ABSTRACT
The link between professional success and resilience has fascinated me for a long time. When I grew up many things were fine in my family and some things were not, just like for many others. As a child, I had always somehow felt that I was wanted and loved. However, for many years there was just too much alcohol and other drugs like tranquillisers being used at home. This created an environment of addiction and co-addiction of which I became a part. It created a secret behind the facade which we were displaying to the outside world as a family. It also created an environment where the really important things like emotions were not spoken about. As a child, you adjust to your environment and since you hardly have any means of comparison you just plod along; at least this is what I did. When everything at home is somehow fragile you are probably not very likely to become a rebel because you feel that your parents just have no capacity left to cope with any sort of trouble. Some weeks were worse than others. I recall that my mum was hospitalised at least three times because of acute intoxication. Once even during the exam period when I was finishing high school. Even when you get somehow used to it, events like these stick with you. Any attempts to talk about addiction and find an ally in my dad led nowhere.
