This is an accurate portrayal of my daughter assignable to my active alcoholism that didn’t end until after she left for college.

I think it possible someone might read this response and hearing a 1st hand case story shared in complete honesty and transparency be even more open to noticing the symptomatic behaviors in themselves or others.

I am an alcoholic, 21 years sober without a drink. My daughter and I have a close relationship after two decades of my sobriety through active efforts by both of us to communicate, walk through shared experiences in a new way and many healing “re-do” activities and interactions.

My alcoholism was evidenced in the following ways for the first 18 years of my daughters life: emotional absence and failure of validation from her father, “rage” episodes of me demanding to be left alone or angry rage filled interactions and her own acting out as a result. It does not have to devolve to physical abuse (that wasn’t present), gross negligence (I kept a good job and provided a materially stable environment) or gross negligence (she was never unsafe and there wasn’t name calling or any violence).

She had and continues to have a lot of anxiety that is fueled by underlying anger. This is after years of her active participation with psychologists and my sobriety which she would validate has been a 180 turnaround in my life, nature and behavior.

In sum, the anger/anxiety does not just disappear if the stimulus is no longer present, even when it is acknowledged, quantified and openly worked on. In this case it has gotten a lot better — but that anger is still there even after changes and efforts that I would assess to be the best of circumstantial remediation. We’ve both worked hard. We know the root explanation. And the anger tentacles hang on like a latent ghost. How much worse for those suffering without even the acknowledgment of underlying causes and experiences.

Thank you Nick for the article, maybe it will help someone.