icant said:
My father taught me black and white thinking, perfectionism, if you aren't good at it then don't try.
Alcoholic roles and behaviors definitely get passed down even if the drinking is absent. I have seen this in my siblings.
The common thread in all the roles is a compulsion to hide the family secret, and as Dothi pointed out, this compulsion occurs whenever there is something that the family wants to hide.
Only recently have I realized how much I fear interactions that may, even remotely, result in judgment. It may underlie a lot of my procrastination and a weird tendency to space out at alanon meetings - I am averse to judgment. This might be a learned habit of avoiding anything that might give others a yardstick to measure what is going on at home, or a habit of hiding mental/spiritual bruises.
Its a really bad habit.
Yuckier that chewing tobacco and nose-picking.
A lesson: You can't move forward if you keep circling the wagons.