There is a story we don’t often tell—the one that lives in the space between love and hurt, between the tender moments and the storms that follow. It’s the story of growing up with a parent who struggled with addiction, a story not so easily split into good and bad, black and white. Because in the same home where the chaos of addiction lived, there might have also been laughter. In the arms of the parent who fell into the grip of substances, there might have been love. This is one of the complicated truth: finding wholeness as an adult child of a parent with addiction.
For the adult child of a parent with an addiction, this duality is what makes the journey of healing so complicated. It’s not as simple as labeling the past as “all bad” or even “all good.” There may have been nights when you held your breath, waiting for the storm to pass. But there were also may have been moments when that same parent, in their clear moments, showed you affection, played games with you, or helped with your homework. It’s these contradictions that make it hard to make sense of the story, hard to figure out where to place your anger, your sadness, your gratitude.
This is where the polarization comes in—the split between the part of you that remembers the love, the tenderness, and the part of you that can’t forget the hurt, the neglect, the instability. You might feel pulled in two directions. One part wants to protect the image of the parent you loved, and the other feels angry, betrayed by the one who couldn’t show up the way you needed.
It’s a tension that lives deep in the hearts of many adult children of addicted parents. That pull, back and forth between feeling empathy for what your parent went through, and the pain of what you endured. Sometimes, you feel like you need to choose—either forgive completely and let go, or stay locked in your resentment. But healing doesn’t happen in those extremes.
Here, the lens of Internal Family Systems (IFS) offers a way to hold both truths without tearing yourself apart. IFS teaches us that we have different parts within us—parts that hold different emotions, beliefs, and memories. These parts developed to help us survive, to manage the complexity of our experiences.
For you, as an adult child of an addicted parent, some of these parts might be in deep conflict:
The Loyal Part might remember the good times and the parent you loved when they were sober. It might feel protective of their image and even defensive when others criticize them. After all, that parent, in their best moments, was loving, kind, and maybe even the person you looked up to.
The Wounded Part might carry the pain of being neglected or hurt by your parent during their addiction. This part remembers the broken promises, the missed moments, and the nights filled with uncertainty.
The Angry Part might feel rage at how addiction took your parent away from you, and the loss of stability and safety that could’ve been yours.
The Compassionate Part might understand that your parent was suffering too, that maybe they were struggling with their own childhood wounds, their own unhealed parts, and turned to substances as a way to numb their pain.
And so the parts polarize, pulling you in opposite directions—love and anger, empathy and pain. These parts, each valid in their own right, can make the journey of healing feel like walking on a tightrope. It’s exhausting, trying to hold all these truths without losing your balance.
But here’s the thing: you don’t have to choose between these parts. The IFS model teaches us that each part holds an important piece of the story, and healing comes not from pushing one aside, but from bringing them into conversation. You can sit with the Loyal Part and acknowledge the love and connection that existed. And you can also sit with the Wounded Part, letting it speak its truth without fear of being silenced. Both are real. Both are part of you.
And what of your parent? They, too, likely carried their own polarized parts. Perhaps they, too, felt pulled between their love for you and the overwhelming need to escape their own pain through addiction. Addiction, after all, isn’t about weakness—it’s about managing suffering. It’s about parts of them that may have been exiled long ago, parts that couldn’t bear the weight of their own hurt. They might have had a Wounded Part, just like you, one that never had the chance to heal. And their addiction might have been their way of trying to protect themselves from that pain, just as your caretaker parts stepped in to protect you.
This is the complexity of generational trauma: it’s rarely as simple as saying “they were bad, and I was good.” It’s a cycle of hurt passed down, one generation to the next, each person doing the best they can with the parts they have. But the beauty of this realization is that healing can start with you.
You don’t have to be trapped in the polarization forever. You can honor the parts that loved your parent and the parts that hurt. You can recognize the weight of systemic factors—maybe your parent faced societal pressures, racism, poverty, or trauma from their own upbringing, and their addiction was intertwined with those struggles. Intersectionality reminds us that these layers of identity, circumstance, and history shape not just your story, but theirs as well.
Healing, then, is about embracing the complexity. It’s about learning to sit with the contradictions. It's about recognizing that there was love, and there was pain, and both are true. You can grieve what was lost without letting go of what was good. You can hold compassion for your parent while still holding them accountable for the ways they hurt you. And through it all, you can lead from the Self, that wise, calm part of you that knows you are not defined by your wounds, but by your capacity to heal.
And so, you rise—not by erasing the past, but by integrating it. By understanding that you are whole, even with your contradictions. You are not the storm you survived, but the light that emerged from it. And in this wholeness, you find the strength to heal not only yourself, but the generations that came before and the ones that will come after.
Comments