Claudia Black identified 4 main roles the children in alcoholic home. Latter several other roles were defined which further refined Ms. Black’s.

But these 4 are the simplest and work well.

They are the responsible one, the adjuster, the placater and the acting out child.

In truth few of us stick to just one of the roles.

But for most of us we stood in one role or another the majority of our growing up and then tried to continue it into adulthood, usually with little to no success.

The responsible one steps in and takes over being the responsible one for the family

They are the 9 year old going on 40 who knows how to make dinner, do the laundry and all the other things the adults are supposed to be doing.

The advantage of course is that they learn how to be responsible. The problem is that they never learn to be a kid. They never learn to accept love, to allow others to help them. They never learn to trust or to relax.

The adjuster (that was me a lot) was the one who learned to cope with anything, to just accept things. His of course allows them to build great coping skills. In fact they are so good t adjusting that they never learn to stand up for themselves and often become victims… even going on in life looking for people who will victimize them so they can feel “normal”.

The placater is always trying to make people feel OK. They are the joker, the care taker, and/or the sensitive ones the on to hold the hands of others and tell them it will be alright. They can read someone’s mood from across the room. They are great at being fixers and taking care of the emotions of others. Unfortunately they lean to bury their own feelings and hide their pain.

The last of the 4 roles, the acting out child, is in an odd way the healthiest. They are the ones who are acting on their pain and screaming for help. Even though they are the ones who seem to get in the most trouble they are the ones who often are in touch with what is going on around and within them.

I can see in growing up and in adulthood I had all 4 roles going, mostly the adjuster and acting out, but I was also a good placater, especially in dealing with my Mom’s mood swings, and I did become the responsible one feeling guilty over everything.

The disadvantage of these roles is that they keep us from growing into the people we really are inside. They become our identities instead of us developing into who we really are.

As we work the steps we can see what parts of those identities were really us an wich ones stood in the way of us becoming ourselves.

When we cast off the parts of us that do not fit we are free to become ourselves. We can also pick up the parts of our old roles when we want or need them and then latter put I back on the shelf for another day.

So look at the roles and look at yourself. Do you see where any of them fit you, your childhood and, more importantly, your adulthood?