If you’re like me, and your mother is the adult daughter of an alcoholic, you may have grown up feeling more like a specimen in a Petri dish than an innocent, carefree, joy-seeking child. If your mother is an ACOA who hasn’t done her recovery work, she may have grown up feeling like something always felt wrong, but because there was no alcohol abuse to point out, she may have learned to sadly brag that the anguish that he feels inside- -which you could not name- was ‘you’.
The adult children of alcoholics who have not done their recovery work are unaware of how severely their emotional selves have been affected. Because their priorities in life were ranked according to their needs to simply survive, many times ACOAs are inadvertently stuck and don’t even realize it.
Because alcoholism is such an insidious disease, it seeps into the cracks of the psyche like a mist. To make matters worse, because alcohol use is often so socially glorified, it is difficult to hold on to the idea that people who abuse alcohol are acting irresponsibly, not only towards others, but also towards oneself. .
If your parents were emotionally neglected as children because their parents were alcoholics, they may not realize how ‘disconnected’ they are from themselves. When a childhood is filled with fear, survival is often the only thing on a child’s mind. Because a child’s basic instincts must be in hyperdrive, to simply survive, there is little time to mature emotionally and to connect with the spiritual side of the Self. And when these adult children of alcoholics have children of their own, they are blind parents and detached from any notion that they are emotionally disconnected from within. As a result, ACOAs are often unable to form authentic parental bonds with their children, simply because they have no idea what they are NOT giving to their child.
ACOAs, like the rest of us, are doing the best they can. But sadly, they are often blind to what it means to ‘feel’ loved on a psychological level, because they never have the experience of ever ‘feeling seen psychologically’ themselves, as a result of being self-absorbed, drunk, and foolish. , alcoholics. Because they themselves had alcohol to point to as the reason ‘why’ mom or dad weren’t there for them, later in life, many ACOAs make a conscious decision NOT to drink, assuming that by choosing not to drink, their adult lives will. it turns out very well. However, what they fail to understand is that alcohol is not the problem. A painful sense of self-alienation – it is.
If you are the adult child of an emotional manipulator, alcoholic, narcissistic mother, drug addict, sexual abuser, verbal abuser, and the like, you have been raised by an individual who is cloaked by the curse of self-alienation. Because they are so alienated within the Self, they are unaware and unfortunately cannot “see you” in an authentic way. They raised you like someone was trying to lift a couch. You were supposed to sit there, be still, be quiet, and not get in the way. You were supposed to magically one day grow up, be happy, and move on. Your adult son of an alcoholic father, of course, would have been totally dumbfounded by any of your claims, implying that you didn’t do enough to instill in him a true sense of worth. His reaction to your claim may sound something like, “Ungrateful little brat. Don’t you see how hard I tried to make you happy? I brought you to this house, fed you, and dressed you. There was always heat running through the walls, and He always said ‘good morning and how was your day’, what else did you want from me? Did you want me to clean your ass too? “
Any attempt by you, the adult child of the adult child of an alcoholic, to try to make your parents ‘see’ or ‘understand’ the emptiness or disconnection you felt with them would have been faced harshly and with an insurmountable burden of fault. They would have made you feel like the shortest of the shortest for daring to imply that there was something your ACOA parents didn’t give you. In their minds, because all of their basic needs were met, unlike theirs when they were children, they would not have been able to understand that there was something they might have overlooked. In their minds, they didn’t drink, your house was always clean, and there was always food in the refrigerator. Because you never had to worry about where you were going to sleep at night, in your parents’ minds, they don’t know what “disconnect” you are trying to express.
In fairness to our adult children of alcoholic parents, if they did not choose to drink, they actually made much better decisions as parents than their own parents. Although we, your children, may have grown up feeling lost in the abyss that is the fog that lingers long after the death of our alcoholic grandparents, it is not the fault of our ACOA parents that they were raised by parents who were so drunk and absorbed in themselves that they couldn’t see them psychologically.
On the road to recovery, you will face many hidden secrets. If part of your deep digging makes you contemplate the fact that your parents are adult children of alcoholics, congratulations, you’ve found another piece of the puzzle that is you.
In the future, she will have to accept the lack that she feels inside, which has been the torch of self-alienation that her ACOA parents have passed on to her. Healing requires you to accept the lost shattered facets of the Self. Try not to spend too much time blaming your parents for the lost time. Instead, look at it, acknowledge it, welcome your soul home, learn to forgive, and finally let it go.
Hire a therapist or Life Coach to guide you on your path in life so that you can begin to make healthier life decisions for your future.
Read all you can about what it means to be the adult child of an alcoholic, as well as what it means to be the grandchild of alcoholics. Attend 12-step meetings and online social communities that are geared toward increasing self-awareness. Learn about codependency, enablement, denial, projection, and fantasy-type distraction-based thinking. Start meditating in the morning before you start the day and do another while you fall asleep. Start taking baths instead of showers. The goal is to learn to embrace the Self, rather than avoiding it any longer.
Congratulations and good luck on your transformation journey.
You are loved.
Namaste.
