During the movie, Gwen uses multiple coping mechanisms. She uses denial, displacement, rationalization, and compensation to cope and defend different aspects of her life. She uses different coping mechanisms as she goes throughout life and in different situations to defend her drinking, drug use of opioids, and smoking. According to a study published in the Substance Use and Misuse Journal, “those who typically rely heavily on approach (low) coping strategies may drink alcohol to ameliorate sadness following stressors because of their perceived inability to deal with their current situation using their typical approach coping strategies.” (Dermody et all). In the movie, Gwen uses alcohol to cope for every situation. Gwen starts the show …show more content…
She uses rationalization to deal with her memories from her previous life experiences. Some of her rationalization comes from when she was a kid and her relationship with her mother. Gwen remembers her mother acting the same way. Something that Gwen realizes later via flashback is a statement her mother said to her, “If you aren’t having fun, what is the point of living?” Gwen ponders that as what might have started her drinking addiction. While attending the rehabilitation center, Gwen’s memories as a child are more frequent as she deals with her therapy. Gwen realizes toward the end of therapy that her drinking wasn’t due to physical stress, but emotional stress. The alcohol helps her take her mind completely off stress, anxiety, and low self-worth in her life. She remembers the euphoria that came along with her drinking, and not the bad things it caused her to do like run a car into a house. The drinking made Gwen have more self-worth and overall be a much happier person, but she was always doing something inappropriate or wrong with her drinking. Gwen associates that her mom could drink and have fun, why can’t she. This is just another way she uses rationalization to condone her behavior of being an alcoholic. The coping mechanism of rationalization for Gwen is nontherapeutic because she never fully admits she is wrong, or what she is doing is wrong. She doesn’t recognize her unstable coping mechanism. She needs
Additionally, although proclaiming his love for her, Lester becomes a negative influence on Kathy. Under the false sense of security he provides, Kathy, a recovering alcoholic, allows herself to start drinking again after an abstinence of three ye...
She first lies to doctors about substance abuse landing her support groups for substance abuse and a program to help her stay sober. This isn’t productive for Daphne and she grew tired of being bunched up with the addicts. She decides to come clean, of conscious and recant her exaggerated tales of alcohol and drug abuse before she was admitted into psychiatric care. This is however not seen as her coming clean, she isn’t better, the staff and patients believe the opposite in fact. Her pleas of sobriety and confessions of previous lies are seen as an addict denying their problem and a symptom of her substance abuse; incapable of admitting to herself and others that she has a
One in every twelve adults suffer from alcoholism in the United States, and it is the most commonly used addictive substance in the world. The World Health Organization has defined alcoholism as “an addiction to the consumption of alcoholic liquor or the mental illness and compulsive behavior resulting from alcohol dependency.” Reiterated themes encompassing Jeannette Walls’ father’s addiction to alcohol are found in her novel, The Glass Castle: a memoir, which displays instances of financial instability and abuse that hurt the Walls children for the rest of their lives. The Walls’, altogether, are emotionally, physically, and mentally affected by Rex’s alcoholism, which leads to consequences on the Walls children.
Drinking: A love story by Caroline Knapp is a memoir of Knapp’s love story with alcohol. The novel is in told is Knapp’s point of view in which she tells the story of her downward spiral of her addictive nature. She describes how the effect alcohol had on her emotions, relationship, and thoughts. The beginning of the book explains how she became an alcoholic which further progresses to how she knew she had a problem. She was first introduced to alcohol by her father, whom she has a good relationship with as he seemed to worry about her feelings because he had related to them.
...er appreciate the world in this way because her mental and physical state was always impaired. When she wasn’t she could not make these same associations because bonding with alcohol repetitively was the only constant joy she had in her life.
“When Dad went crazy, we all had our own ways of shutting down and closing off…” (Walls 115).In Jeannette Walls memoir, The Glass Castle, Walls enlightens the reader on what it’s like to grow up with a parent who is dependent on alcohol, Rex Walls, Jeannette’s father, was an alcoholic. Psychologically, having a parent who abuses alcohol is the worst thing for a child. The psychological state of these children can get of poorer quality as they grow up. Leaving the child with psychiatric disorders in the future and or being an alcoholic as well.
Reading this I remembered, that I heard in AA meetings people referred to alcohol as their best friend, who is reliable and present. In case of Caroline’s mother death, she turned to her drink for the support and comfort, in the manner of a child who is afraid to be without a favorite blanket or a teddy bear. “Protect me. Shield me from being alone in my own head”, those thoughts were racing in her mind as she increased her daily alcohol intake after her parent’s death. Knapp got sober two years after, and it was sad for me (and I am sure for Caroline, too) to realize that her parents never have seen her daughter free from the addiction, never will have quality time with them and a brand new relationship that they could have been built if Caroline would not have been
Another way these characters avoid living their life is by drinking continuously, in a way to make the time pass by faster and forget. ?Haven?t you had enough? She loses count after 10 cocktails,? (pg.11) proving to the audience her own self denial, and how she wastes every day. Unfortunately, there are many, who in society today, do the same thing to get out of a situation they?re trying to hide or a difficult time they?re going through. This relates back to their affair which they?re obviously hiding and trying to get through this time in their life.
Andrea, her roommate, is seeking treatment from addiction to heroin and self-harm. Gwen refuses to having anything to do with the treatment center and group therapy. She believes she doesn’t have a drinking problem at all and therapy is silly. While still denying she has a problem, her boyfriend Jasper slips her a bottle of pills while visiting her. Gwen and Jasper leave the campus and have a night of partying. Gwen arrives back in her room the next morning clearly intoxicated. Cornell, the director of the rehab facility, confronts Gwen and informs her that she violated the rules of the facility. Gwen is told she is being kicked out of the program and is being sent to jail. She becomes outraged and denies that she has a problem and can quit whenever she chooses. Leaving the director’s office, she goes to her bedroom and decides to take the pills that Jasper slipped her. She ends up spitting out the pills and throwing the rest of the bottle out of the window.
In Gwen Harwood’s poetry, the changes in an individual’s perspective and attitudes towards situations, surroundings and, therefore transformations in themselves, are brought on by external influences, usually in the form of a person or an event. These changes are either results of a dramatic realisation, as seen with shattering of a child’s hopes in The Glass Jar, or a melancholy and gradual process, where a series of not so obvious discoveries produces similar reformation. An example of the later case would be Nightfall, the second section of Father and Child, where the persona refers to her forty years of life causing “maturation”. For the most part these changes are not narrated directly but are represented by using dynamic language techniques to illustrate constant change in the universe of the poem.
Within the memoir, The Glass Castle, the self destructing addiction of alcohol becomes an apparent theme throughout the literature. Alcoholism is a disease that can cause destruction to families and even ruin lives. This is a common occurrence that effect’s many Americans today. Alcoholism is one of the most common problems in families, it doesn’t always interfere with just the person drinking the alcohol. It also affects the people around the influenced person. Rex’s struggle with alcohol is logged through his daughter Jeannettes struggles as she is finding the balance between respecting daughter and a strong individual. It is through her accounts that the reader is able to see the truly damaging effects of this disease.
The body and the spirit are connected through the entity of emotions and feelings, which are formed through experiences, understanding, and knowledge about the world. As Australian poet Gwen Harwood’s poem’s “Triste Triste and “Alter Ego” seeks to find and reconnect an individual’s inner-self again through both the body and spirit, Kenneth Slessor’s poems “Sleep” and “ ” explores how the separation of the body and spirit can be seen as a positive component towards the core experiences of human life. As each of the poems captivates a sense of intertwinement within the body and mind, the poems seem to reflect and mirror one another, drawing upon similar experiences and emotions which are conveyed through the persona’s journey.
throughout her childhood with an alcoholic father and a selfish mother who cared more about her art and happiness than that of her children’s. Alcohol misuse can affect all aspects of family functioning: social life, finances, good communication, relationships between family members, parenting capability, employment and health issues, It also has a strong correlation with conflicts, disputes and domestic violence which can leave a damaging effect on children. Alcohol misuse often times changes the roles played by family members in relation to one another, and to the outside world as well.... ... middle of paper ... ...and agencies designed to meet the physical, intellectual, and social-emotional needs of individuals and families.”.
Unlike Alyssa, Ivy has the option to drink alcohol when she feels she’s in a safe environment and ‘let loose’ and de-stress even
There are many times where the narrator describes his actions towards his loved ones while under the influence of alcohol. Since the narrator is trying to draw the attention to his consumption of alcohol, he tries to make sure that his actions trace back to it. In the short story, the narrator says "But my disease grew upon me -- for what disease is like Alcohol !..."(Poe 23) which shows his addiction for alcohol becoming stronger. The narrator's madness seems to be heightened by the alcohol. He begins to chan...