Healing From Alcoholic Parent Trauma

Alcoholic parent trauma causes some of the most challenging wounds someone can heal from. The effects of this type of trauma play out in the children of alcoholics on a daily basis, causing feelings of shame and abandonment in personal relationships. Often, people with this kind of trauma are unaware of the reasons for some of their behaviors until they dig into the traumatic situations of their past.

Recovering involves uncovering and healing old wounds and questioning old narratives. This takes time, effort, and courage, but it is possible. In this blog from Yatra Centre, we explore the details of how you can recover from having an alcoholic parent as a child.

Long-Term Effects of Alcoholic Parent Trauma

When children grow up with an alcoholic parent, they do not know which version of their parent they will see on a day to day basis. They may leave for school with a parent who is loving and kind, and come back from school to be shouted at for no reason.

It is often not only alcohol that causes these emotional disturbances. People with alcoholism often have underlying mental health problems that can cause further instability. 

This emotional rollercoaster creates a sense of hypervigilance in the child of the alcoholic. You become attuned to every shift in tone, every glance and every sigh. This becomes exhausting, but it becomes a necessary skill for survival.

Children who must be hypervigilant grow up into adults with hypervigilance. Their nervous systems are brittle, and they may constantly be on the lookout for signs of danger in their environment and relationships.

The Parentification of the Child

If your parent is the kind of alcoholic who becomes unable to carry out the daily responsibilities of the house due to their alcoholism, it becomes down to you to do the chores that adults usually carry out.

A child in an alcoholic household may also be expected to comfort the parent during emotional breakdowns, listen to their problems, or try to mediate conflicts in the household. The child is often treated as a confidant or surrogate partner, expected to meet the parent’s emotional needs, despite not being developmentally equipped to do so.

This leads to a loss of childhood, as the child effectively must “grow up” while they are still a child. This may lead to guilt as they feel it is their responsibility to fix the parent or family dynamics, but are unable to.

This dynamic often leads the children of alcoholics to become codependent in relationships, as they take on the caregiving role with partners, repeating the parent-child dynamic.

Emotional Numbness and Suppressed Feelings

One of the natural responses to growing up with alcoholic parent trauma is to shut down emotionally. You learn that expressing your feelings might not get you the support you need. Worse, it may lead to conflict. You stop showing sadness, fear or even happiness, because any emotion feels risky.

The other reason children of alcoholics shut down emotionally as it can be too painful for a child to cope with the feelings of abandonment that living with an alcoholic parent can bring up. This numbness becomes a permanent defense mechanism as you grow old, as you become cut off from your emotions entirely. This numbness can affect your relationships, make it difficult to trust others or open up, even to the people closest to you.

Shame From Alcoholic Parent Trauma

When a parent struggles with alcoholism, children may wrongly believe that their parent’s behavior is somehow their fault, leading to feelings of inadequacy or unworthiness. The lack of validation and emotional support in these homes can reinforce the idea that their emotions or needs are unimportant, intensifying the sense of shame. 

As adults, this shame may manifest as self-doubt, a fear of vulnerability, or an overbearing inner critic, making it difficult to feel deserving of love, success, or personal fulfillment. This emotional burden often remains unless directly addressed and healed.

Isolation

The constant stress of navigating an unstable household can make them feel misunderstood or disconnected from peers, leading to a sense of loneliness and difficulty trusting others. Over time, this isolation becomes a protective mechanism, further deepening the emotional wounds of growing up in such a challenging environment.

Vulnerability to Later Trauma

The unresolved trauma from childhood may lead to difficulties in setting boundaries, forming trusting relationships, or handling conflict, increasing susceptibility to further emotional harm. Additionally, the lack of stable emotional support during formative years leaves us more prone to repeating unhealthy patterns, making it easier to experience re-traumatization in adulthood.

Trust Issues in Relationships

Trust is often the biggest casualty of growing up with an alcoholic parent. You learn that people let you down, promises are not kept and that love is unpredictable. This makes it hard for you to fully trust anyone.

You will develop an insecure attachment style, which means you are quick to dip out of relationships when things start getting serious. You may either shut down emotionally, or end relationships prematurely.

Children with alcoholic parents may also develop anxious attachment styles. This attachment strategy leads a person to fear abandonment most of all. People with this attachment style are often on edge, fearing their partner will leave them. People with anxious attachment styles may push their partners away by becoming overly clingy, or by not expressing their feelings for fear of becoming abandoned.

The final attachment style people with alcoholic parent trauma often develop is disorganized attachment. People with disorganized attachment often display a mix of anxious and avoidant behaviors, stemming from fear and confusion in early relationships due to inconsistent or frightening caregiving. They crave closeness but simultaneously fear it, leading to unpredictable or erratic patterns in relationships. This attachment style is typically associated with childhood trauma, neglect, or abuse, where the child’s primary caregiver was both a source of comfort and fear.

Healing and Moving Forward

Healing from the effects of growing up with an alcoholic parent is not easy. It involves consistent effort on your part, and a willingness to open old wounds and feel the feelings underneath that many people find incredibly challenging. 

But this journey is well worth all the struggles you will go through, because at the end of the road you will find freedom from the pains of your childhood, and the ability to feel and be part of life in all its richness, perhaps for the first time in your life.

Questioning Your Narrative

When children are emotionally abandoned, they do not question what is wrong with their parents. Instead, they believe that there is something wrong with them, as otherwise they would not be abandoned.

This belief can lead to a lifetime of hurt, as these abandoned people grow up the beliefs that they are not good enough for love, that they are unlikeable or that they are bad people. This causes no end of relationship problems.

Healing from alcoholic parent trauma means questioning this narrative, and replacing these negative ideas with more realistic ideas. This is a slow process, and it can be helpful to have a trauma professional to support you during this time. This person can let you know when you are improving in changing your beliefs around yourself, and also let you know where you may still make progress.

Connect With Others

Childhood trauma cannot be healed while you are in isolation. You must have healthy connection with other people so you can fully heal. If you have a pattern of toxic relationships, it is time to break free of this. Healing is challenging when you associate with toxic people.

Connecting with others may also involve attending a support group such as Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (ACA). This is a 12 step group which has regular meetings across the globe, and is designed to offer you the connection you need to recover. At ACA meetings you will be able to meet with people who have been through similar experiences with you, and who can offer you the support and guidance you need to recover.

Finding Self Love

Most guides on developing self-love make suggestions like “practice affirmations in the mirror in the morning” or “realize your good qualities.” And while these practices may work for some people who grew up with alcoholic parents, much of the time these suggestions are ineffective, as emotional numbness and negative beliefs are so deeply ingrained.

People with alcoholic parent trauma may also live in a state of hypervigilance This constant state of alertness, where the nervous system is wired for threat detection, leaves little space for emotional reflection and self-care practices that require feeling safe and secure. Until the nervous system is regulated, typical self-love practices are likely to be ineffective.

This means that for these people, the process of finding self-love involves first calming the nervous system through breathwork, meditation and somatic practices. While you are doing this, be aware that your attempt to find self-love is in itself an act of self-love.

To cultivate self-love, it’s important to set boundaries. Growing up in an unstable environment may have caused you to neglect your own needs or to develop people-pleasing tendencies in an attempt to maintain peace. Learning to prioritize your well-being with activities like self-care and surrounding yourself with supportive people helps you reconnect with your inherent worth. 

Setting boundaries with your parents or others who trigger painful memories allows you to protect your emotional space and focus on healing. As you gradually rebuild trust in yourself, you can learn to embrace your authentic self—free from the emotional burden of your childhood—allowing self-love to flourish.

Healing From Alcoholic Parent Trauma at Yatra Centre

Healing from trauma is a journey that requires time, patience, and support, but it is absolutely possible. At Yatra Centre in Krabi, Thailand, we understand the deep emotional scars that can result from growing up in a home affected by alcoholism. Through compassionate, trauma-informed care, we offer a safe space to explore and heal these wounds, empowering you to reclaim your life. 

For more information on how we can support you on this journey at Yatra, contact us on +66 96 916 3287.