If you answered yes to any of these questions, you probably learned in your family to put other people's needs before your own. Adolescents with drinking or drugging parents often learn to recognize the feelings of others instead of recognizing their own feelings. Such families are called a chemically dependent family system because if a parent has a problem with alcohol or drugs, and the rest of the family will adjust to that person's moods and behaviors. An adolescent may work hard to try to control the family environment, even instructing siblings on how to behave to keep from upsetting Mom or Dad. Chemically dependent families have four common, destructive traits.
Denial is the common denominator in every chemically dependent family.
Chemically dependent parents deny their addictions and their children are encouraged to cover it up, to deny it, too. They grew up learning that the family did not talk about its problems. The family did not deal with feelings either, therefore individuals may not have learned how to deal with them either. Children get the message that they are responsible for the behavior of their chemically dependent parent. They feel the blame for their family's pain, and that it is in their power to control what happens in their family.