You'd need a psychologist who knows you well to help you with this, but based on what you've told me, here's my best shot. A lot of this comes from what I've learned about child psychological development over the years during teacher training, reading as a parent, and in medical psychopathology class this year.

First, all kids have fears. We all have inherent neuroses and potential phobias. And that stuff is felt on an emotional rather than intellecutal/logical level when we're kids. When we're grownups, we can interpret it on two levels, both emotional and intellectual (logical). But kids don't yet have the intellectual capacity to understand the logical end of things. So they just feel things emotionally. That's why nowadays you can realize logically that the fears aren't or weren't rational but you still had them when you were a kid and can still have them now, too. Now as an adult, you can sort of see the logic involved, too.

The way adults establish a secure, solid routine for kids, who're able to calm down and develop properly when they're being raised in a steady, predictable way, makes a huge difference in how kids respond to their childhood fears. A regular day-to-day routine helps kids know they're secure and safe. It seems boring to us adults, but it's actually just what kids need. And how the adults in kids' lives respond to kids' fears helps quell those fears or aggravate them. My guess is that you didn't get a lot of reassurance about your standard childhood fears. But from what you've told me, you also didn't have a lot of security or continuity in your family of origin--and not a lot of predictable routine, either. To make things worse, before you were even old enough to know what was going on, you more than likely witnessed some fear-inducing things: crazy behavior, addiction, violence, possibly even traumatic scenes of various kinds. As a kid, no one protected you from that traumatic stuff, much less comforted and reassured you through the standard childhood fear phases. You displaced some of the fear from the crazy stuff you were witnessing on the routine, everyday things in your life--like bathrooms and toilets and the space under the bed or behind the curtains and around every corner. Those normal fears you would have had anyway were magnified, and then you were also exhibiting the irrational, constant fears of a traumatized kid, too.

See if that fits. This fear-and-trauma thing is why kids who're too badly traumatized and frightened sometimes dissociate and create a separate identity or psychological state to deal with those fears. Sounds like you were in touch with the fears for the most part, which was why you felt them so constantly as a kid. But if you'd not been such a strong kid, you might have separated yourself from those feelings or even developed an alternate personality. That tendency to dissociate, or separate, from those feelings is how in cases of extreme trauma kids can begin to develop alternate (multiple) personalities. It's a coping mechanism, and it's inaccurately referred to as schizophrenia, which is a totally different brain-physiology related illness. Sometimes dissociative disorders don't go as far as multiple personalities and instead just extend to altered or blocked-off states of consciousness where people dissociate from their feelings.

The reason the fears stopped to a large extent was that when you got old enough to incorporate the intellectual with the emotional you were able to see that some of those childhood fears were without rational foundation. You probably also by then had learned enough coping skills to suppress those fears enough that you could function in day-to-day life.

So now your job as an adult is to do a few things. You can't undo the past. None of us can. But you can deal with it as much as you can and keep helping yourself see the difference between rational and irrational fears. And you can work on staying in grownup mode where you're in touch with what's going on in your psyche instead of too much numbing out on substances, if that makes sense. That'll also help you break the cycle for your own little boy. By staying connected and in touch with yourself and your feelings and with him and his feelings, you can also help create for him the steadiness and predicability that was lacking in your own childhood so he doesn't have to face the same craziness. Give him a steady, predictable routine. Comfort him and make him feel safe. Shelter him from craziness if you can and help him process what he does see. Kids love repetition and routine because it's familiar and comforting. That's why they like to read the same books over and over and watch the same movies. That's actually very beneficial to their development and security, even if it tends to bore us.

Does some of that make sense??