Adult Children of Alcoholics

Boundaries

Many adult children have a poor concept of personal boundaries - we constantly allow other people to manipulate us into situations or into doing things we don't choose to be doing. The only way we can stop this is by having our own personal boundaries.

This has been one of the hardest things I have had to learn in my own recovery - and i still have a good way to go. I found it virtually impossible to say "No" - and if I did, always had the need to go into some expanded justification of why I was saying "No". Of course this is because I am ACOA, a pathological people pleaser with a desparate need for the affirmation of others - because I never got it from my parents.

As I slowly progress in my own recovery, I am finding myself saying "No" more often. If someone asks me for a lift home from a meeting and I genuinely can't do it, I am now able to say, "no, sorry i can't this evening" - and actually shut up! Previously I would have either given the person a lift and been in a state of anxiety the whole time or would have said "No" and justified my reasons - "my children are at home alone and I told the sitter I would be back by 10pm... I am so sorry.."

Of course boundaries are about more than just being able to say "No" without going on a guilt trip. Boundaries are also about ensuring we are treated with respect as human beings. Sometimes we have to remove ourselves from an abusive situation - such as hanging up the phone if someone is making us feel threatened or bullied - much more effective than getting into an argument.

Our recovery is not dependent upon anyone else  being in recovery. We have to look after ourselves, our own needs and that really does mean zero tolerance of abuse.

Standing up for ourselves

Standing Up for Ourselves

As a child of alcoholic parents, I was constantly subjugated, doing everything I could to please them and readily accepting the blame for whatever went wrong. I had no idea how to stand up for myself. I didn't believe it was my right. At school I was envious of classmates who had older siblings who helped them in their battles, I wanted someone to stand up for me, but as an only child, there was no-one, least of all my parents. As I get further along in my own journey of recovery, I am learning to be less tolerant of people who hurt me, I no longer accept abuse as part of my lot in life. I am a human and have rights, and one of those rights is to be treated with respect.

When other people speak to me in ways that feel disrespectful or mean, I will tell them how I feel about it. I will tell them that what they've said has hurt my feelings or makes me feel sad or angry. I have the right to ask that others express themselves in ways that aren't hurtful.

Today I will write down what my response might be if someone hurts my feelings or speaks to me in an uncomfortable tone of voice. When I learn appropriate ways to respond, I'm better able to stand up for myself and let others know how I'm feeling. I don't have to hold my feelings inside and allow verbal abuse to continue. I have the right to stand up for myself in all situations.

Shame

Once we break the denial of the reality of parental alcoholism, we sometimes, especially in early recovery, feel very ashamed. We have been so used to parenting our parents in so many ways, it can feel like we are betraying the family 'secret'. In truth, we are merely telling the facts of our home environment - we are not betraying anyone. We are learning to be rigorously honest, which is essential to recovery. We need not feel guilty about being honest. We can sometimes have difficulties with our other family members who are still in denial - but that is not our fault. We cannot control the reactions of other people. We cannot break their denial systems. But we choose to remain honest with ourselves. This will almost certainly cause us to feel emotions that are very powerful. Shame is an emotion that we are good at imposing on ourselves, but we are merely being honest. We need only keep the focus on ourselves, and entrust the rest of the family to our Higher Power.

Failure

Failure is an attitude. Having an attitude of failure can't help us - it can only hinder us. If we are not careful, it can grow into a way of life.

So, when we feel like failures, we had better look at our attitudes.

An attitude of failure often comes from making mistakes. But we can learn to use our mistakes as lessons for our personal growth and recovery. This turns our mistakes into positives - not failures.

Sometimes, we try to do things that just can't be done. When we act like we can control others, we are going to fail. When we act like we know everything, we are going to fail. If we try to act like God, we are going to fail. We can't control others. We can't know everything. We are not god. We are human and if we act human, we have already won.

Facing our past "failures" is the first step to learning from them.

Perfection

One of the charatcteristics of many acoa is that we strive for perfection in whatever task we are involved in.

How come? Well as a child I always felt that I never lived up to my parents expectations of me - that I was a perennial disappointment. I rarely received praise, only criticism and condemnation, whatever I did was never good enough or I was compared to some other child who my parents thought had "done better".

My dad came to one school sports day and I can remember praying to God on the start line to "please let me win"  of course I didn't, I came 5th in a race of 6 girls. As I crossed the finish line, I looked over to my dad who was just shaking his head. I had let him down again - I was a disappointment.

So I concentrated on what I could aspire to perfection in - and that was my school work. I was attentive at school and worked hard at home - always buried in a pile of books - and I found a way where I could achieve and came home with glowing reports - and dad was pleased.

Of course what this actually did was to set myself up for failure. There came a time when I didn't do quite so well, regardless of the effort I had put in. I sat 10 what were then "O" levels and passed with good grades in 9 of them. The one I failed was maths. The day my results came, dad opened the envelope and his only comment was "You will never get anywhere in this life without a maths qualification". Ouch!

Many many years later, I started studying with the Open University for an Honours degree and one of the course choices I made was Applied Mathematics. I was in my late 30's and still carrying the baggage that I would get nowhere in life without a maths qualification - even though I had a string of professional qualifications and a good job.

I passed the Applied Mathematics course and I felt a greater sense of achievement in that than in the rest of my degree put together. I had laid a ghost to rest.

The funny thing is, now in my 40's, I have had a series of good jobs and now work as a free-lance consultant - and never once has anyone asked me to explain Pythagorus' theorem! But I had carried that feeling of inadequacy with me for 25 years.

Now in acoa recovery, I am much kinder to myself. I know I don't have to be perfect, I have accepted the concept of "good enough" - and it's a much healthier way to live!

Shame

"You should be ashamed of yourself!"  was a constant admonition of my childhood - whatever minor misdemeanor I had committed. Getting my white socks dirty, not getting 10 out of 10 in a school test, not making my bed properly or putting my toys away - all were met with the same scorn - I should be ashamed.

Of course tell a child something often enough and sooner or later they are going to take ownership of it. This happened to me and I grew up full of shame, never feeling I was good enough, that I was shoddy goods.  I was ashamed of everything - especially my physical appearance.

So as I  entered my late teens, twenties and thirties, I ended up in a series of relationships with men who reinforced this for me. I only knew how to live with a bully. I was willing to settle for any relationship, on any terms, because I felt it was all I deserved. When things went wrong, of course it was my fault and the waves of shame engulfed me as I took full ownership of any situation, it had to be my fault - because I was told it was! For over 25 years I lived with eating disorders, self-harm, and finally alcoholism.

It has taken me a long time to allow myself to grow and get out of the helpless victim mode, and I can still fall into it occasionally.

Part of my acoa recovery is learning to accept and love myself and with this comes the knowledge that I deserve to be treated with respect by others and stand up for myself when I encounter less than this. I have learned to detach from unhelathy relationships and put my energies into building relationships where I feel valued and cherished. I have also learned that it is okay to make mistakes - I am a human too. Sometimes I am going to get it wrong, mess up, but having my 12-step programme gives me the tools to address this. I promptly admit when I am wrong and make amends - and then I "let it go and let God".

I have spent half a life time hanging my head in shame and merely surviving, I intend to spend the rest of it living - one day at a time - and living each day as fully and joyfully as I can.

Easy Does It

  It wasn't until I got into my own recovery from alcoholism that I became fully aware that I was indeed acoa. Like many people, my sterotype of an alcoholic was a real rock-bottom drunk - you know, dirty and unkempt, elderly, tatty coat with string around the waist and drinking some bottle wrapped in a paper bag..

Of course alcoholics like any other groups of people come from all walks of life - our common bond is that we have no control over our drinking. It's exactly the same for acoa - there is no stereotypical acoa - our common bond is that we grew up in a family where one or both of our parents were alcoholic.

As soon as I entered the rooms of AA, my desire to drink was taken away from me - the only proof I have ever needed of a power greater than myself.

So when I made a real attempt to start acoa recovery, I was disappointed that all my acoa issues were not taken away overnight! I admitted I had no control over the family disease of alcoholism and was willing to believe that a Higher Power could restore me to sanity... so why didn't it happen?

Well of course it couldn't - the issues are far too complex and ingrained. It takes time and real hard work. It is hard to let go of all our behaviours and attitudes - they took us years to acquire after all. Acoa change happens slowly, we have to work through repressed feelings and often a great deal of pain. We can't change our families but we can change ourselves - and that's where my Higher Power comes in on this one. If I am willing to change and hand my life over to the care of God as I understand him, then slowly but surely I can recover. I'm not there yet - but i do find myself reacting differently. I have stopped trying to get approval from my parents and now know I can approve of myself and rely on others for affirmation. Instead, when I speak to my parents, instead of trying to get them to focus on me, I focus on them, the balance of dynamics has changed. This is my recovery - I have to be willing to change my own attitudes.

In the meeting rooms of AA's we have posters with statements on - one of them states "Easy Does it" - and that is exactly how we have to recover from our acoa past. Gently and slowly, use all the support we can from other acoa's - and we will get there - together.

The problem

Many of us found that we had several characteristics in common as a result of being brought up in an alcoholic or other dysfunctional households.

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 live 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 matched 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.

This is a description, not an indictment.

Isolation

Until I started the long journey into my own acoa recovery, I hadn't realised how isolated I had become. Not isolated in the physical sense - on the contrary, I lived in a house with 4 other people, met lots of people through my work, attended AA meetings - how could I be isolated?

But as I progressed in my alcoholic recovery I started to come to a realisation that I was emotionally isolated within myself. I didn't know how I really felt - I was numb inside. And of course, the alcohol had kept me numb for a long time so I didn't have to deal with feelings.

With sobriety comes a whole re-surfacing of repressed feelings - and for me these were feelings that were rooted in my childhood and growing up with an alcoholic father and a co-dependent mother. I grew up feeling "responsible" - that it was my job to make them happy and as I got older I became a chronic people-pleaser. I would daily do things to try to keep other people happy, make their lives smoother, go to all sorts of lengths to feel that I had done something for somebody - anybody! Of course, if I kept myself busy doing things for other people, I didn't have time to do anything for myself - and that was just the way I liked it. Another way of repressing my own feelings and staying numb.

So as I got into my acoa stride in recovery, I found I had to start taking a personal inventory, finding out about myself and my own feelings that motivated my behaviours and formed my attitudes. And it hurt. It meant owning up to a far from perfect childhood, that although my parents did the best that they could, it didn't meet my needs. I needed the support of other acoa's in recovery to show me how to let go of the past and address my own feelings and needs. I had to reach out and take the help proffered to me and start coming out of my emotional isolation. Slowly but surely I started finding myself.

None of us have to be alone. Use this Blog to reach out to other acoa's or email us by using the link on the left hand side.

Perfect daughter

I am now totally comfortable saying "I am Juli, an alcoholic" - it's who I am and  have total acceptance of my alcoholism and real gratitude for my recovery. However, I still struggle immensley with saying "I am Juli, an adult daughter of an alcoholic father". There is something that still feels really uncomfortable about that yet it is that 2nd statement that has directly lead to the first - that I am indeed an alcoholic. I drank to be numb, so I didn't have to deal with excrutiatingly painful feelings of rejection and abandonment. The alcohol, for me, was an emotional anaesthetic.

Why am I so uncomfortable with that 2nd statement? Well, I feel as if I am betraying my father - admitting his alcoholism when he cannot and nor can my mother. Admitting that what to the outside world looked like a perfectly happy family, was in fact a place of fear and chaos.

I went through a whole process of blaming and building resentments - "if dad hadn't been an alcoholic and mum hadn't been so co-dependent, my life wouldn't be the constant shambles it is.... " and of course the only place that lead me was to the bottom of a whisky bottle. As all alcoholics in recovery know, resentments build into anger and anger leads us to drink.

So I had to begin the long process of letting go, of detatching with love. It is hard, my parents, are now in their late 70's, dad is still drinking and mum is ever co-dependent and as an only child, I find it particularly difficult. I wanted so much to be the perfect daughter - to very imperfect parents.

In common with many acoa daughters, I have always desparately craved my dad's approval, wanted him to be proud of his only child and I still harbour longings for a storybook ending where all is reconciled and forgiven and he loved me all along...  The reality is, this isn't going to happen. My dad loves me but he doesn't love me in the unconditional way I need to be loved. The love is always set within a set of terms and conditions - if I behave in a certain way, then I am loved. So I grew up feeling not deserving of love and that if someone rejected me it was because I wasn't worthy.

What this engendered in me was the whole "damsel in distress" syndrome. Wandering through my adult life looking for a knight in shining armour to rescue me! Oh, and I got rescued several times, became very adept at clambering on to the back of any passing white charger. Only of course what would inevitably happen - sooner or later - is the white charger turned into a carthorse and no amount of WD40 would restore my knight's armour to its original condition. I was so needy, so emotionally high maintenance and insecure, trying to create the family life I felt I should have had - yet totally unable to look at myself. I didn't know who Juli was.

It took the total abyss of alcoholism and my journey into recovery to start the healing process and some days I feel as if I am doing well, but of course I have difficult days where all the old feelings come back. However, I have stopped looking for my knight in shining armour and realise recovery is a whole different ball game to rescuing. I have to have total ownership of my own recovery, become my own loving parent, heal the inner child because no-one else can do it for me, this is my party, this is  my life.

In recovery, we embrace the concept of one day at a time, because the day we are in is all we truly have. I have stopped throwing my days away and try to live in a spirit of acceptance that for today, I am exactly where I need to be.