Introduction: “I Am the Problem” – A System-Breaker from a Child’s Perspective
My name is not system-breaker. That is a word used by adults. They use it when I am too loud, too angry, too fast. When I do not sit still, do not listen, do not fit. I am passed around: school, residential care, clinic, back again. Everywhere they say I break the system. What I feel is pressure. I react because something inside me is burning. Nobody asks why. They only see the outcome: loss of control, aggression, escalation. The film System Crasher condenses this experience relentlessly: a child without stable relationships, repeatedly abandoned, whose behavior is treated as the cause of the problem rather than its symptom. The system defines deviation and declares itself healthy. The child becomes a disruptive factor, not a carrier of a history. [1]
Contrast: System-Breaker vs. COPMI – Overlap or Opposites?
The conventional system-breaker can be contrasted with another highly burdened child: a child of parents with mental illness (COPMI). The starting conditions are comparable: emotional insecurity, chronic stress, lack of reliability, parentification, guilt and shame. Developmental conditions are high-risk. Yet the visible trajectories differ fundamentally.
The classic system-breaker externalises stress. Behaviour becomes loud, impulsive, boundary-violating. The system responds with sanctions, exclusion, diagnostics, intervention. COPMI, by contrast, internalise. They learn early to function. They take on responsibility, regulate themselves and others, avoid drawing attention. Adaptation becomes a survival strategy. Inconspicuousness is not health, but invisibility.
The overlap lies not in behaviour but in cause: chronic overload of the child’s stress system. The opposition lies in the coping strategy. System-breakers destabilise the system openly. COPMI stabilise it covertly, at the cost of their own development. This leads to a paradoxical conclusion: the system detects risk where it is disturbed and overlooks it where it runs smoothly. COPMI are labelled resilient although they are often highly burdened. Empirical evidence clearly shows elevated rates of depression, anxiety disorders, addiction, and trauma-related disorders in adulthood. [2][3]
The system-breaker is problematised; the COPMI is instrumentalised. One is seen as non-integrable, the other as successfully integrated. In reality, both reflect the same systemic failure: the absence of early, continuous, family-oriented support. Labels obscure the core issue. They serve system order, not child protection.
Change of Perspective: The Adult COPMI as a Delayed System-Breaker
Im Erwachsenenalter kehrt das Verdrängte zurück. Viele erwachsene COPMI entwickeln Symptome einer komplexen PTBS: emotionale Dysregulation, Bindungsstörungen, chronische Erschöpfung, Dissoziation, Überanpassung mit plötzlichen Zusammenbrüchen. Das früh gelernte Funktionieren versagt unter den Anforderungen von Arbeit, Partnerschaft, Elternschaft. Jetzt wird nicht mehr angepasst, sondern ausgegrenzt – subtiler, aber wirksam.
In adulthood, what was suppressed returns. Many adult COPMI develop symptoms of complex PTSD: emotional dysregulation, attachment disorders, chronic exhaustion, dissociation, over-adaptation followed by sudden collapse. The early-learned functioning fails under the demands of work, partnership, parenthood. What follows is no longer adaptation but exclusion—subtle, but effective.
The adult COPMI breaks the system not through aggression, but through non-fit. They drop out, resign, end relationships, go on sick leave, withdraw. Organisations respond with performance logic, pathologisation, replaceability. The systems of work, health, and welfare are designed for stability, not for trauma. Those who avoid triggers, need boundaries, lose control, or cannot regulate closeness are classified as dysfunctional.
In this sense, the adult COPMI becomes a belated system-breaker. Not because they disrupt, but because the system has no structure for their biography. PTSD is not an individual deficit but a relational and structural problem. The system is not broken; it proves too narrow. The misfit lies not in the subject but in the framework. [3]
Prevention Instead of Labelling
The term system-breaker does not describe a child; it describes a system boundary. COPMI demonstrate that adaptation is not protection but displacement of the problem into the future. Prevention must begin early, be binding, and be family-oriented: systematic identification of COPMI, destigmatisation of parental mental illness, trauma-sensitive educational settings, mandatory interfaces between psychiatry, child welfare, and schools, long-term support instead of short interventions.
Integration does not succeed through standardisation, but through system flexibility. Anyone who wants to protect COPMI must change structures, not optimise children. Everything else produces silent children and, later, failed adults.
References
[1] Albers, N. (Regie): Systemsprenger. Deutschland 2019.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Systemsprenger_(Film)
[2] Kloss, C.: Überlebenslust – Kinder psychisch erkrankter Eltern.
https://christiankloss.de/uberlebenslust/
[3] Ludwig Boltzmann Gesellschaft – Village Project: Children of Parents with Mental Illness (COPMI).
https://village.lbg.ac.at/about
[4] Schäfer et al.: Deutsche Traumafolgekostenstudie – Abschlussbericht.
https://beauftragte-missbrauch.de/fileadmin/user_upload/Publikation_-_Abschlussberichte/Publikat_Deutsche_Traumafolgekostenstudie_final.pdf
