My Lenten Promise

I vow to give up self-hatred and slothfulness.  And in an effort to better my relationship with my Higher Power, I will pray/converse with my HP everyday for the forty days of Lent.

Moments in the life of an ACoA

     Sometimes I wish I could give people a chance to live a day in my head, just so they might understand what I struggle with everyday.  I can’t so I thought I’d write out a few different scenarios and show how ACA thinking affects everyday life moments.

     You’re out with friends.  Hanging, actually enjoying yourself, but then someone makes a joke, one single stupid joke about the joys of booze, and then all that fun you’ve been having?  It’s done.  You try hard to have a good time, but you just got reminded of all the fun with booze you had growing up.  The yelling, the anger, the fear.  In a single instant you just got consumed.  You can’t wait to leave, because you want to run to your bed, fall asleep in the hopes it resets your mood.  But these are your friends.  To run away now would raise questions.  So you sit and stay and pretend to be having a good time, and wonder how screwed up a person has to be to hate hanging out with their friends like this. 

     You’ve made the decision to go to this group meeting.  You’re eager and excited about going, because you like the people in the group.  Everything is going well, until you hear someone else share something personal in their lives.  You want to share as well.  But what do you say?  You’re struggling and hurting and close to tears, but you can’t figure out what to say about it.  So you stay silent.  Doesn’t matter anyway.  Even if you did figure out what to say, you can’t.  Despite your best efforts the words stay stuck in you.  You get so frustrated, because you know that if only you could ask for help, it would be given to you.  You know this, and still can’t force the words out.  So you become angry at yourself, and upset, and when you are alone you feel the tears well up.  You wonder whether or not you should go to that group meeting anymore.

     Things aren’t exactly going super in your life right now.  You accept this, because you know that your life is destined to suck.  When things go wrong sometimes you don’t even know if you’re allowed to be upset about it.  You look to others to gauge how you’re supposed to feel.  And because things go wrong, you blame yourself.  Even if you did your best, it doesn’t matter, because you failed.   And because you failed you get angry at yourself.  You start listening to that voice in your head that says you’re worthless, that you don’t matter.  You get struck by depression and then find yourself doing nothing for days on end, because you don’t think you can stand one more failure.  And you just know if you try and go after what you want you’ll fail.  Because that’s how your twisted mind works.

     And God.  You struggle with God a lot.  For a while it was okay.  You accepted what happened to you as a kid because it made you stronger.  But then you realize just how weak you actually are, and that you are forced to recover in Al-anon/ACA due to what happened.  So now you struggle to find another reason why God let that happen to you.  And you wonder if God’s plan is for you to be broken.  You end up concluding that you can’t understand things right now, but surely in time it will all be clear.  You hang on to this hope desperately, because Al-Anon and ACA are spiritual programs.  And you need a relationship with a Higher Power to recover, so you feel trapped by your inability to let God in. 

     Truly the mind of an ACoA can be a troubling place.  I battle self-hatred every day.  Some days I come out ahead, and others I go to sleep hoping my life will reset itself in the morning.

“Coming Out” with my ACA story

     Like being gay, being an adult child of alcoholic is something that isn’t immediately obvious to others.  It can be a secret, even to the individual.  Such is the power of denial.  The secret can evoke shame and holding on to the secret can cause the person undue pain.  The individual holds on tightly to that secret until either they are exposed or they come to terms with the secret.  

    

     Additionally, the secret can be very hard to share with others, even friends.  It is a struggle.  The first people I came out to with my ACA story were a close knit group of friends I had in college.  The group of us met at orientation and became really close very quickly.  They were the first people I have met whom I felt genuinely cared about me.   Even still it took me five months before I got in depth about my being raised in the home of an alcoholic.

     When I finally told my friends they more than supported me.  They showed me what love is.  My group of college friends loved me more than I had thought possible for people not tied together by family secrets.  Things were good.  I had a core of friends who knew my story and who I felt close to as well.  The problem?  College ends eventually.  I moved away and soon new friends came into the picture. 

     Because it’s never enough to tell your coming out story just once.  Different people are going to come into your life, and you have to make the choice whether or not you choose to tell them your story.  You don’t have to tell them.  In fact it’s probably not advisable to go up to people you’ve just met and say, “Hey, my mother drank a lot and her pastimes included screaming, breaking stuff, and making life miserable.”  Yeah…not going to fly. 

     You have to be choosy about who to tell.  I am friends with this group of really great people and have been for about a year.  Even after that year I still feel like I have trouble connecting with them.  I think to myself, "Connecting with my college friends was never this hard."  But that’s me, simply remembering the time after I had let go of my secret shame.

     I really do want to tell this group my ACA story, and I struggle to find reasons why I stay silent.  “They seem too perfect.  They won't understand.”  "They’ll think I’m attracted to crazy or drama or something if I tell them this after everything else that has happened.”  “The timing/atmosphere is never right to share this.”  “If I do it, they’ll drop me quicker than a flaming sack of potatoes.”  “They don’t care about your past (which then translates to ‘they don’t care about you…not enough at least to listen to you whine about the past’).”   

     Not helping is the fact that I had a dream where, after a violent confrontation with my drunk mother, I seek asylum with a college friend, who turns into one of my new friends from the group.  I tell my story, but he is unsympathetic.  He kicks me to the curb.

      All this leads to this question: “Why again do I have to?”  I too easily answer my own question.  Because, I know they care about me.  Also perhaps it would help explain me and my occasional idiosyncrasies to them.  I’m not sure how I’ll tell them.  Maybe I’ll share during a group meeting.  Or maybe I’ll just send out the web address to this blog post.  I do know that I will tell them…eventually….some day.

How is being an ACoA like having a disease?

                Alcoholism is a disease.  I’m not sure who was the first to say it or when that came about, but it is a statement very much accepted in the world of recovery.  It seems lately there have been several mentions in the meetings I attend that link ACoAs with disease as well.

“A thinking disease”

Something I heard today is that our disease is a thinking disease.  Because of how we were raised our minds were warped and our subsequent thoughts and actions mutated.  It is so very true.  My body may be physically in perfect shape, but this thinking disease shapes my world in a grotesque and solemn manner.

“It’s like diabetes.”

A newcomer asked the group whether or not this thinking disease can ever be cured.  An old-timer took the question on.  He likened how we are after being raised in an alcoholic or dysfunctional home to diabetes.  There is no cure for diabetes.  However if we take care of ourselves and seek appropriate medicines and help, we can live active, productive and healthy lives.

“Growing up with an alcoholic is like growing up with cancer.”

Be forewarned, I have a bone to pick with this comparison.  Growing up with alcoholism is like growing up with a parent or both parents who always has/have cancer.  Because of the nature of the disease often the focus will be on the inflicted.  At certain points in your life you might have to explain why your parent looks different due to lack of hair.  You may even have to take over the role of caretaker.  

 So there are similarities, but I feel still conflicted about this simile.  There is no shame in having cancer.  It’s not something you have to hide from your friends, or even your relatives.  And while alcoholism is a disease, the choice to drink, at least initially, is a choice.  Cancer is not a choice.  Cancer was actually the best thing to happen to my relationship with my alcoholic mother. 

She got breast cancer my junior year of high school.  And for several months she had to undergo chemo and radiation therapy, and I loved it.  Not because my mother was suffering, but because she could not drink on the drugs she was on.  And back then she could make the choice not to mix alcohol and her drugs.  So I got a sick, but sober mom for a whole summer.  The best months I spent with her were those months.  I felt bad I was so grateful my mother had cancer, but I couldn’t help but brush the guilt away as I enjoyed the love she had to give to me then.  Then of course she got recovered from the cancer, and as soon as she could she started drinking again and things were back to "normal". 

So for me, being an ACoA is similar to some diseases, but not all.  Then I shrug my shoulders.  What works for one may not work for all, but if it works for them, then that's all that matters.

               

ACA Trait: Judge Ourselves Too Harshly

From the Laundry List, ACA Trait 11: "We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem."

     In high school I remember being told to write a fictional short story.  I’ve never been great at crafting fiction, so I pulled inspiration from my head.  I wrote about the three “voices” in my head.  One was sad and weepy, eternally broken.  The second was the calm yet unfeeling voice of reason and logic.  And the third was the hypercritical voice, sneering ever at my pathetic attempts to exist. 

     Growing up I knew I was never good enough, that I could always be better.  Each day I tried to be a better person, but I never succeeded, at least not in my eyes.  “Everyone makes mistakes.”  I would not allow myself to make mistakes.  If I did make a mistake I would bring down the hammer and scold myself for days, sometimes weeks for something minor.  

      It wasn’t until college that I realized how harsh I was to myself.  Even then it wasn’t apparent to me until someone else pointed it out.  I was talking to one of my friends, one whom I wasn’t real close with.  All of a sudden she turns to me and says, “You’re real hard on yourself, you know?”  I was taken aback by her words.  I hadn’t thought about it that way.  I simply was the way I was.  

     My friend’s words made me question how I treated myself.  But in the end I decided that I was responsible for me and if someone else wasn’t going to push me, I had to do it.  “If I don’t do it, who else will?”  So while I finally identified the critical voice in my head for what it was (an uncompromising bitch), I continued to allow it to talk and whisper in my ear.

     Then I started ACA, and I discovered that 1) having such a critical voice is indicative of adult children of alcoholics, 2) that it isn’t a good thing and is self destructive and 3) I didn’t have to it listen anymore.  Now when the critical voice pops into my head I identify it for what it is and I block out the venomous invective as best I can. 

Program Slogans That Work

     Today I am struggling.  There is no shame in that.  There are going to be days like this.  It's important for me to understand a month of recovery only goes so far.  My life does not become perfect just because I've decided to get help.

      I've been using a few slogans to help me get through my days and disappointments such as the one I experienced today.  "Progress, not Perfection"  "It may not be okay, but it is okay to feel."  "I am enough".  As I try to convince myself that I am deserving of happiness and that life will get better, I'll leave you guys with some other helpful slogans.

ACA Slogans:

                ACA is Simple but it is Not Easy

                Live Beyond Mere Survival

                There is Another Way to Live

                One Day at a Time

                Easy Does It

                Keep it Simple

                Progress Not Perfection

                First Things First

                This Pain Too Shall Pass

                Let Go.  Let God.

                Keep Coming Back

                Name It, Don’t Blame It

                Ask for Help and Accept It

                Pray and Pray Harder

                Don’t Just Do Something.  Sit There.

                Be Still and Know.

                There is no Healing without Feeling

Copied from p.52 of Adult Children: Alcoholic/Dysfunctional Families (“The Big Red Book”).  Can be ordered here.