that I haven’t felt some generalized distress at Christmas time. It began when I was a child in a violent, alcoholic home. I almost always got hurt on the days leading up to Christmas. It would begin with the tree.
Claudia Black, Ph.D. and national expert on the Family Disease of Addiction, contends that most children in chemically dependent homes are often overlooked and underserved by school counselors and family service agencies, and even the juvenile justice system. Why?
