In families with addiction everyone struggles. Each family member develops coping strategies and survival skills to keep them safe within the family unit. The grown ups in these families are often loud, chaotic and scary. They have a voice, but their children don’t. Children with addicted parents distance themselves emotionally. They build walls to protect themselves and learn not to trust what their parents or other adults, say. But since they are innocent and perhaps a little codependent, they haven’t become totally hard-hearted (yet). They lie to the parent/s and let them think everything’s okay and that they still look up to them (it’s ironic, they don’t want their parent/s feeling bad, guilty or ashamed) But inside, the child is building walls of mistrust, disappointment, rejection, unworthiness, abandonment, shame, disgust for the parent (as the child gets older) and the list grows. The child will eventually begin acting out the pain they’ve absorbed. As they mature their relationships are built out of these deep-seated hurts and mistrust. Everything the child has missed from mom and/or dad, they will look for in another relationship – where the cycle begins all over again.