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Fear of Responsibility (FoR) #1a

BOOK: “So the Witch Won’t Eat Me: Fantasy & the Child’s Fear of Infanticide” ~ Dorothy Block (INTRO – especially important)

👼🏼 🫃🏽 CHILDHOOD ORIGINS (cont)
1. “I tried to fix them so they’d be OK”
2. “I failed to make them better & so to stop my pain”

3. “I have to carry all the things they refuse to acknowledge”
AWARENESS:
✦ Children are highly sensitive to their environment, especially the emotions & attitude of their parents. Even as very little kids, ACoAs were smart enough to know when things were ‘off’ with adults, in terms of their behavior, motivation & interactions with others
✦ The dysfunction in our home was so great that we felt unsafe all the time. Because kids see themselves as the center of the universe, we assumed that we could help out by picking up what they ‘dropped / denied’, as if that responsibility would even things out

COMMENTS: Unfortunately this is a common response for children. EXP:
• If they were hypocritical, did illegal things, were cruel & insensitive AND had no remorse – we felt ashamed for them!
• If one was depressed, suicidal (even if never acted on directly – but showed up in physically illness, addictions, not able to work…..), we took on their depression, lack of motivation & wanting to be dead

• If one or both parents’ never dealt with their own childhood pain, we took that on & “felt terribly sad/bad for them”. This is true whether the parent was numb & acted like they were OK, or if they were always in ‘suffering / martyr mode’

Loving them is not enough. No one can relieve another person of their hurt or other sickness by carrying it for them! no matter how pure our motives are. And children’s motives are never pure – understandably so. We desperately wanted them to be OK so they could be there for us. That was/is a legitimate need!

▶ All of this was in addition to our own pain from neglect & abuse. The combination of our suffering PLUS their dysfunction became overwhelming.
Unfortunately, holding all that extra responsibility was totally wasted – it never helped them nor changed our situation. No wonder we’re so terrified & traumatized now!

4. “I’ll always fail at everything I do, so I won’t bother trying”
DISTORTION:
✦ It’s natural for children to assume they have magical power over their circumstances, which in fact they do not have. This is normal childhood narcissism
✦ Our family, & often other adults, were unable or unwilling to take on the ‘burden’ of their adult responsibilities – which left children having to carry it for them. Indeed, in many cases they actually dumped all their own weight on us, adding to our sense of obligation

COMMENTS: As children, being ineffective at stopping the abuse & improving our lot at home inevitably left us with the conclusion that it was because of some lack in ourself.
If we failed at such a basic goal – of helping to heal our parents & getting our needs met inside the family – our WIC thoroughly believed there’s no way we can now have any effect on anyone outside the family either – much less positively. This became the pattern for our adult life.

• This assumption is one of the many CDs common to ACoAs. As children we not only thought we could influence our parents with enough love & effort, but many of them did insisted it was in fact our job to take care of them.

We had no way of knowing know that:
√ we were given an impossible task, from the very beginning, which we took on because we had no choice
√ that the reason we were ineffective is only because of the persistent unhealed damage in our parents, not because of any lack in ourselves. Our self-appointed task was always impossible!

NOTE: In some cases the alcoholic parent joined AA, & stopped the overt part of the dis-ease. Even so, they rarely cleaned out their personal wounds (via Al-Anon & FoO work), which continued to infect the family system. And very often, the non-drinking parent did not want nor receive needed treatment either.

NEXT: Fear of Responsibility (Part 2a)