Boundaries
When family members learn to deny reality, deflect blame, suppress emotions, and attempt to control the behavior of others, their relationships are profoundly affected. Healthy relationships have boundaries - a sense of where one’s self ends and the other’s begins. We can see, then, how boundaries become problematic for the addicted family. Blaming, for example, involves a blurring of personal responsibility.

The “don’t talk/don’t feel” rule is a boundary invasion. It is an external force that dictates your personal thoughts and feelings. What you feel and what you can say about it is no longer a private matter, but is subject to the control and censorship of others.

Boundaries also exist between generations. In the healthy family, there is a boundary between the parents as a couple and the children as a group. The parents discuss and experience some things that they do not share with the children and vice versa. These boundaries are one-directional. Certain things may be deliberately withheld from the children in order to protect them from stress and allow them to focus on their own growth and development. For example, while it is appropriate for a child’s emotional needs to be brought to and met by the parents, it is not appropriate for the mother or father to come to the child with emotional needs, because that would burden the child, increase the child’s anxiety level, and interfere with the child’s development.

In the addicted family, the stress level is often so high that the children pick up on the parents’ emotional distress and begin to feel responsible for fixing the family. It is not uncommon for at least one child, often the oldest, to assume the role of junior parent in order to relieve some of the pressure.

The parent-child roles may also be reversed. Children are exquisitely sensitive to emotional upset in the parents, and often a child will assume the role of emotional, or sometimes physical, caretaker for the addict or for another overburdened family member such as the addict’s spouse. In both situations, the child’s development is hampered. The child is forced to deny age-appropriate needs in the interest of the family’s functioning and survival.

Trust and Intimacy
In this family where boundaries shift, roles are reversed, emotions are censored, and tension, chaos, and unpredictability are part of daily life, it is almost impossible for family members to develop a solid sense of trust. People often do not do what they say they will do. Situations change abruptly and without apparent reason. The emotional climate of the home is never predictable, and much depends upon whether or not the addict has used the addictive substance.

Since emotions are suppressed or denied, family members are unable to accurately tune into one another’s needs. They cannot be trusted to respond consistently or in understanding and empathic ways. In short, relationships are experienced as basically treacherous and stressful. It is no wonder that a person from an addicted family has difficulty experiencing intimacy with others.

Roles
The power of addiction as a molding force in a family is illustrated by the observation made by many addiction professionals that certain stereotypical roles appear in the addicted family. The reason is that these roles are necessary in order for the family to continue on an even keel in the face of the addiction and the multitude of ways in which it distorts the way the family functions.

The chief role that is seen in most addicted families, including addicted couples, is that of the enabler. The enabler, often the spouse, gradually takes over the responsibilities that the addict is failing to assume. At the same time, there is an escalating effort to try to control the addict’s behavior and return to the way life used to be, or to the way the enabler thinks it should be. But the enabler unwittingly allows the addiction to continue by protecting the addict from negative consequences. This is an entirely unintended result. The enabler’s behavior is motivated by love for the addict and for the family and by a wish to help and to compensate for the addict’s mistakes. But as the addiction progresses, as it inevitably will, the enabler gets caught in many impossible binds.

For example, the addict may be spending most of the weekly paycheck at the bar on the way home from work on Friday night. If the bills aren’t paid, the lights and water eventually get turned off, and the family is evicted from the home. These negative consequences might motivate an addict to seek treatment. But while the addict is experiencing these negative consequences, the whole family is suffering as well.