Childhood can be a nightmare.  It is an act of grace that many of us fare as well as we do considering our family history.  We may feel that we were born into the wrong family.  Had we been born into the family next door, things might have gone more smoothly.

I once had an alcoholic patient who had been sober for several years. I saw Martha with her boyfriend for couples counseling.  Early in our sessions, I got the impression that she was avoiding addressing childhood feelings.  She would minimize her family history and refocus our attention on current relationship issues.

Martha felt lonely because her partner worked long hours and appeared to be consumed by his work. He would come home late at night and there never seemed to be moments filled with togetherness.  I met with Martha's mate individually, encouraging him to demonstrate more care and concern through kind gestures and affection.

Martha was supposed to be seeing me for individual sessions as well.  These appointments were broken for a variety of so-called legitimate reasons.  Finally, Martha kept her scheduled appointment and visited me one afternoon.  Through tears (which I had never seen before), she laid out her story about how she had relapsed by using tranquilizers and cold remedies to get buzzed.  She had justified the self-medicating like most alcoholics do, by claiming that at least it was not wine, beer or hard liquor. She was consumed with shame and disappointment.

When Martha's boyfriend found out that she was self-medicating again, he ranted and called her nasty names. His anger served to ramp-up the volume of Martha's self-deprecating behavior, keeping the addiction cycle alive.  Although Martha's partner attended meetings for partners of alcoholics, he continued to come unglued with her.

I was concerned about the triggers which caused Martha to relapse.  Martha's mother had come to visit her prior to our session. Her relationship with her mother was described by Martha as cordial.  After further exploration, Martha told me that she felt like a little kid in her mother’s presence.  This discovery led me to explore her family history to find out why Martha felt the need to sabotage her progress with sobriety. Her mother’s visit had brought to the spotlight core childhood issues.

Her mother was an alcoholic.  At an early age, Martha recalls carrying her mother to the bedroom after her mother would fall because of bouts of drunkenness. To complicate matters, Martha's father suffered from Bipolar Disorder and tried to mask the symptoms through the use of marijuana.  Her father would frequently lash out at family members with physical and verbal abuse. Martha recalled her father pushing her mother down a flight of stairs when she was a teenager.

Martha remembered being terrified to come home from school with an average grade on her report card. Her father would berate her if her grades were not up to his standards.  She was a good student, who later attended college, but her father's expectations were always unattainable.

Martha's father divorced her mother and she was forced to live with him. She constantly sought ways to avoid spending time at home.  Since Martha was a sensitive girl, she swallowed her parent’s feelings and became numb as a means of coping.  She was scared of her feelings and learned to keep them hidden.

Martha's adult relationship reflected the behavior of her parents - unavailable and hostile. Martha used self-punishment and self-medicating as a way of coping with the terrors of childhood.  Since she had learned to deny her anger, she was unable to constructively direct it toward the source of her problems.

I began working with Martha on her childhood interpretations and her self-defeating coping strategies. It was important to break the addiction cycle of anxiety, self-blame and drug abuse by helping her experience the full impact of her childhood pain while finding new ways to manage her feelings, thoughts and behavior.  Part of the process involved Martha pro-actively sharing with her partner her own needs and wants.  When Martha first came to see me after her relapse, my first question to her was, "Who's punishing you for what?"  Martha gradually learned that she was punishing herself for behaviors that occurred long ago, that were not her fault, but were left unresolved.

We cannot wish our childhood pain away by ignoring it.  As adults, our emotional history will follow us, creating a pattern of self-defeating behavior.  Eventually, we make a choice.  Will we stay in an impasse, neglecting the ramifications of a childhood filled with terror?  Or, will we choose to follow our emotional pain to its source and seek to find a way out? Those who commit to reinterpreting old childhood assumptions with a new psychic map will experience fulfillment and meaning during adulthood.

Note:  This case is a composite drawn from my practice as a psychotherapist. It has been altered to protect the individual’s right to confidentiality and privacy.