AC's Recovery and Healing Blog

Being a hero is about the shortest-lived profession on earth.
Will Rogers

In every dysfunctional family there are certain characters or roles that each member takes on.

There is The Enabler, The Scapegoat, The Lost Child, The Mascot and the Hero.

The Hero, who is usually the oldest child, is characteristically over-responsible and an over-achiever. The Hero allows the family to be reassured it is doing well, as it can always look to the achievements of the oldest son or daughter as a source of pride and esteem. While the Hero may excel in school, be a leader on the football team or a cheerleader, or obtain well-paying employment, inwardly he or she is suffering from painful feelings of inadequacy and guilt, as nothing he or she does is good enough to heal his family’s pain. The Hero’s compulsive drive to succeed may in turn lead to stress-related illness, and compulsive over-working. The Hero’s qualities of appeasement, helpfulness and nurturing of his or her parents may cause others outside the family to remark upon the child’s good character, and obtains him or her much positive attention. But inwardly, the Hero feels isolated, unable to express his or her true feelings or to experience intimate relationship, and is often out of touch with his or her own sources of spirituality.

I played the hero role in my family for decades.  The alcoholism, adultery, constant fighting and tension between my parents gave me ample opportunity to figure out how to create some kind of safety and security on my own.  The way I chose to deal with the issues in our family was to be the best student, and most well behaved (while others were watching..), least amount of burden, and make my family proud of me type of kid.  My grades were very good; I stayed out of trouble, my friend’s parents used to tell them that they trusted me and that it was great that they were friends with me because of that.  I could not wait to turn 16 so I could get a job.  During my senior year of high school I did not want my family to worry about any expenses for college so I applied for scholarships to any kind of school that I could think of.  I eventually received one from a technical and trade school in electronics and computer technology.  I figured since I did well in math and took electronics in high school that was good enough. I actually had my hopes set on being a writer but I went where the scholarship money took me….

After excelling at the technical school (I received the highest overall grade average in the history of the school up that point) I found a job at a major defense contractor – Hughes Aircraft.  I was 19 and went to work with a whole department of people that were all at least 8 years older than I was.  I then bought a condominium and was engaged to be married.  All before I was 20… Responsibility was a way of life for me.  I believed that if my family had something in their life to be happy about it would be ME….

Within a few years I became involved in a church that taught the bible and my relationship with Christ started.  The first thing I did was go to my family and preach the gospel to them believing that I had found the only hope for them to be what they were supposed to be.  There was nothing wrong with that except that it furthered their perception of me as there hero and confirmed in me the belief that I could somehow control the family’s health and well being.

As time went on I continued to have “success” in my career working for some great companies.  I worked at Motorola and then Qualcomm during its early days until they sold off our division to Ericsson.  I had traveled all over the world for business – Japan, Korea, Singapore, China, Peru, Brazil, Malaysia, and Montreal, Sweden.  I climbed the ladder and led a department of 22 engineers most of whom had advanced degrees – Masters in Electrical Engineering or Computer Science all while I only went to that trade school…

During the course of my career it was very common for my family to let others know of my success as any family would.  It also became common for them to ask me for help when they needed financial assistance – which was often more than just a little bit of money.  They had accumulated a rather large amount of credit card debt and were getting behind on other payments as well.  My codependency and hero status kicked in hard for awhile and I rescued them from that financial situation.

After 22 years of working for big technology companies I was laid off when Ericsson closed their facility in San Diego.

I then took the big risk and pursued the American Dream of owning my own business.  I bought a computer services franchise.  During the next few years of my life the bottom fell out for me in my life in numerous ways.  My business failed and I lost more money than I want to count. Of the many casualties of this downtime in my life was in the area of my finances.   I am no longer a “successful businessman” and my financial losses caused great pain down the line – including my ability to subsidize my parents life…

But a funny thing happened while I was losing all the money, material and status things in life.  I found recovery from Anger, Codependency, and being an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  With that recovery began an awareness and ability to create boundaries in my relationship with my family.  For me it has been great and very healthy.  For them – they do not see it as great.  In fact the more I respond in healthy ways the more awkward and upsetting things have been for them when it comes to interacting with me.

You see, they want me to be the hero that makes them proud.  But I am not.  I am working at a very low paying job, I have no money at all, I am divorced, and I am only willing to interact with them when I believe it is necessary.  They don’t know how to deal with that.  They don’t like it and they are not happy with me.  They want the hero back but he is gone…