Why are ACoAs Terrified of Conflict & Angry People?
photo by Girl With Red Hat
Adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs) often have a fear of conflict and angry people due to the constant state of instability and chaos in their childhood homes. Moreover, highs and lows of moods in the adults around them, fighting and rage episodes are common and tend to be presented as normal. There is very little acknowledgment in an alcoholic home that the children may end up scared, frightened, sad or upset at something they witnessed or when they themselves are the brunt of attacks. The ACoA grows up with the messaging and belief that highs and lows of emotions are normal, the effects are normal and there is no apology for how the emotional turmoil or fighting may impact everyone in the household. There is a lot of “rupture without repair.” The child learns that expressing feelings, especially anger or disagreement, can result in volatile reactions from the alcoholic parent or caretaker.
This historical context affects ACoAs in the following ways:
ACoAs can experience anger and conflict as being dangerous and unsafe
ACoAs often have a managerial part of themselves developed in early childhood. This “part” was incredibly adaptive at the time, often using hypervigilance and a heightened of attunement to their environment and the people around them. This hypervigilant part once served a purpose to monitor any changes, subtle or gross, around them. Kids growing up in an alcoholic home can sense the shift in moods of the people around them incredibly easily; it may be in the slight change of tone, a raised eyebrow, or even in the silence. For these children, they develop this part as a matter of survival, learning to detect these shifts early so as to avoid conflict, anger or violence. In adulthood, this may lead to avoiding conflict or disagreement all together, shutting down when someone is “in a mood”, avoiding any anger in one’s self or others, or exhausting themselves by constantly tracking or being alert to another person’s state changes in their relationships.
ACoAs learned to push down their own feelings and to people please instead
In childhood, many ACoAs learned that their feelings were not valid, causing them to clam up and freeze in the presence of their caregivers “larger feelings.” When these feelings, especially those of the angry or uncomfortable sort, get pushed down, they can often turn into shame, self-attack, depression and learned helplessness. The child (and later the adult) may then learn to please the people around them to avoid these uncomfortable encounters and to “go along to get along”; however, their uncomfortable feelings still sit with them and inside them. In adulthood, this may turn into some codependent patterns as well, putting the needs of others before their own, fearing conflict or feeling responsible for another person’s emotions.
ACoAs can’t distinguish healthy from unhealthy conflicts or healthier expressions of anger
ACoAs were often raised with experiencing volatile fights between parents, rage episodes where they were shamed and criticized, stonewalling, high defensiveness and lack of being seen and heard by their caregivers. They came to associate another person’s anger with being unsafe, unseen and unheard. This often leads them to experience fear even when someone is healthily expressing their anger; this could be seen in witnessing assertiveness, disagreeing by expressing a difference of opinion, or simply setting a boundary. ACoAs may become frightened when witnessing someone in these healthier state of anger and then shut down, freeze or avoid the conversation because internally they feel threatened and unsafe.
In therapy, the ACoA can start to learn new ways of being, new patterns of relating to others and how to build more workable relationships. They learn to be on a path to emotional sobriety, which includes how to meet their emotional experience in the middle, listening to their feelings and garnering important information from them. They can learn to tolerate anger and disappointment, to become more confident in the expression of their own feelings, even if they are in conflict or disagreement with another person in their lives. They can begin to learn what relationships can be workable, where repair can happen in moments of disagreement and how to assert themselves even when it can be uncomfortable. They can start to distinguish what relationships are too upsetting, unworkable or abusive. They can start to learn to put their needs first and focus on themselves, leading to hope, connection, contentment and peace. It is a long journey, but well worth the healing to accomplish these healthier relationships and weathering anger in practice.
