Adult children of alcoholics: how growing up with a parent's drinking can shape adult life

Someone asks you for a favour. You say no, because you genuinely have no time, and you carry the guilt around for the rest of the day. Or: someone close to you comes home in a worse mood, and before you have even thought about it you are checking their face and tone of voice and working out what to do to make it better.

Plenty of people know these reactions, and they have many causes. For some adults who grew up in a home where alcohol shaped family life, they share a background. Experiences of such homes vary, and so do their consequences in adulthood. This article explains what stands behind the Polish abbreviation DDA, how such experiences can be felt today, and how to start a conversation with a psychologist if you want to look into it.

What does DDA mean?

DDA is the Polish abbreviation for "adult children of alcoholics", the equivalent of ACoA in English. It refers to adults who grew up in a family where one or both parents' drinking affected everyday life: the atmosphere at home, how predictable things were, how safe it felt, and how much attention was left for the child. Further on we mostly write about people who grew up in a home with a drinking problem, because that describes an experience rather than putting a label on a person.

A few things are worth knowing at the start.

DDA is not a medical diagnosis. There is no such entity in ICD-11 or DSM-5-TR. The term describes an experience, not an illness. The difficulties people from such homes bring to a psychologist may have recognised names, anxiety disorders or depression for example, but growing up in such a home is not itself a diagnosis.

It also does not mean that everyone takes the same difficulties from it, or that everyone needs therapy. The Polish State Agency for the Prevention of Alcohol-Related Problems (PARPA) says so directly: not everyone from a family with a drinking problem develops the set of difficulties called the DDA syndrome. What matters is the child's temperament, health, ways of coping, and whether there was someone around who offered support: a grandmother, a teacher, a friend's family.

The term can help you name your own experience and find people with a similar history. It does not describe the whole of you. You are more than the home you grew up in.

Alongside DDA you may come across DDD, "adult children of dysfunctional families". It covers people whose homes were chaotic for reasons other than alcohol: violence, a parent's mental illness, another addiction, or long-term neglect. Much of what follows applies to both groups.

How can these experiences be felt in adult life?

A child in a home where nobody knows what the evening will bring learns to react in ways that help them get through: to watch the adults closely, not to bother them with their own needs, to take on what the adults neglect. The PARPA leaflet puts it in one sentence: what helped a child survive in childhood is out of place in adult life and creates difficulties. Below are four areas where such reactions show up most often.

Responsibility for other people

Your partner comes home from work tired and quiet. Before they have said a word, you are already wondering what happened and what to do to lift their mood. If it does not work, you feel you have let them down. Other people's emotions become a task to complete, even when nobody has asked.

Boundaries and your own needs

A friend asks for help with a move on your only free weekend in a month. You say no, and for days you keep coming back to that conversation with guilt, even though the request clearly went beyond what you could manage. It is also hard to answer a simple question like "and what would you like?", because for years you have been answering other people's needs rather than your own.

Tension in relationships

Someone raises their voice in a conversation, or merely changes their tone. Your body tenses immediately and the question in your head is: what did I do wrong? An ordinary difference of opinion triggers a reaction as if to a threat. Some people withdraw and go quiet in such moments; others do the opposite and attack first so as not to be caught off guard. If this tension mostly concerns your relationship, read Constant arguing in a relationship: why you keep having the same fight as well.

Control and rest

A free afternoon brings unease instead of relief. It is hard to sit down and do nothing, because a belief kicks in that everything has to be kept under control, and that asking for help means losing it. Rest feels like something you first have to earn.

These are examples, not a diagnostic checklist. Similar difficulties can have entirely different causes, and not everyone who grew up in a home with a drinking problem will recognise themselves here. But if one of these descriptions sounds familiar and gets in the way of your life, that is reason enough to talk about it.

"It wasn't that bad." Do I have a reason to look for help?

Many people put off talking to a psychologist because one of the doubts below speaks up.

"Other people had it worse." Perhaps. But suffering is not a competition, and your experience does not have to win any ranking to count. The reason for a consultation is what is happening in your life now, not how hard your childhood looks when judged from outside.

"I have a job and I function normally." People from such homes often function very well on the outside, precisely because they learned early to keep things running. Functioning well does not rule out overload, constant tension, or the feeling that the same script keeps repeating in your relationships.

"My parent no longer drinks, so the subject should be closed." A change in a parent's behaviour matters, but it does not undo what the child learned over the years. Nacoa, the UK charity for children of alcoholics, points out that these difficulties can continue whether the parent is still drinking or not. The same applies when the parent has died or you are no longer in contact.

"Talking about my family would be disloyal." In many homes with a drinking problem there was an unwritten rule: we do not talk about this. Talking to a psychologist is not passing judgement on your parents. You can love a parent, have good memories, and speak about what hurt, all at the same time. Support does not require you to condemn anyone or to choose between loyalty and your own wellbeing.

The reason for a consultation can be present suffering, overload, recurring difficulties in relationships, or simply wanting to understand where some of your reactions come from. You do not have to compare your history with anyone else's.

What can psychological support involve?

The work starts with what is there now: what bothers you, in which situations it appears, and what you would like to change. Goals are agreed together, not taken from a ready-made programme. Some directions the work might take:

• noticing your own needs and learning to communicate them,
• looking at the sense of responsibility you feel for other people's moods and behaviour,
• understanding your own reactions during conflict and tension,
• practising setting boundaries in specific, recurring situations.

These are possible directions, not a promised outcome. The PARPA material is honest that the traces of childhood experiences cannot be removed entirely; the aim of the work is to recognise them and weaken their hold on your present life.

Forms of help differ:

• A psychological consultation is one or a few sessions to understand the situation and work out what you need. For some people, a few such conversations are enough.
• Individual psychotherapy is regular, longer work, for example in a cognitive behavioural approach: on beliefs about yourself and others, on reactions in relationships, on specific situations from the past week.
• Self-help and therapy groups are meetings with people who share a similar history. In Poland there is an Adult Children of Alcoholics fellowship, and public addiction treatment clinics run therapy programmes for adult children of alcoholics, as the National Centre for Addiction Prevention (KCPU) notes. At Oddech we do not run a DDA group; we work individually.

None of these is right for everyone. The choice depends on what you bring and what you expect, and it can change along the way.

How can you start getting support at Oddech?

What you can come with. You do not need a ready explanation, and you do not have to decide in advance whether you "are DDA". It is enough to describe a current difficulty: tension in a relationship, guilt when saying no, trouble resting, a script that keeps repeating in your relationships. Your family home may come up at the first session or much later, at your own pace.

What the first consultation covers. The first session is a psychological consultation. It lasts 50 minutes and costs 250 PLN. You talk about what brought you here, and the psychologist asks when the difficulties started, how they affect your daily life, and what you are hoping to get from the appointment. There is no obligation to tell everything at once.

How further help is discussed. After the conversation, the psychologist tells you how they understand your situation and suggests a next step: further consultations, regular psychotherapy, or another form of support if it would suit you better. One consultation is not always enough to fully understand a problem; if further sessions are needed, you will hear why. The decision to continue is yours.

Who works with people with these experiences. At Oddech, Agnieszka Michalak, a psychologist and CBT psychotherapist in the course of a four-year training programme, works with people affected by growing up in alcohol-affected or dysfunctional families (DDA/DDD). She sees adults and teenagers aged 12 and over. Adults can also see Karolina Zawrotniak, a psychologist, sexologist and psychotraumatologist who works within a cognitive behavioural approach with anxiety, low mood, low self-esteem, relationship difficulties and traumatic experiences. Both see clients in person in Poznań and online, in Polish and English.

Questions before a first consultation

Can I come if my parent was never formally diagnosed with alcohol dependence?

Yes. The consultation is about your experience, not your parent's diagnosis. Many people from such homes never saw any document; what matters is how the drinking affected family life and you.

Do I have to describe my childhood in detail straight away?

No. You start wherever you want. The psychologist may ask about your family, but the pace and scope of talking about the past are agreed between you.

Can I get help if I do not identify with the term DDA?

Yes. The abbreviation is not an entry requirement. If the term does not fit you, you do not have to use it; we talk about your difficulties, not about a label.

Does working on these experiences require forgiving my parents or cutting contact?

No. Neither is the aim of a consultation or a condition of the work. Your relationships with your family are your decision. In the consulting room you can look at what you need from those relationships, but nobody will impose an outcome on you.

If you would like to talk about how experiences from your family home affect your life today, you can book a psychological consultation at Oddech. You do not need a ready explanation of your difficulties. You can start with whatever made you look for support.

Book a psychological consultation

This article is for psychoeducational purposes. It does not replace a psychological consultation or an individual assessment of a particular person's situation.

Sources

• Państwowa Agencja Rozwiązywania Problemów Alkoholowych (PARPA). Wpływ doświadczeń z dzieciństwa w rodzinie z problemem alkoholowym na funkcjonowanie osoby w życiu dorosłym [The impact of childhood experiences in a family with a drinking problem on adult functioning]. Leaflet based on: Z. Sobolewska-Mellibruda, Psychoterapia Dorosłych Dzieci Alkoholików, IPZ, Warsaw 2011. National Health Programme 2016–2020. In Polish.
• Krajowe Centrum Przeciwdziałania Uzależnieniom (KCPU). Jak nadmierne picie wpływa na funkcjonowanie rodziny [How excessive drinking affects family functioning]. In Polish.
• Krajowe Centrum Przeciwdziałania Uzależnieniom (KCPU). Jak nadużywanie alkoholu przez rodzica wpływa na dzieci? [How a parent's alcohol misuse affects children]. Leaflet, National Health Programme 2016–2020. In Polish.
• Nacoa (The National Association for Children of Alcoholics). Help and advice for adults.