Ask anyone what an authority figure is, and they are likely to give you a logical answer: anyone who is in a position of authority. But ask an adult child, who endured parental dysfunction, alcoholism, and abuse growing up, the same question, and you’ll most likely be asked an emotionally painful question. “Authority” for him significantly transcends the traditional definition of the word, and so does the concept of “father.”
Subjected, without choice, recourse, escape, or solution, to some two decades of betrayal and detriment, these adult children, while still physically intact, are not necessarily emotionally stable, but often seem confident and capable. Yet their years of defamation, demoralization, degradation, and dangerous exposure to parental trespasses from which they could neither defend nor protect themselves have left them shattered and without the trust that otherwise allows people to connect with and love others in the world at large.
“Adult children often live a secret life of fear,” according to the Adult Children of Alcoholics textbook (World Service Organization, 2006, p. 10). “Fear, or sometimes terror, is one of the threads connecting the 14 characteristic traits. Two of the first three traits describe our fear of people. While many adult children appear cheerful, helpful, or self-sufficient, most live in fear of their parents and spouses as well as fear of an employer… They have a sense of impending doom or that nothing seems to work.”
That fear is the primary parameter an adult child uses when trying to define an “authority figure.”
“(All) children look to authority to help them define what is real and make sound decisions in relating to others,” according to the ACA textbook (p. 355). “The support of the responsible authority gives them confidence to develop their own capacity to live effectively in the world.”
“(However), the tragedy for children in an alcoholic home,” he continues (p. 355), “is that they are robbed of a pattern of life that is based on a responsibility to sanity… The attitude of abuse that Underlies all addictive behavior, dominates the family and children learn to accept this attitude in others and in themselves.
Inadvertently negotiating the world with a hairpin trigger, these people frequently cause them to trip up others, who can often be classified as “authorities” due to various factors.
Taller, heavier, and/or stronger-looking, those with such physical characteristics may place the person at a current disadvantage by suggesting or recreating their imbalance in the parental power play early in life. .
Speech, tone of voice, volume, movements, actions, and gestures serve as behavioral features that remind or reactivate you.
“We have a negative ‘gut reaction’ when dealing with someone who has the physical characteristics or mannerisms of our alcoholic rater,” according to the ACA textbook (p. 417).
Mild imbalances, such as those manifested by a better job from someone else, a higher salary, and greater comforts, such as a bigger house or a more luxurious car, can cause some degree of concern.
The many functions, roles, and titles of life, including bank tellers, store clerks, teachers, supervisors, bosses, police officers, and judges, along with the broader agencies that create and uphold regulations in customs, immigration, judicial systems, prisons, Governments, and even God, are adorned with the word “authority” and place adult children at decided disadvantages, almost impossible to win with them.
Amplifying this authority and emphasizing its power are those who perform their duties in uniform, which can virtually dictate their superiority. People with a more secure and stable upbringing can confidently pass a police car parked on the highway at a speed well over the limit, for example, but an adult child can take his foot off the accelerator even if he maintains a speed that exceeds the speed limit. him, trying to avoid the heady emotions that would surely result from a confrontation with him.
Having been routinely attacked by a predatory parent and “punished” for doing little more than exist during his upbringing, he has become accustomed to being responsible for the uncontrollable behavior of others and accepting the blame for infractions he never committed.
“Authority figures scare us and we feel afraid when we need to talk to them,” again according to the ACA textbook (p. 417).
“We confuse our boss or supervisor with our alcoholic parent(s) or handler and have similar relationship patterns, behaviors, and reactions that are carryovers from childhood (ACA textbook, p. 417).
Forced to gorge, swallow, file, deny, and even lie to himself about his past in order to believe that it has “gone and forgotten,” an adult child does not realize or understand that this is not the case and that a single authority figure can gently press your “play” button, inducing your unresolved and sometimes traumatic recordings to come back to life in your mind. These circumstances can result in various forms of insanity.
“Insanity,” according to the ACA textbook (p. 359), “begins when children are forced to deny the reality of pain and abuse. Once children have accepted the idea that alcoholism is not violent or dangerous, they have no basis for deciding what is real or for knowing how to respond to those around them. They no longer trust authority to guide or protect them from harm.”
In fact, the “authority” created its damage, leaving them in their greatest need, and no one appeared then to protect them from their original and only “authority”.
“That fear (of abandonment) we transfer to our adult lives, and we fear our employers, certain relationships and group situations,” according to the ACA textbook (p. 11). “We fear authority figures or we become an authority figure.”
In the latter case, the abuse spreads from the abused child, who becomes an adult child, and then to his own offspring, if he has not undertaken an adequate recovery, repeating the only behavior to which he has been introduced.
An adult child’s definition, in the end, of an authority figure has little correlation to what the figure does, but rather to what he unconsciously believes he does to him, and this involves several subtle factors.
First and foremost is the fact that an authority figure wears the displaced face of their parent or primary caretaker, seeming to gently uproot the sediment of their past that they thought was well buried.
Secondly, it ignites the affective bond, like a thread that extends from the present to the past, or between him now, as an adult, and him then, as a child, generating the anxieties, fears and apprehensions that initially aroused the experiences of their parents. original betrayal of him, or one that inadvertently placed him on the “enemy” side of his fence and created the mistrust that separated him from them and ultimately from most others in the world. Instead of attracting, he repelled, which ultimately led him to disconnect from them and from God or the Higher Power understanding him.
Paradoxically, what he most needs now to heal his condition – reunification with others – what he most rejects.
Although several decades may pass since the original infraction occurred, regenerated emotions can cause similar or even identical reactions, throwing you back to a time when you were physically, psychologically, and neurologically underdeveloped, resulting in impotence and paralysis of the present moment.
Finally, the neuropathways, or connections between his brain cells or neurons, may be so dense and established that he automatically takes them back to their origins, retracing them at the age of three, four, or five when he may now be in his 30s or 40s. or 50.
“Childhood abuse by authority figures has left us on guard against authority figures as adults,” according to the ACA textbook (p. 379). “We tend to place people in the categories of an authority figure when they may not be… Our past experiences tell us that any leader, employer or official is inherently an authority figure and should be mistrusted.”
If a loving, caring and protective father treated me like this, an adult son can reason, then how will others in the world treat me, who have not known me since Adam and therefore owe me nothing?
The purpose of the brain, above all else, is to promote and ensure a person’s survival, and it processes any potential danger, whether perceived or real, into its primitive or reptilian portion, triggering a flood of stress hormones that must be harnessed so that the person is adequately fueled for the fight or flight action which will improve their chances of survival if they do so. An abused child, forcibly confronted with a hopelessly unbalanced power play, can do nothing but flee inward creating an inner child sanctuary and thus virtually drowns in the physiological reactions triggered within him, defeated so much for this useless response as for the harmful father. you stumbled across the circuit of him.
It takes several more milliseconds for your circumstances to arrive and register in the higher reasoning portion of the brain. But, programmed to be “better safe than sorry,” the bottom half often reacts the same way to parental authority figures later in life, bypassing the path to higher roles and leaving the person with no choice but to fight waves of fear and terror churned within him. The repeated betrayals and dangers of the original incident create chronic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
Forced, prior to understanding or recovery, to negotiate life through survival traits that attempt to minimize the danger to which he believes he is subject, he implements a people-pleasing strategy to soothe, calm, and appease his authority figures. displaced by parents. and therefore create the illusion that he is kind, helpful and benevolent; in other words, that he is a friend and not the enemy that he seemed to become in the eyes of his parents or his primary caretakers. The motivation, in all cases, is to improve your chances of survival in your emotionally weakened state, even though the danger exists almost exclusively within your mind and not outside of it, in the world.
Two of the 14 survival traits echo the fearful state of an adult child: “We became isolated and fearful of people and authority figures” and “We became approval seekers and lost our own identity in the process.”
According to the ACA textbook (p. 11), “Becoming a people pleaser is one of the solutions adult children use to avoid being criticized, shamed, or abandoned. Adult children also try to disarm people.” angry or scared with Approval Seeking Behavior…We believe we will be safe and never abandoned if we are ‘nice’ and never show anger.”
Authority figure and people-pleasing dynamics are by-products of being forced to deal with slanderous, dysfunctional, and sometimes dangerous parents or primary caregivers, and not knowing or understanding the reasons behind their actions, as abuse it was never identified or labeled as inappropriate. The adult son, in the end, was led to believe that her parents represented everyone else in the world.
