A Dozen Steps

Can You Identify?

by Mark on February 19th, 2008

I can… I lived this also. Many of “us” have.

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 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 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.

Our Twelve A.A. Steps work well on this and so do these at Adult Children of Alcoholics.

Dysfunctional. “I was a functional alcoholic.” BS…

I still have a very difficult time with personal criticism but I am getting better! Thankfully. Here’s an example, as quickly as I can. “D*******’s” terminated my employment (earth job) last month. They said, truthfully, that I hadn’t met sales requirements. What they didn’t say, a lie by omission, is that I wasn’t the problem, they were/are, as is this current economy. No one, no matter how good or bad, can sell anything to the air. Without customers, there was no solution. Finally, even though the idiot store mgr. who perpetrated this act did it with a completely inappropriate demeanor (imagine - an ear to ear grin), I didn’t react!

Next - I certainly married another child of an alcoholic so what did I expect? Now, I wasn’t perceiving it that way then but abandonment was surely a part of that equation as was a rescue.

Feelings? Wow… “Don’t let your father see you crying!” because, if you did, there was more of the same. The same? That boney hand hurt no matter where it found it’s mark, let me tell ya’. So did the belt or the spatula. Geez, both my parents, were they alive and “parenting” today, would be in jail. I learned how to “stuff” those feelings well. Which is why there came a time when I was told I had a short, or non-existent, “fuse.” Who wouldn’t be angry?

Thank God for the Twelve Steps of A.A.! And every other Twelve Step group like Adult Children of Alcoholics! Yes, I have recovered from a hopeless state of mind and body, but, that doesn’t mean my work is done.

[Credit for what is copied above - Adult Children of Alcoholics: The Problem]

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POSTED IN: Experience, Strength and Hope, Helpful 12 Step Sites, Personal