Getting to our EMOTIONS – Over (Part 1)

 

HELP, I’M DROWNING -
I can’t cope with all these feeling!

PREVIOUS:

Review Intro of last post (‘Under-Feeling’)

IN THE PRESENT: keep in mind: “If it’s hysterical it’s historical”, therefore our emotional intensity comes from the Inner Child, who had to stuff & store all the hurt no one helped us process, day after day, year after year!

• WE add to the mountain of misery we already carry from our past by feeding our self-hate, guilt, shame along with the reluctance to leave people who are emotionally unavailable &/or outright abusive .  Yet we stubbornly resist doing emotion-release work because we say we don’t want to feel the WIC’s pain – while we’re creating more pain with our damage!  Over-Feelers (O-Fs ) are already suffering! Why not clean it out & be rid of it?
• Being swamped with old pain (and new) blocks our ability to have pleasure! We know we’re not happy but are so used to being miserable we believe we’ll never be free if it.   “Does a fish know it’s wet?” The unexpressed grief & rage keeps us stuck & obeying our family’s Toxic Rules.

• ACoAs need permission and courage to express all emotions (Es), BUT in the right places & in safe ways, learning how to handle them appropriately whenever they surface.  Yes, O-Fs are afraid of letting out intense rage & terror because we really don’t want to hurt others. But sometimes, when our huge abandonment button gets pushed, our Inner Sadist (I.S.) raises it’s head, & we can’t stop ourselves from saying & doing cruel things.  Afterward we usually feel guilty, ashamed & remorseful.  So, as much as we can, O-Fs try to push those big feelings down too – just not as successfully as U-Fs

2. OVER-FEELING (O-F)
a. DAMAGE
O-Fs cannot easily hold in our feelings when hurt, so from childhood on we were reprimanded, punished, made fun of & misunderstood – at home, in school & at play. We cried too much, were depressed, felt suicidal, threw tantrums, were clingy or rude, withdrawn or flamboyant…. The more we expressed our pain the more we were abused, so the more pain we felt; the more we showed our distress at being abused, the more we were punished for it! It was a vicious cycle.

Expl: Jinny was a very bright, intuitive & hyper-sensitive teenager. Not only had she been emotionally & mentally stressed since birth, but then the hormones kicked in. Her ACoA parents had no clue how to deal with her – the narcissistic mother wanted her to ‘shape up’ & the depressed father identified with her but was powerless himself. One evening, in the kitchen, yet another insensitive comment her mother made set Jinny off & she began sobbing.
– Her father came in & told her to stop, which made she cry harder – so he slapped her.  His reason: “You were hysterical & I was trying to snap you out of it”.  It’s something he had once read, so thought he was being ‘helpful’! Jinny was devastated by his betrayal – as he was the kind one.  She knew she was not hysterical & could think quite clearly!  Not everyone can “walk & talk & chew bubble gum” but she could,  yet after all these years (17) her father still had not bothered to find out who she really was!

• As a result of our experiences, O-Fs often hate having emotions but can’t stop ourselves, so we despise our ‘weakness’!  Rarely or never comforted, we were left  desperately alone with our pain – profoundly terrifying for any child.  Combining no comfort with being penalized for expressing legitimate suffering taught us to loath being so sensitive. Therefore O-Fs also have pushed away some emotions, hiding them from ourselves, but still acting them out for everyone else to see!
• This enormous backlog makes un-healed O-F ACoAs very touchy & easy to flare up. One woman in early Recovery expressed it as : “I’m an emotional hemophiliac – touch me & I bleed”!

b. RECOVERY
EXP – a BETTER way to cope with Emotional Intensity
• Sue is an O-F with a strong-willed Inner Child. With great love & effort she has developed a bond of trust with her IC in Recovery.
• Sue is on a blind lunch date in a small upscale restaurant. The man is an engineer, all left-brain & totally un-self-aware. When he asks what she does & she says Astrologer, he begins a lecture about how unscientific & ridiculous that is!  Sue can feel her kid’s rage building to an explosion, but she knows that if she lets her kid attack the man for insulting her & her chosen profession, she will only be making a fool of herself – and in such a small space! SO –
– just before the angry words can leave her mouth, Sue asks the man to talk more about his work. She’s not interested and is not listening, but it stops his ignorant comments AND diverts her emotional energy long enough for her to have a private talk with her kid: “Honey, there’s no point in rebutting. Remember we’ve been taught to think: ‘How important is it?’ This guy wouldn’t get it anyway, & we’re never going to see him again. The only important thing is that I don’t want us to be embarrassed here & sound like the crazy one, since I know we’re not!”  Her IC agrees & is mollified.

NEXT:  Part 2 of Over-Feelers

ACoAs: Our TIME-LINE Inventory

  

IT’S INTERESTING TO SEE
my life all laid out so clearly

PREVIOUS: Family Inventory – General

REMINDER: See ACRONYM Page for abbrev.

CHOICES:
FYI: Family Inventory charts will be posted in the near future.
But for anyone who wants to start with a Personal Inventory (or have already done one, try c.), here are a few options:

a. The 4th Step of the 12 Step Program: “Made a fearless moral inventory of ourselves”. Most newcomers just write everything they think is wrong with them (character defects) & all the wrong things they’ve done (bad actions). Actually it’s supposed to include our strengths, skills & gifts, but ACoAs rarely think to do that.
– This can be done with an outline such as the AA version at “Step12.com”
– or done ‘freehand’, as things come to you. Then later you can categorize them for clarity.

b. AL-ANON‘s “The Blueprint for Progress” booklet & online

c.  The TIME LINE Inventory
•  This chart may seem sketchy, but can be quite powerful. Because it’s so visual & simple it’s hard to miss the obvious – trauma & repetitions of trauma. You may:
– find yourself reluctant to start , OR you may fill in some & then drop it. This is most likely because it’s painful & you’re shying away from facing the pain – doing it alone can be hard
– If you do continue, be sure you have a good support system in place ahead of time when you need encouragement if the emotions that surface come up too strongly. Don’t give up!

WHAT TO DO
– Tape together as many sheets of paper as needed (20-30…)
– OR use a roll of white paper
– OR a loose leaf notebook with unlined paper
• Draw a horizontal line about 2/3 of the way down, all the way across. At far left put the year of your birth & then mark off every 2 years with the date and your age, all the way to the present. Leave more space between later 2-yr. periods than early ones.
USE PENCIL so you can make changes or corrections

• Above the horizontal add slanted lines as they fit your life experiences & briefly write on each one a major event: illness, moves, school, graduations, special events, travel, hospitalizations, awards, relationships, work, physical abuse…. It’s OK if you don’t know the exact date or yr, especially from your early life. Put in everything you can think of, even if dates are approximate

• Below the line write in any event that happened to another person close to you which had an impact on your life: birth of siblings, divorces, illness, deaths, their loss of jobs….

• Start anywhere in your lifetime, filling in the things you remember most easily, & then go back & fill in earlier events as you think of them. Ask people in your family or anyone who knew you then, who can give you some history you forgot or didn’t know. Do the best you can.

• When you’ve filled in as much as you can (you can go back & add things at any time) you’re going to be looking for :
– the recurring pattern of your early experiences
– how you’ve copied them as an adult
– what had the most impact on you
– what did you just realize for the first time now
– what are you clearer about, that you sort of knew, but hadn’t solidified

IMP: Take your time. Allow yourself to feel all your emotions – sadness, anger, frustration, loss…. Bookend this exercise with someone your trust, & review it with a therapist, sponsor or sibling, if possible.

NEXT: Family Inventory – Reason (Part 2)

Loneliness in Recovery (Part 2)

I’M NOT OFTEN LONELY,
now that I have myself!

PREVIOUS: Loneliness in Recovery (Part 2)

REMINDER: See ACRONYM Page for abbrev.

This type of Rec. Loneliness is healthy & to be expected (cont.):

Accept temporary Rec. loneliness of……
….. Re-evaluating all our relationships. This comes in stages, like everything else, first just being aware of the problem, then consider leaving the most blatantly inappropriate / abusive people, then eventually catching the subtle ways people are abusive, unavailable or just plain unsuitable for us, no matter how nice or good they are.
….. The actual ‘leaving’ comes in stages too. Some relationships just drift away, some people we have to have a talk with, some will not accept the loss & pursue us. And then there are the relationships we’ll keep falling back into – even when we know they not healthy for us, because the WIC is not ready to let go of them, so we’re conflicted. When the kid is sick & tired of being sick & tired – we move on – with little or no regret!

Accept temporary Rec. loneliness of……
….. Our increasing awareness:
– when someone is not ‘all there‘ – shut down, distracted, narcissistic, not available. We are truly alone with such people & we don’t like it!
– that we get confused when someone tries to ‘help’ us, but we still feel angry, alone, misunderstood. Sometimes this is because the WIC is not yet allowed to be helped by anyone, BUT more often – as long as we’re still dealing with anyone who is controlling, narcissistic, people-pleasing or a rescuer – we are legitimately picking up that the help or solicitousness offered is tainted. It’s being given for their benefit not ours. That leaves us alone – again!
– that in early Recovery we tend to idealize NEW support people or groups who are genuinely helpful, kind & gentle. This is the WIC seeing them as the Good Parent, rather than just healthier peers. As long as we idealize anyone we will be let down & disappointed when they don’t live up to our fantasies.

✶✶ However, for those of us whose parents are still alive – a very important & powerful Recovery experience is when we finally ‘get it’ that being with our unhealed family leaves us feeling very mentally & emotionally alone – no matter how nice they may be to us in the present. It’s not just our imagination or some flaw in us. It’s that they haven’t done the ‘work’ & are still shut down, still ‘active’, still self-centered…. so our connection is superficial. We want more but they’re simply not available.

Too fast: When we first become aware of how sick many of our long-term relationships are, some of us will want to get rid of everyone right away & perhaps start dumping our whole phone book. If the phone list is very recent that may be OK. But we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water.  Ending all old relationships at once can be too overwhelming – leaving us bereft of any connections before we can replace them with more loving ones.

Very slowly: At the other extreme are those of us who take a very long time to process any decision to separate, especially regarding long-term relationships that were once important to us. We’re afraid of being disloyal (even tho they don’t deserve it) & afraid of feeling the loss of our illusions about them, since we always knew there was something wrong but couldn’t admit it.

SOME RESULTS
Emotional feelings when leaving inappropriate people can be sadness & brief loneliness, OR relief and healthy self-congratulation.

Practical outcomes can be:
– short-term isolation, which we need to process such big changes, but not from fear, guilt, shame or S-H
– that some people can’t tolerate their own abandonment pain, so will keep bugging up : ”What happened? Where are you? Are you all right”? even after telling them you need space, or ending with a final good-buy.  If you’re truly done, you don’t have to respond. We are not responsible for THEIR WIC, even tho you can understand & have compassion
– we’ll feel lighter & have more energy for our own life & pursuits
– having the space to add in more & more healthy suitable people/ places & things for ourselves

• Keep in mind Al-Anon’s 3 As: 1. Awareness 2. Acceptance & 3. Action. It’s never healthy to jump from #1 to #3, which is what most ACoAs do automatically. We need to spend as much time in #2 as our psyche /WIC needs. Then the eventual Actions will likely be much healthier.

Accept temporary Rec. Loneliness of…..
…. Shifting our dependence to a Higher Power or Spiritual Discipline as the Good-Parent we never had. Humans will always let us down, even the best ones, but “God, as we understand Him” never will. Remember: ‘God is not an alcoholic parent’.
– For those of us having trouble with this concept (from lack of faith, anger at the God of our childhood, or not having a sense of a H.P. greater than ourselves…) we can ask for guidance to a Governing Principle that will be a comfort to us.
• TRUSTING an unseen Spirit Being or Force if hard when we don’t trust anyone or anything. But that shifts as we learn to trust ourselves AND pick healthier people who are more reliable. Also, because Spirit is intangible, we need to be in touch with the emotions housed in the Healthy Child & Loving Parent ego states, our intuition & perhaps our 6th sense.

NEXT: ACoAs & Personal Immaturity

ACoAs dealing with ABUSERS (Part 1)

I’M TIRED OF BEING AN OSTRICH -
ignoring what others are doing to me!

Previous: Grandiosity or being Normal

Review Post: “ACoAs Getting Controlled” (1 & 2)

 

1. ACoA SILENCE
ACoAs are more than reluctant to speak up for ourselves. We hold it in & hold it in, & then we eventually explode outward – having a tantrum at others, while some implode – into illness, depression & isolation.  We are equally mute with people:
• who are actually abusive, whether they know it & don’t care, or have no idea what effect they’re having on someone
• who we just think are hurting us by something they said or by not reading our minds (giving us what we need without us having to ask for it), but they really are not – they’re just pushing a button in us
• who are not being abusive at all, but we’re afraid of hurting their feelings, scaring them away or -god forbid- make them angry at us!

We don’t speak up because of:
a. Toxic Family Rule “Don’t talk”   (WE = parents/ community)
• about what’s going on in the family, don’t air dirty laundry – it’s no one else’s business (family shame = family secrets)
• about what you need & want, since we can’t or don’t want to provide them
• about that you think about anything – unless we agree completely
• about what you feel emotionally – we don’t want to hear it, we’re already in enough pain & don’t know how to deal with it, so we don’t need yours too!
• about your personal opinions, values & observations – if they don’t fit in with the family line (the ‘story’ we’ve created about the tribe we all belong to). No matter how twisted, it’s our & we protect it at all costs.
– Along with this rule is the fear many ACoAs have about going to 12-Step programs &/or therapy – seeing it as disloyalty.

b. Fear of Punishment
Of course most people don’t want to ‘be in trouble’ with others, & learn what’s appropriate to say or not say, especially in public. But for ACoAs it’s always about FoA (fear of abandonment). Even as adults we’re afraid of various types of unpleasant reactions from others – when they get angry at, dislike, make fun of or worse – ignore us!
• Our co-dependence (needing others’ good-will to let us feel OK about ourselves) makes us do anything we can to prevent people from expressing any disapproval – which will set off our S-H. Our WIC always takes anything that seems like an abandonment (to us) as punishment, rather than someone else just having their own feelings & opinions, OR acting out their damage.  Much of how people respond has nothing to do with us – but the kid in us takes everything personally. After all: “I’m so unlovable, no one really likes me & sooner or later will leave – unless I make them like me, or else I’ll die”. So it’s safer to be silent – we think!

c. Being MUTE
A basic reason we’re silent is the result of the brain-washing we received growing up. We were trained so thoroughly to ignore what we heard, saw & experienced that we end up not seeing many things that are in front of us (”What insult?”), misreading a situation (“I’m sure they hate me”) or being unable to respond to a painful comment (“I wish I had said…..”).
• No matter how articulate some of us are when we’re comfortable, there are times we get brain-freeze. It’s frustrating when we’re with someone & we get so scared that we shut down completely. In that moment we lose our internal computer screen – it goes blank & we can’t think & talk. Yet a minute later, when we’re alone, the computer comes back on automatically & we know what we should have said! Darn, darn!

d. Our Rage
Most ACoAs know, or at least sense, that we’re afraid of others, especially of their anger. But many don’t recognize how filled with rage we are too.
The reality is that we’ve stored years & years of childhood anger in every cell, and then as adults we pile more on top by staying connected to abusers – familiar and equally as painful as those we grew up with.
• So one more reason we’re afraid to say anything when we’re upset is the fear of not being able to control our rage – we don’t know when the lava will burst out.  We even know at some intuitive level that our reaction, most of the time, is out of proportion to the current situation, even when we don’t actually feel the rage. So we’re not only trying to protect ourselves, we’re also being protectors.

• All ACoAs will benefit from doing extensive rage-work (on our own, in small groups or with professional help – like Core Energetics) so we can lighten our burden – mainly for us to feel better, but also to make it easier & safer for us to interact with the world.

e. Discounting  Experiences✶
ACoAs spend much of our time in daily stress & trauma, internally from S-H & externally from being in unhealthy environments. Because so much of our energy is taken up with these ‘big’ problems, we ignore the more subtle ones, the little ‘nigglies’ in the background. Sometimes these are just life’s trivial annoyances (no hot water, subways are late, we’re out of milk, can’t find something….) which bug us way too much, or they’re the minor unkindnesses of, and disappointments in other people. These also pile up on us, & then we get cranky or depressed & don’t know why.

• When we consistently underestimate the nature of the ‘little slings & arrows’ of irritations or abuse – they seem so trivial – we underestimate the emotional impact those barbs have on us. Just because a paper cut is not life threatening doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt – a lot!
Yet we use Denial & Perfectionism to dismiss subtle info our emotions are giving us – like when we repeatedly get the ‘ICK factor” in our gut about someone. We don’t object to the minor things that bother us because we literally talk ourselves out of believing ‘something just happened’.  FYI – Sometimes a quick cry or fist pounding on desk – relieves the tension!

✶ This category (e.) is different from the peaceful experience of correctly not over-reacting to unpleasant or unimportant events – as a result of healing our emotional wounds in Recovery.  Al-Anon suggests we ask ourselves: “How important is it?”

RESULT:  If we don’t speak up for ourselves when problems are small, they accumulate & grow into monsters, & then we don’t know how to manage ourselves. To correct this ‘cognitive impairment’ takes knowledge of the real world & our inner world, & then the courage to deal with situations as they come up.

NEXT: ACoAs & Abusers (Part 2)

INDIRECT Abusers

…. BUT HE’S SO NICE TO ME -
the rest of the time!

PREVIOUS: Direct Abusers

RESOURCE: Dr Irene’s great Abuse & Recovery site

REMINDER: See ACRONYM Page for abbrev.

COVERT ABUSE  (CA) – Emotional, Mental & Spiritual
• Emotional abuse is one of the most under-reported types in the US today. Blatant emotional cruelty may be noticed & definitely felt by a Victim (V). (even if they ignore or excuse it) but daily or periodic abuse in smaller doses can too easily be ignored, as it gets woven into the fabric of the relationship. Typically the V. will say : “It’s not all bad, You don’t know him the way I do. I know she loves me. When something goes wrong it’s really my fault. He didn’t meant it. She’s just under a lot of pressure. I don’t want to miss out on the good things we have together. He needs me. It’s only because she’s in pain” ….

• Sneaky Perpetrators (P) are also full of S-H & FoA, but they hide it better.  They too think they’re unique, so different from others that they don’t have to follow the same rules as everyone else. Yet they actually have a lot in common with all other Ps, sharing similar thinking & action patterns.  While they may never lift a finger to ‘harm’ anyone, the internal damage they do to others, with it’s long-term scars, are much harder to heal.  Victims are threatened & terrorized (emotionally) when they try to object to how they’re being treated. A result is that they don’t believe they have a right to identify themselves as victims, or that their mate, adult-child, boss….is actually abusive.

• TO outsiders, emotional abusers (E.A.s) don’t stand out – they usually present themselves as decent, successful, calm. They have a  talent for creating an image for the public eye that contradicts what happens behind closed doors. They use public venues to have an adoring audience & as an outlet for their ‘better’ qualities (work, church, politics….), but will take out their emotional sickness on those who are closest, most vulnerable & most dependent on them. Ps needs a safe place to let their dirty hair down where no one will judge them, hold them accountable, object or leave!
TO their families, they’re often controlling, self-absorbed, hypercritical, compulsive, childish and mean-spirited. What’s so confusing is that this type of abuser is actually BOTH. But the abusive side always wins out in private.

• CAs are passive-aggressive, which means they show their anger (aggression) sideways (passively) by withholding information, deliberately stalling, being stubborn, sulking, and/or not trying their best. They ignore reasonable requests to put in a reasonable amount of effort into their closest relationships. They pick partners who are push-overs, with low self-esteem, who find it easy to make excuses for the other person’s terrible behavior.
EXP: Ps will make you choose an action that affects you both (dinner, movie, trip….) & then blame you because they didn’t like it or it didn’t work out. They also may deny that you asked them for their opinion or input in the first place, accusing you of being controlling. You get set up!

Abusers & Therapy
a. There are some covert abusers who seek out therapy because they’re in very real pain, and will even go for years & years, but aren’t willing to dig into their unconscious (their Shadow) in order to clean out their pain & correct their CDs. These narcissists, borderlines, paranoids…. are trying to get relief by ‘using’ the therapist as their nurturing parent rather than learning how to parent themselves. Unhealthy counselors will fall into the trap & become enablers, while the healthier ones will challenge the client to grow, which is never well-received!

b. However, most deeply entrenched abusers (hard cases who have too much to lose) won’t go to therapy because the problem is with other people, never them.  If pressed, their reasons for not going may be:  lack of time or money, they are handling things themselves, they don’t believe in airing dirty laundry, they tried before & it never helped, it’s all psycho-babble & B.S. anyway….

c. If they do go for some kind of help, it doesn’t last & there’s no genuine improvement. Maybe they’ve been told by their adult-children, friends, a spouse….. that they’re abusive & need help. Maybe they’re forced to go in lieu of losing their job or serving time. In any case, their real motives are:
– to get the mate or child to return to their clutches
– to save face, their job, or prevent some other loss
– to get better at their all-consuming passion – psychological warfare – by using their newly learned therapeutic info & tools, but in a distorted form
– so they can demand credit for ‘trying’, but will inevitably blame the V. when nothing changes – meaning that the V. isn’t behaving as the P wants.

SO, it’s completely unrealistic for us to believe that the P. is going to counseling to face their underlying damage, the same way you can’t trust a married boyfriend who keeps promising to leave his spouse.
The game “LHIT – Look how hard I’ve tried” from GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, by Eric Berne, lays out the pattern & can be applied to many different situations – gov’t leaders, poker players, office workers, spouses… The person acts like they’re making an effort but really aren’t. (Read more)

BOTH Direct & Indirect abusers harm mates, children, friends & co-workers, but NEVER because of anything the Vs are or have done! Their mis-treatment is all on their own shoulders.  Therefore, no effort on the V’s part to stop the abuse will work. As with others addicts, the P must be willing to face & own their actions & deeper motives – & get outside help. Al-Anon teaches the 3 Cs for Vs: “I didn’t Cause it, I can’t Control it, I can’t Cure it.”

The GOOD NEWS:
Given enough time, many victims get to the point where they suddenly wake up to their rights, understanding & finally believing the abuse is not deserved. They’ve had it, & decide to get help for themselves. And the faster we can come to this conclusion, the less wounding we have to heal. SO listen to that still small voice whispering in the background, to your gut & all the comments from others about your situation. YOU can change your life.  If the abuser can not tolerate the changes in you (likely), then plan your escape!

NEXT: Being In Denial

“ACTIONS – Healthy OPPOSITES” (Part 2)

I’VE BEEN DOING THE OPPOSITE!
 why isn’t it working?

Previous: Choosing Negative Opposites
Review: ‘Why are you stuck?’ post

“REVERSING our Behavior IMPROVES our Life” cont.

B. UNHEALTHY Opposites
• From the very beginning of our lives we’ve have been trying to figure out how to survive, fix our family & how to get our needs met – mostly with corrupted info (GI-GO = computer / Army lingo for “garbage in – garbage out”). ACoAs are very smart, creative & determined – even tho we don’t realize or own it. As kids all of that talent went into a valiant effort to save our parents & siblings – maybe even our friends. Now we find other dysfunctional people to ‘rescue’ – desperate to make them well enough to be there for us!

Exp: The 4 yrs old trying to help her drunk father up the stairs that he’s passed out on, the teenager hopelessly trying to convince her mother to go to Al-anon or leave dad, OR as adults – trying to keep a heavily addicted lover /spouse from killing themselves – with no success

• As unrecovered adults we stumble around without mental or emotional clarity – in spite of our high intelligence, because of the convoluted & warped info we were fed in childhood. The ACoA Laundry List says: “We guess at what normal is”, so we obsessively watch normals to figure out what to do (how do they talk, how do they eat sushi, what makes them happy, how do they make friends?…).  Even so, we still use our old childhood / family templates. That’s to be expected – it’s how every brain is programmed from birth.  And we always end up in the same old place, defeated & hopeless, thinking that it’s: a) somehow all our fault, & that b) the universe is against us! Either way, it hurts!

Exp: Afraid to be in social situation because we don’t know how to make small talk, convinced we’ll be boring & look stupid

• And how do we use all our native cleverness & determination for ourselves? Take a few minutes to study this chart & see what we do!
There are many convoluted ways UNhealth can manifest itself. From that mess we choose a set of patterns that most suits our specific personality & our background. We keep trying them in complex variations & with lots of different people. When these patterns don’t get us what we need or want, we unconsciously pick thru the mental rolodex of the distorted options that were forced on us, looking for an opposite way to handle things, hoping it will solve our problems. And we Do try obvious reversals, BUT all our action-choices are taken from the ‘disease’ end of the spectrum. From a. to b. & back again!

Exp: I always say the wrong thing, so now I’m not going to talk at all! or
My last 3 girlfriends were nightmares, so I’ll never trust another woman

• Recovery is about moving from being unhealthy (#1) to gradually becoming healthier (>>>#2), from doing self-harming things to becoming more self-caring. All wounded people start out on the far Left side of this chart, taking mostly unhealthy actions. Unfortunately it’s where many ACoAs stay – altho we don’t have to.
There’s a saying in AA: “Alcoholics dig themselves into a rut, & then they decorate it”! — instead of getting themselves out.  Since many of us were raised by alcoholics we learned to do the same & find it very hard to reverse. (Also if our parents were other kinds of narcissists & depressives, no matter what their drug-of-choice was – booze, food, money, exercise, relationships, workaholism, rage, religion….)

• Naturally, if we don’t know what Healthy Opposites are we can’t work towards them.  So we settle for Unhealthy Opposites without even realizing what we’re doing.  Because they don’t work either, we go back to our original coping style, caught in a vicious cycle between the extremes of the Left end, never making it over to the RIGHT side!

Some Negative Opposites (a –> b –> a….)
• Feeling hurt
Too Little: backing down, suffering in silence (& rage), being a victim…
Too Much: rude, hostile, attacking, insulting, giving the cold shoulder….
• Disappointing “relationships”
Too Much: clinging, chasing, verbally attacking, demanding….
Too Little: isolating, depressed, not saying how we feel or what we need, ignoring our needs, waiting to be taken care of…
• Work Stress
Too Much: trying to please the boss, doing everything immediately, staying late, worrying about getting fired…
Too Little: being late, going on strike, not finishing projects, making lots of mistakes, taking too much time off….
• In the Home:
Too Little: being lazy, sloppy, careless, dirty
Too Much: compulsively cleaning, obsessively putting things in ‘order’, not wanting anything moved….

More Examples:
• from clinging to bad relationships, family, jobs… to isolating ourselves to the point of emotional starvation
• from not being able to get out of bed, totally goofing off, not using our talents …. to running around like a headless chicken, taking on too many projects, becoming a workaholic
• from being so poor that we end up living with drunks & crazies, to overspending every cent we have as a way to sooth ourselves
• from physically being undernourished to stuffing ourself, especially on unhealthy food & drink
• from promiscuity to sexual / sensual deprivation
• from living in daydreams to being hard-nosed & controlling   – and back again….

NEXT: Healthy Opposites

ACoAs & Boundary INVASIONS (Part 2)

BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING
Then why do I feel so alone?

PREVIOUS: B. INVASIONS (Part 1) Physical & mental

3. Family System SYMBIOSIS
a. Insecure parents:
• push for an ‘us against the world’ attitude in hopes of increasing family solidarity, which is powered by an unbearable threat to their sense of self
• can be over-protective. On the surface it looks like showing their love but is really trying to keep us attached by dis-empowering us. It gives the message that we are incompetent, weak & should be afraid of everything

• may attribute the wrong motive to peoples’ unpleasant reactions to any family member, no matter what we actually did (be controlling, arrogant, withdrawn, belligerent….) in order to make the family look better, saying things like: “Those kids are just jealous of you because you’re so much better than everyone else in the class”, “The boss doesn’t like me because I’m smarter than her”….

b. Distortions :  These & other CDs cause many problems for children:
• prevent them from becoming fully socialize, from normal risk-taking & learning about the many options available in the world
•  give them a distorted view of events & how the world functions, making it hard for them to take responsibility for their motives & action
• severely increases their inappropriate social behavior, making it easy to become a target for bullying, insuring their isolation from peers & dependence on the family

Some familiar phrases: Blood is thicker than water ~ We’ve got to stick together ~  Never air our dirty laundry in public  ~  We’re better than everyone ~  No one else will love you like we do  ~ You’ll never make it on your own ~~ Which reminds us of the childhood taunt:  “You have a face only a mother could love, & she died”!

c. Family Insularity is built on fear-based rules that inevitably lead to
constriction, intolerance & hopelessness about collaborate with others well.  Ironically it also creates isolation, scapegoating, splits & alliances inside the family, which then get repeated in adulthood.
EXP: Being in a toxic role, like the Scapegoat, had some advantage in the dysfunctional family mobile (feeling useful by ‘protecting’ a parent from the consequences of their addiction by being the focus of the family’s troubles).  We then look for the same kind of payoff when playing out that role in the larger world (protecting a spouse or boss…), but it rarely works & only reinforces our S-H, A. & negative benefits.

4. Parental NARCISSISM (N)
This topic has been covered in many other posts, so it’s not necessary to belabor it here. As it relates to B. invasion:
• Ns require that everyone around them be their carbon copy, so there’s no room for children to develop their own individuality
• children need mirroring (feeding back what you see of the other person without adding anything of yourself) & Ns cannot give it because they are only reflecting themselves, not who the child is

Narcissists do not recognize there are such things as boundaries, that others are separate & not extensions of themselves. People either exist to meet their needs or may as well not exist at all. Anyone who provides narcissistic supply will be treated as if they are part of the controller, who demands that the victim live up to their expectations (think: spider & fly). As one ex put it, ‘If you had firm boundaries in the face of a narcissist, the relationship wouldn’t last’!

• Some N. phrases:
“What yours is mine & what’s mine is nobody’s business”
“Do as I say not as I do”, “Put a sweater on, I’m cold”
“No some of son of mine is going to…..”
“This is the thanks I get – after all I’ve done for you”
“Do that in the morning when you’re fresh” said by a mother who was always raring to go at 6 am, to her child who was born a dyed-in-the-wool night person!

Role Ambiguity
Parental N. spawns much identity confusion  – since only their needs counted, so the children take on parent role – “I am them”,   & many a parents acts like a needy kid – “They are me”.   Family members aren’t sure who’s in or out of the clan, who’s performing what tasks of legitimate roles : Dad acts like a ‘girl’, Sis is the ‘mom’, little Brother is the family shrink….. Growing up, whose pain were you feeling – yours or theirs? Were you parent to your siblings? Spouse to one of your parents? Did you ever get to just be a kid? Which role did you have – Hero, Scapegoat, Mascot or Lost Child?

Al-Anon IMAGE: A co-pendent decides to kill himself by jumping off the roof of a tall building.  As he’s falling, someone else’s life flashes before his eyes!

NEXT: B. Invasions (Part 3)

ACoAs & Boundary Distortion (Part 3)

I GOTTA GET OUT’aHERE -
but I’m stuck in YOUR mud!

PREVIOUS: B Distortion (Part 2) — Family Mobile

REVIEW : ‘Healthy vs Unhealthy Parenting’ , ‘Healthy Family Characteristics’

TRYING TO LEAVE a dysfunctional system
• For many recovering ACoAs the process of outgrowing our childhood damage is hard enough, but often we have the added burden of dealing with the reaction from family & long-time friends who don’t want us to change. We need to be prepared for being ignored, attacked, even disowned by some, when we rock to boat.  We are dislodging the precariously constructed patchwork of these long-standing relationships. This scares everyone – our Inner Child and our family, lover & friends – so we can expect internal backlash & external complaints, anywhere from whining or guilting, to outrage, to punishment!

• In Social Psychology, researchers have used animals to study how we learn (think: Pavlov’s dogs), including birds.  For expl, once a pigeon had learned to peck at a lever to get a pellet of food each time, the scientists began withholding the food in stages to see what would happen (how we un-learn). The bird had to peck 2…6…10…. times to get just one pellet. As the food became scarcer it began to peck more & more frantically – to get its reward. Eventually, as the food was dispensed rarely & then not at all, the bird finally stopped trying

• We notice a similar pattern in symbiotic families – they cannot tolerate the loss of a member, so they too become frantic. At first they try whatever they can think of to hook us back into the fold – guilting, shaming, getting sick, attacking, begging…. BUT the most dangerous tactic is when the anxious parents say “But we loooove you! we want to hear from you, we miss you….” sometimes sent with cute cards. Anything but giving us space!

✶ It’s important for us to remember that – even tho our parents may genuinely believe they feel love for us, for the most part it is a narcissistic love! It’s about THEM – their need to keep up the fantasy of being good parents, their fear of being alone, their sense of identity, their image in their community, their overt or covert demand to be taken care of…. If their love had been healthy, they would have treated us very differently! See: ‘They did the best they could’

• These maneuvers are seductive because ACoAs are so desperate to hear we are wanted & loved, AND we can’t stand feeling the guilt of upsetting others. Under such pressure we often find it easier to fall back into the toxic whirlpool. If we’re in Recovery and we do succumb, even temporarily –
– afterward, for days or weeks, we can end up paying for that moment of illusion by being depressed, dropping down into S-H & hopelessness, getting physically sick, feeling suicidal…. having made the connection again because the WIC still wanted to believe it was part of a loving family. Eventually we begins to see the truth & have to mourn the loss of our fantasy – the hope that they will some day, somehow magically be healthy & kind. They rarely do & that HURTS!

• BUT if we steadfastly persist on the path to PMES Health, in most cases the family’s desperate grabbing will stop, or at least abate a great deal.  Someone once said in Al-Anon (not officially): “This program will fuck up your fucked-up-ness”.  So the longer we are in Recovery, the harder it is to tolerate fractured ways of interacting.  Because of that, when we do re-engage with anyone in the old familiar style, we can:
– observe the noxious quality of it more easily – being less in denial, & armed with new info, validation & support
– feel the pain, sadness, anger & disappointment in our whole body, of how empty, shallow & abusive the relationships really are & always have been!

In GAMES PEOPLE PLAY, by Eric Berne, we are warned that when one person in a symbiotic / addictive relationship arbitrarily ends a psychological game (“a series of complementary ulterior transactions progressing to a well-defined, predictable outcome”) before the other person is ready to disengage – the latter will become highly agitated, demanding, clinging, enraged, even suicidal (See 4 games)

• Many ACoAs have shared about their active addict or depressed co-dependent parent committing suicide once the adult-child withdraws from the family drama, rather than be left alone with their loss.  Unless someone is physically in terrible pain & dying, the reason for suicide is almost always the person’s rage at others for abandoning them, as a punishment.  Yes the person is depressed, affected by chemicals, isolating, not getting any help… but their narcissism has them blaming everyone else for their misery, & it’s often their children!

In LOVE & ADDICTION, Stanton Peele says: “The addict is a person who never learns to come to grips with his world & who therefore seeks stability & reassurance thru some repeated, ritualized activity.  The addict’s lack of internal direction or purpose creates the need for ritualized escape…. drugs give him/her an artificial sense of self-sufficiency that removes the small motivation she/he needs for complicated or difficult pursuits.  One major feature of the addiction cycle is withdrawal – the addict’s anguished reaction to an interruption of his/her supply”

• Yes, we can become addicted to another person just as much as to a physical substance. We will experience many of the same detox symptoms as going cold-turkey from a chemical, such as sleeplessness, anxiety & panic attacks, physical aches & pains, listlessness, difficulty thinking…. with feelings of despair, hopelessness, anxiety & anger.

• In relationships based on symbiotic attachment – each person is so intensely dependent on the other for their sense of identity & safety that when one of them needs to get away for their psychic survival, the other is deeply threatened & will become depressed & enraged.  Whether we’re talking about adults & their parents or love partnerships, amicable separations are rare. Often the only option for an ending entails an explosion – fights, yelling, threats, stalking, harassing texts & calls, even violence….
So ACoAs have to brace themselves for our Guilt, which is about breaking toxic family rules. Don’t let that emotion stop you from continuing to S & I, which is what we are all required to do to become free & empowered humans, and are encouraged to do in healthy families.

NEXT: Boundary Invasions

ACCEPTANCE & ACoAs (Part 1)

ACCEPTANCE – BAH!
I don’t like it, so I’ll ignore it

PREVIOUS: ALONE, an ACoA poem

REMINDER: See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

Acceptance is the middle ‘A’ (A2) of the ‘3 As’ in Al-Anon.  Understanding & using this tool positively will make our life much clearer & saner.
But for ACoAs this pesky A2 is the most misunderstood and the one many ACoAs HATE!  ACoAs do not even want to acknowledge it as something we should deal with because we say: “I can’t accept anything I don’t like or is too painful”, which is a CD – Cognitive Distortion.

However, the actual meaning of A2 is NOT about:
• liking or not liking something! – a MAJOR misconception
• staying a victim, accepting our lot in life, being resigned
• giving up, not trying, not looking for a way up & out
• putting up with ‘crap’ from people, including our Introject ‘bad voice’
sitting around waiting for things to happen or someone to rescue us

Part 2 will explain what IT IS. However, we as we’ve seen in other areas, ACoAs will turn almost anything against themselves, even good things. In this case we do use the 3 As, but only in the service of our dis-ease, a shorthand for all of our toxic thinking. The NEGATIVE message “You’re Bad, We’re Good, the World is Bad” can be read as:
A-1  = Awareness – “I’m so bad, no one will ever love me”
A-2  = Acceptance – “I believe it absolutely, but try to ignore it”
A-3  = Action – “I must be perfect, (or dead!),  to make up for it”

PROBLEM – We’re stuck with this awful protocol we think we can’t get out of :
A1 = re. US - the deep-seated belief (of the WIC) that we’re unworthy, not entitled, beyond redemption! (S-H)

A2 = re. THEM - that our family was right about everything as a result of their overt and covert brain-washing. Guess whose options we have now!  We believed them because:
• all humans are intensely loyal to their upbringing – it’s our most basic connection to others
• it’s the way our brain got programmed – every experience created the neural pathways which formed our understanding of life
• AND they constantly made it clear that we were un-acceptable. Some parents even used God, spirituality & religion to prove it to us!

A3 = re. the WORLD – everything & everyone outside our out-of-balance & insulated family mobile is considered dangerous, unhelpful, unwelcoming, indifferent…. Our family (& community) forced on us their narrow, alcoholic, bigoted view of the world, based on their experiences.

Unrecovered ACoAs deal with ‘c’ in one of 2 ways:
• Defiance of all authority & systems, which have become substitutes our parents We can hate them instead of admitting our rage at the family. AND since the world is SO-O-O dangerous – we’re NOT going to give in or let them GET US!
• Compliance – we have to give in, keep our head down, hide in the shadows, so no one will GET US!

✶✶ IRONY: these are very the messages we have accepted!
The fact that our suffering was endless & hopeless back then does not have to apply any more. Yet we still ACCEPT all sorts of terrible things as normal & inevitable for the rest of our lives, in obedience to our family & community’s teachings. However, we can only maintain this obedience by being in denial – hiding the cruel messages from our awareness. That is why we always want to skip over the middle A.

We Accept that we deserve / or must endure:
– verbal abuse, disrespect, being controlled
– being treated like a dumb kid (we were never dumb, even as kids!)
– over-looked, unappreciated, ignored
– never finding love & validation, since our parents didn’t love us
– we’re ‘weak’ & don’t know how to take care of ourselves
– we can’t have a positive impact on our world
– we have to deny / destroy ourselves in order for others to be OK
– we must let others use, manipulate & torture us
– we can only stay with people who are unavailable, distant, cruel & selfish …..

So even when we begin to have useful, valid new info about ourselves or about the people in our life, we automatically jump to A3.  Whenever we have any new Awareness we immediately ask: “What can I / should I  DO?”.         

We compulsively SKIP the middle ‘A’ because:
• we think it’ll make us safer
• our whole culture focuses on Action (just DO it!)
• our culture does not value process, ONLY immediate gratification
• we’ve been waiting so long for something better to come along, we don’t want it to take time the WIC is convinced that if we are told to wait, it means it’ll never happen
• our dysfunctional family made their approval conditional – based on our actions. If you act bad, you’re bad, if you act good, we ‘love’ you. YUCK. Healthy love is unconditional!

We think we have no choice, trapped in a double bind:
• on the one hand – we hate the rules we grew up with
on the other hand – we are not allowed to disobey them, ever.
So, since OUR version of acceptance is so painful & debilitating, we keep trying to ignore it altogether, as if we could control the truth away!

NEXT: Acceptance & ACoAs (Part 2)  – Healthy A2

What to DO when CONFUSED (Part 4)

 

WHEN I’M CONFUSED
it’s OK to ask for help

PREVIOUS: What to DO When Confused (Part 3)

REMINDER: See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

7. OUTCOMES
They are by definition, about the future, whether 5 seconds or 5 yrs from now. ACoAs want to know how everything is going to turn out, to quell a little of our anxiety. We assume that without OUR interference we will always be in danger, as we often were in childhood. What DANGER? As kids we were just as harshly treated if we spilling our milk, talked back or stole something. No nuances, no degrees of value, no room for lack of knowledge, accidents or human error.  In the present, ACoAs continue to give the same importance to all situations & all outcomes. This is not accurate or healthy.

• Our traumatized WIC still doesn’t know there are ‘gray hats’, and certainly don’t believe there are any actual ‘white hats’ – only ‘blacks hats’ (bad, scary, dangerous) that have to be white-washed to make tolerable, because we aren’t allowed to leave. “Should I get a divorce or have a dinner party?” asked one very distraught ACoA woman. Hmmmm.
IRONY: While the WIC can only see and is drawn to the unsafe ‘people, places & things’ in life (black hats), but as that is intolerable for some of us, we compensate by not acknowledging who or what is truly dangerous. We walk right up to it, say hello & then take it home with us! And then wonder why the outcomes are so often hurtful or disappointing! We’re not crazy – just blinded by denial.

EXP: Telling someone you don’t want to do something, or forgetting to make a call is NOT as dangerous as walking alone thru the Central Park at night, or depending on a narcissist – for anything…. Unfortunately, many of us are more afraid of the former than the latter!

• Al-Anon says: “Take the action & let go of the results”. This is another hard thing for ACoAs to do. ‘Letting go’ is not in our vocabulary. Because of the WIC’s fear that the whole world is an unsafe place – as our original family was – we try to control every outcome. BUT danger is not the only possibility beyond our family, in spite of all the bad things that do happen in the larger world, which none of us caused nor can fix. Not every situation or person is equally safe (idealized) OR equally dangerous (devalued). The reality is that there are good people & positive circumstances we can interact with, once the WIC & PP are no longer in charge of our choices!

In reality, there are some outcomes:
a. we do need to be responsible for – so the results have at least a chance of being favorable, first to ourselves, & then to our loved ones, our work projects, & perhaps even the world – when applicable. How things turn out will partially depend on how we behave & what actions we choose, and partially on outside forces.
• Many times we can make an educated guess about the outcome of a date, meeting or event, which is not mind-reading, projection or wishful thinking. Rather, such ‘predictions’ are based on logic, knowing what’s real & sane, using previous experience, education & intuition.  But since we are taught to deny all of these – we don’t take advantage of what we already know.

• If we’ve been thru a particular situation several times AND are willing to acknowledge what we’ve observed and felt, then our behavior & the actual outcome will improve without a lot of agonizing, like:
– NOT dating an addict, again
– NOT going to an abusive parent for emotional comfort, again
– NOT taking another job that doesn’t suit your talents
– NOT not handling our money wisely….

b. we can not possibly control, because we’re not all-powerful, in spite of that some ‘spiritual’ or philosophical teachings insist on. Nor are we all-knowing, even tho ACoAs believe we’re supposed to be, & feel ashamed & self-hating when we aren’t. This is magical, narcissistic thinking. And this kind of ‘not knowing’ sends some ACoAs into a panic, bad enough to paralyze, because we assume the outcome will be the same as all the previous times, & like our childhood.

We can NOT predict the outcome of encounters or situations –
i. which NO human can know ahead of time. Even very psychic people don’t have all the answers! We can’t know things like  –
– the outcome of medical tests, procedures or medicines
– how someone is going to react when pushed to their limit
– when we’re going to met the ‘right one’
– how our children will turn out
– whether cold-calling will get us business
– when you’re going to die….

ii. when we don’t have enough info about them ahead of time, like how a new experience is going to turn out (first time in a groups, moving to a new job or location…. ), what value you’ll get from taking a class, how your relationship will work out in the long run, where Recovery will take us in life….
EXP: No matter what you think of the Kardashians, Kim’s comments to Oprah about the ‘reason’ her recent marriage broke up after 2 1/2 months speaks to the lack of info: she said they had never spent time together alone, so that once they were under the same roof on a daily basis, she realized they were totally incompatible.
• Naturally that suggests to all of us that some situations need to be researched more thoroughly before we jump in, as in “Look before you leap”.  So we’re back to: “Take the action & let go of the result”, or – do the best you can & learn from the outcome.

Taking actions – The best way to learn how you function in the world is by trial & error – IF you have enough info & a decent support system to guide you.  Try out 2-3 different ways to say or do something, & then evaluate the results.
• In most cases you can change your mind before or even during an activity, without major repercussions, so your decisions don’t have to be written in stone. ALWAYS have PLAN B. in case things don’t work out to your benefit.
• IF you still can’t take a particular action, keep working on:
– your negative beliefs, & the anxiety they create
– the connection to your PP (too strong)
– with your WIC (not strong enough)
– validating your needs & hopes, while practicing your boundaries

BROADEN you horizons. Not all RISK is dangerous. Keep trying new things.

NEXT: