Now that my friend Elizabeth over at Hope Maybe has posted a response, it seemed a good time to share the guest post here I wrote for her earlier in the week here at TDA.
Those closer to the alcoholic or addict almost always face long term repercussions including guilt, remorse, anxiety, and what I call the psycho sign. Not exactly a clinical term, but it is the best I can come up with for the type of behavior that is essentially a form of harm reduction and fatalistic enablement.
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In medical terms a sign is the presence of abnormality that is observed by others; in this case I use it as symptom of addiction that goes unnoticed by those affected. It took seeing the psycho sign in the behavior of others before, even in retrospect; I had realized that I had exhibited the same behavior. It’s like being the director of a horror movie, where scheduling scary and macabre events becomes routine. Inured to heightened states of anxiety and trauma, they become just part of the business. From behind the scenes, we already know how the story is going to play out but constantly tweak the action trying to steer events toward a suitable ending.
In reality of course it is actually the addict and alcoholic that decide the outcome of events, and the only thing I ever accomplished was the perverted solace that things could be worse.
Long term exposure to this environment deprives us of the ability to live in the today, instead constantly worried about what will surely fall to pieces in the near future.
As if it were a job, those exhibiting the sign in life try to manipulate the players, direct the action, and even cause the tragedy they are comfortable with- only to reminisce later as if only spectators of a scene. Even long after an addict or alcoholic is gone, this learned behavior can continue.
Only through my own recovery program have I been able to identify and change this behavior. I consider it near impossible to self-diagnose, especially considering that usually most of the attention is focused on the epicenter of the problem which is the alcoholic and addict. This is why Al-Anon and other programs that address the collateral damages of addiction are so important- because the horror story of addiction has no real director, only a cast of millions all slated for the role of victim.
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I have decades of experience on the codependent side of this family disease fence, and the way you’ve described it is perfect. I chuckled when I read “the only thing I ever accomplished was the perverted solace that things could be worse.” That was certainly true for me! It took a loved one going into a residential treatment program for alcoholism about five years ago — a program that had a strong “help the family” component — to finally get me to recognize I had a problem ["the psycho sign'] and thus started on my own road/journey to recovery.
belittling the family portion of my rehab as overboard and “touchy-feely” nonsense. I was wrong, just wish it wouldn’t have taken me so long to figure that one out.