What Normal Isn’t
The feeling that was most pervasive for us as children, and the one that is most insidious to us as adults with post childhood trauma symptoms, is that we are somehow all ALONE. We learned early on the unspoken dysfunctional family’s code to not reveal to outsiders the helter-skelter norm of our daily life. In homes where chronic traumatic stress in the form of neglect, violence, lack of appropriate boundaries, the onus of too much adult responsibility too soon and an array of other ugly events, nothing irregular that occurs ever gets explained or discussed.
The very act of the adults in our life pretending our home and family is perfectly acceptable destroys our ability to tune in to our own intuition for reading and understanding people. After all, what is our standard for normal, for acceptable behavior? Add dissociation to that dilemma and it is clear why we live with the feeling that we exist on the outside looking in at how ‘normal’ people act and live.
It has everything to do with why forming healthy relationships is a total mystery to us and why we keep finding ourselves in situations that do not elevate us. It also explains why we have such a difficult time expressing our feelings, setting healthy boundaries and tending to our own needs and wants.
Installing Your Safety Net
If you experienced chronic childhood trauma you probably have addictions of your own (I used reading, studying, food, ‘false’ perfection in all its exhausting forms, demanding daily sex in my monogamous relationships), and you have close relatives, your children or your romantic partner who use some sort of substance or behavior to self-medicate. So, what I am about to cover applies to you whether or not you are a child of an alcoholic.
This is the first action you take in—
The Childhood Trauma Recovery for Adults Program
Adult Children of Alcoholics
Adult Children of Alcoholics is a twelve-step program that addresses the core issues that continue to plague those who were raised in an alcoholic (always dysfunctional) or a highly dysfunctional home, even if there was no alcoholism. Most of the issues addressed in their Big Red Book apply to those with post childhood trauma symptoms. The following description of “The Problem,” has been distilled from “The Laundry List’ originally written by Tony A. It is excerpted, verbatim, from the Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization’s website (find meetings in your location here) www.adultchildren.org:
- We had come to feel isolated and uneasy with other people, especially authority figures. To protect ourselves, we became people pleasers, even though we lost our own identities in the process. All the same we would mistake any personal criticism as a threat.
- We either became alcoholics ourselves, married them, or both. Failing that, we found other compulsive personalities, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick need for abandonment.
- We lived life from the standpoint of victims. Having an over developed sense of responsibility, we preferred to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. We got guilt feelings when we trusted ourselves, giving in to others. We became reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative.
- We were dependent personalities, terrified of abandonment, willing to do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to be abandoned emotionally. We keep choosing insecure relationships because they match our childhood relationship with alcoholic or dysfunctional parents.
- These symptoms of the family disease of alcoholism or other dysfunction made us ‘co-victims,’ those who take on the characteristics of the disease without necessarily ever taking a drink. We learned to keep our feelings down as children and keep them buried as adults. As a result of this conditioning, we often confused love with pity, tending to love those we could rescue.
- Even more self-defeating, we became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upset to workable solutions.
End of quote
No doubt there are bells going off in your head right now. Welcome to the club; The Recovery Club. Going to your very first meeting may conjure a bevy of unwanted feelings; that is normal behavior for you entering unknown waters. I had to make a deal with myself before I could go at all without bolting for the door before the meeting even began. I personally committed to attending six ACOA meetings in two weeks. At my very first meeting I sat quietly listening to others share about their past, their issues, and best of all, how they were incrementally overcoming those issues in their lives. I was shocked as they opened-up, sharing their deepest fears and concerns, their feelings of self-doubt and how they comforted and encouraged themselves.
It was terrifying to me that anyone, with a similar childhood to mine, would just blatantly take their social mask off and lay out their psychic innards for all to peruse. When that occurred, I would scan the room, expecting to see faces showing shock, condescension and judgment. Instead I saw heads nodding in agreement and expressions of sympathy and compassion. They were simply accepting whatever this person wanted and needed to share, without a smidgen of judgment.
Although there is no cross-talk, others would share similar challenging experiences and in so sharing they were clearly conveying, “You are not alone.” When it ended, before I could slip out of the meeting, three people came up to welcome me and assure me I had come to the right place. I didn’t have to do anything special to be accepted, just be courageous enough to show up. Others followed up with emails of encouragement. The flood of support to a veritable stranger confirmed that I need never feel alone again.” And now neither do you. Find a meeting to attend this week at www.adultchildren.org. I’d love to hear from you after you attend your first meeting.
Excerpt from: WORTHY A Personal Guide for Healing Your Childhood Trauma available at Amazon along with its companion Workbook of the same name.
Worthy: A Personal Guide for Healing Your Childhood Trauma
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