Posted by Rosa on August 26, 2001, at 9:11:05
In reply to Re: Abuse of Prescription Medication » Pennie Lane, posted by Marie1 on August 26, 2001, at 8:35:16
I hope this will help explain how we are affected by the environment in which we grew up. Although this is a social issue, it leads to being prescribed medication in some cases.
Here are the characteristics we seem to have in common due to being brought up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional home.
a. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
b. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
c. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
d. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our abandonment needs.
e. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
f. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us
to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. This enables us not to
look too closely at our own faults.g. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
h. We become addicted to excitement.
i. We confuse love with pity and tend to "love" people who we can "pity" and "rescue".
j. We have stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost
the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).k. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
l. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were
never there emotionally for us.m. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of the disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
n. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.
(Adapted version) Tony A., 1977
Reprinted from WSO Newcomer, Page 2, with permission from Adult Children of
Alcoholics, World Service Organization,
P. O. Box 3216, Torrance, CA 90510
310/ 534-1815.
_________________________________For further information about Adult Children of Alcoholics, go to the following URL:
www.adultchildren.org
> Pennie Lane,
> What you have to say here about people thinking their depression has been caused solely by some neurotransmitter imbalance is interesting to me. I always thought my depression was purely biological, inherited from my looney tunes grandmother (I'm allowed; I too am "looney tunes :-)). My brother suicided, due to undiagnosed depression and that added to my theory about myself. Basically, I didn't feel that I had the stressors that typically contribute to a "situational depression". So went to g.p. and started Prozac, which luckily worked for me. This too reinforced the physiological depression theory. However, after 18 months in psychotherapy (after a bout of major depression), I'm beginning to wonder just how much of this illness really is bio-chemical. I also have abuse problems with alcohol and prescription meds. I've come to think my depression may be a combination of things, with a genetic predisposition to mental illness. Part of the problem is, I don't want to think my past was anything but normal. We weren't the Brady Bunch, but was it really that bad? Hard for me to say; that was my reality and I had nothing else to compare it to.
> Anyway, I was curious if this is what you meant when you said "how the norms they excepted effected their development, and what alternatives might have produced different results."
> I was also curious as to your background. Are you a psychologist or psychiatrist? Thanks for your thoughts.
>
> Marie
>
> Underneath the blue suburban skies, I sit and meanwhile back at Pennie Lane....
poster:Rosa
thread:75755
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20010822/msgs/76443.html