Codependents working their recovery Community Group
Working on recovery
Here are some dailies from ACA.
Anyone can have these sent out
to their emails.
https://adultchildren.org/newsletter/
Working on recovery
Here are some dailies from ACA.
Anyone can have these sent out
to their emails.
https://adultchildren.org/newsletter/
"We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect." BRB p. 590
As we learn to reparent ourselves with respect in ACA, we oftentimes find ourselves at odds with our Inner Child. Maybe our child is clamoring for an expensive cup of tea at a nearby coffee shop, or just wishing for a better car. We might have once quashed that inner voice in a shaming manner, and said things that we heard as children, like "Stop wishing for what you can never have." We can now be a responsible parent and respectfully say, "No, we can't afford that right now."
With the help of our program, we also learn to put things in perspective. Maybe we can decide that even though a chai tea latte is never going to be a daily habit, we can afford it this once if our Inner Child is having a bad day and wants a treat. And yes, the Lamborghini is out of our price range, but we can allow ourselves to visit the mental Lamborghini showroom, sit in the car with our Inner Child and say, "It's okay to wish for things we may never have." It's a tiny gift not to squash our hopes and dreams, but it is a lasting tiny gift.
On this day I will show respect for myself, my Inner Child, and others. I will remember that wonderful things I never thought possible have happened to me because I dared to dream.
"Having an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, we preferred to be concerned with others rather than ourselves." BRB p. 589
When we arrived at ACA, many of us realized we had a pattern of putting all others before ourselves. It seemed their lives were more important than ours, and we just got the crumbs or whatever was left over. We had developed a "What about me?" victim persona.
Some of us noticed this when we finally became so tired of not being listened to by friends and family. We thought, "Hey, I want to talk about my life, my interests, my challenges, too!" This deprivation had led us to feeling lethargic, hopeless, and depressed. We were wallowing in self-pity, compulsions, or addictions to numb our pain.
In recovery, we find ourselves transforming this pattern. Our unconscious compulsive reactions are lessening. We find freedom from our survival traits when we talk in meetings and with our fellow travelers. We work the Steps. We meditate and pray. We read and write about our thoughts and feelings. We begin opening up, ready and willing to turn our dysfunctional patterns over to our Higher Power. We see how our wounded Inner Child is responding to our inner loving parent's compassion.
On this day I know there is an alternative to being overly concerned with others rather than myself. Gradually, more of my needs are met and I feel I am finally listened to.
"I give it away to keep it - recovery." BRB p. 513
When we come to ACA, we are hurting. We find others like ourselves. Because we learn to trust these people, we gradually allow ourselves to open up and share our deepest secrets.
But in some cases, people we've grown close to leave, and we feel abandoned, just as in our childhoods. We wonder if we should go, too. Maybe we've done all we can and should move on; maybe this ACA program isn't the answer to everything; maybe we aren't having the big "aha" moments anymore.
So why should we stay when others might not? Because this abandonment we feel is different; we are using new tools that help us work through these feelings. Everyone doesn't have the same path, and we can feel sad when people leave and hope they find what works for them. But for us, ACA is the healthy choice. We decide to stay, first for ourselves and then for others. We give back what we've gotten to the next person who comes through the door. These are our peers. We may not all look and act alike, but it's amazing the help we can give one another. By being there for others in recovery, we learn more about ourselves.
On this day I will rededicate myself to my recovery in ACA. I know this is where I belong.
"Freedom from alcoholic insanity is a question of responsibility. We cannot be responsible for something we did not create." BRB p. 88
We thought of ourselves as something worthless at the center of the universe. We had tried to commit suicide in many ways, both emotionally and physically, thinking to ourselves "Maybe this time they will see what is going on." But nothing changed and neither did our perpetrators. We spent all of this energy for what?
In ACA, we learn that we are the ones who have to change. To do so, we first need to let go of the responsibility for the alcoholic insanity. It has always been unmanageable, with or without us.
We start to see that we deserve to have a chance at a sane life, even though we aren't quite sure what that would be like. We look out before us and see there is light ahead. We can't see what it is, but we also can't stop moving towards it. It feels good and warm. That scares us at first, but it also feels new and exciting.
We put down our shame and our addictions that no longer serve us. We release our character defenses. It is time to see what this thing called life is about. We allow ourselves to walk forward.
On this day I will remember that I am responsible for myself, but not for the insanity of my childhood. I will use the memories to heal myself, but then leave them in the past so I can be free.
"Our experience shows that we often lived as victims." BRB p. 14
Many of us may have gotten very good at playing the victim. But we tell ourselves that we didn't create that role for ourselves. Wasn't it those other people and circumstances that made us a victim?
Holding on to regrets and resentments is like wrapping ourselves in a blanket of thorns. Each minute of each day we are aware of the fact that the thorns are causing us pain, and the only comfort some of us get is thinking that at least others see how hurt we are. But nobody wants to live with a victim, not even the victim.
How different our lives and our world would be if we could go back and undo the past. But life doesn't offer us that option. What we do get is a choice, to either accept our past and work through it, or to remain a victim, letting it continue to influence who we are and what we do.
When we recite the Serenity Prayer in meetings, we need to believe the words "Accept the things I cannot change." Our past happened. As uncomfortable as it was, it can become the catalyst that helps make us stronger.
On this day I will continue to shed the blanket of thorns I've worn as a victim and wrap myself in the soft blanket of recovery.
"Gradually, with our Higher Power's help, we will learn to expect the best and get it." BRB p. 591
Our Higher Power is always ready to assist us in realizing our spiritual wholeness. If we take the time and effort to do the work, we will be repaid a thousandfold.
So what are we to expect after all our work? To be the singularly awesome human beings our Higher Power meant us to be with all our wonderful and our not-so-wonderful gifts. Our Higher Power unconditionally loves us from our gray hair to our mohawks, from our double chins to our crooked toes. We are loved for our humanness - creations as magnificent as the galaxies. We are spiritual beings who are having a human experience filled with hurdles and hoops, minor fender benders and colossal blunders.
We have many splendid gifts that we have only just begun to discover. We are learning to ask for the best and we stop placing limits on what we think that is. As we continue to work hard and have faith in our Higher Power, we are amazed to uncover even greater gifts that were just waiting for us to discover.
On this day I will not limit my expectations to small ideas. With my Higher Power's help on my recovery journey, I may get more than I can imagine: Me.
"In Step Five, the ACA member trusts another to hear his or her life story without judgment. For many, this is the first time the adult child has told the most intimate details of his or her life to another. Trust of another person is one of the spiritual principles of Step Five." BRB p. 632
The first time we did our Fifth Step with someone else, we may have been really nervous. Then we felt affirmed as the other person didn't run away or shame us for what we shared. We had broken the silence, and it was a huge relief as we unpacked years of baggage. In a haze, we stumbled in the dark with the loving presence of a fellow traveler by our side. We released our past. We walked away better, lighter, and with a sense of completeness we may have never experienced before.
Hearing someone else's Fifth Step can be such a privilege. When we are asked to do so, we remember our own vulnerability when we shared our lives in this manner. Recalling our own experience helps us honor the other person and treat them with the respect we were given. To help each other on such an important journey truly benefits both individuals.
On this day I will look forward to the time when I am ready to do my Fifth Step so that I can experience the freedom on the other side. When I am then asked to hear another's Fifth Step, I will honor that request as the wonderful gift that it is.
"As we move out of emotional isolation, we regain the ability to recognize and express all of our feelings." BRB p. 361
As children, many of us were not allowed to show our feelings. So we stuffed them and pretended not to have them for fear of being ridiculed or punished.
Is it any wonder that we carried this over to adulthood, where we continued to stuff our feelings and convince ourselves that they didn't matter? Or perhaps we chose the route of medicating our feelings with addictions or obsessions until we didn't have to experience them.
We come into ACA as adult children with an armful of triggers. These triggers can turn what should be a mild reaction into rage, not because of the situation, but because what is said or done awakens our stuffed feelings.
These denied feelings interfere with relationships, as we leave in our wake people who can't figure out why we respond the way we do.
ACA reaches into these hidden areas and brings our childhood feelings into the light of day where they eventually lose their power over us.
On this day I will continue to trust and appreciate that ACA is a safe place for me to recognize and express my feelings.
"The purpose of service in ACA is to support one another in becoming responsible for our own well-being." BRB p. 354
It can be difficult to start doing service when service seems to carry such a heavy responsibility. The idea that we can help another person recover feels similar to our having tried to save our families.
Yet service in ACA is what provides others the opportunity to assume responsibility for themselves. Opening the meeting, being the secretary, keeping the books, and picking up chairs after the meeting are all things that keep a meeting open and provide the means for ourselves and others to recover.
As members turn to us for guidance, we realize that we can share our experience, strength and hope, but that also, the directions are right in front of them. The "Newcomer's Pamphlet," the BRB, the Yellow Workbook, and other pieces of literature will answer any question the member may have.
Our goal is to support adult children as they become comfortable with the idea that they can be responsible for their own well-being. It may be very frustrating to the newer member to understand that by allowing them to find the strength to love themselves, we are expressing a deep level of love. However, if done with a spirit of love and a short explanation, they will feel the strength of the program filling in the vacuum they had long sought to deny.
On this day I will give service, realizing that every part of setting up a meeting creates an opportunity for ACAs to become empowered to love themselves.
"Para-alcoholics (co-dependents) are reactors rather than actors." BRB p. 17
Before ACA, many of us ran from one person to another, one idea to another, found "better" jobs, sought solutions for our medical ailments, read all the self-help books: we tried anything to change the way we felt. We were so mixed up inside, wondering why everyone else seemed calm and reassured, while we had fireworks going off in our brains and bodies. Each time we jumped into frantic action, the results were usually hurtful to ourselves or others.
How did we learn to react so intensely? As children, each step we took or didn't take caused "bombs" to go off. We were told things like "Can't you do anything right?" or "If you'd just stop acting like that, everything would be better." We were scapegoats. We became reactors in an attempt to try to fix things. And we carried this behavior into our adult lives.
In ACA we find relief, one day at a time. We learn to use the slogans, like "Easy Does It" when we feel an "emergency" inside. They help us act in healthier ways by doing nothing, even if we have to sit on our hands or zip our lips until the compulsion passes.
Self-reflection is imperative during these times. Stopping ourselves before we react inappropriately, and even in mid-sentence, helps us gain self-confidence and positively affirm ourselves.
On this day, when I feel a compulsion to react "Right Now," I will remember two slogans: "Don't just do something, sit there" and "Be Still and Know." I am learning to be calm in the face of internal chaos.
"Using a substance to alter the feelings is the second way to dissociate from feeling pain. The most easily available substances are alcohol, sugar, nicotine, and caffeine." BRB p. 87
Many of us came to ACA with addictions to drugs or alcohol. Others came with addictions to money, food, sex, or gambling. With the help of other 12 Step programs, we successfully worked on these presenting problems. But there were other seemingly more acceptable addictions that we picked as a way to mask our pain. In our quest for emotional sobriety in ACA, our feelings have to be available to us in order to locate the underlying trauma in our lives. Even if we're participating in these more acceptable addictions, like watching hours of TV each day, a nicotine habit that interrupts everything we do, or excessive caffeine, our feelings are being masked.
If we continue to alter our feelings in these or similar ways, it may be because the underlying trauma seems too scary to face. But to find true freedom for our Inner Child requires that our feelings to be accessible. We need to be "present" to work our program if we are to become our own loving parent, which means rejecting the role models of our childhood. We make a commitment that the abuse stops here! We allow ourselves to be imperfect and move towards our ultimate goal of being fully awake without reservation.
On this day I will be honest about what I may be using to numb my feelings. I will reach out for help so that I may find the peace I deserve.
"Grief is loss that is stuck beneath denial, willful forgetting, and the fear of being perceived as dramatizing the past. Grief is the built-up defeats, slights, and neglect from childhood." BRB p. 199
Before we came into ACA, we might have thought of grief as something we experience only from overt losses such as death of a loved one, divorce, or a devastating illness. With recovery in ACA, we also experience grief as something that comes from the loss of our identity in childhood. We're exposed to many suggestions of what those childhood losses might be, such as being regularly and unfairly criticized by a parent, being compared to a sibling who was more well-behaved, being told we were bad, dumb or inferior, being told to keep secrets - the list goes on.
Just as it's valuable to handle more overt losses by grieving in a healthy manner rather than avoiding, numbing, and dissociating, we learn in ACA to practice loving ways to grieve our childhood losses, By working the Steps and learning to have a dialog with our Inner Child, we discover that our bodies and minds remember the neglectful and shaming acts of the past. Unearthing these memories and facing the feelings buried within them isn't easy, but we discover an amazing payoff on the other side of this grief - being fully self-expressed and feeling alive, perhaps for the first time.
On this day I will be aware of and focus on one of the losses I experienced in childhood and practice a loving and compassionate way to grieve that loss.
"Yet, we come from homes in which doing our best was never good enough. Or it seemed never good enough." BRB p. 37
As children, many of us were expected to perform. But no matter how well we did, we didn't receive praise - just higher expectations. It was normal to want to hear we were valued and we yearned for affirmation that we were okay. But in its absence, we were left to believe we simply weren't good enough.
As adults, we heard those tapes in our head and kept setting higher expectations of ourselves. No matter what we achieved, we never felt good enough. Many of us were lucky that we inevitably hit a wall we couldn't climb and found ACA and the help we needed.
We began to also see that not getting praise had kept us from knowing how to give praise. For those of us who have children, we wanted to do it better but couldn't find the language, often believing that praise would give them permission to stop trying. We had repeated the pattern, not realizing that the disappointment in their eyes mirrored our own childhood feelings.
As we learn to erase the tapes in our heads, we begin to give ourselves the affirmation we didn't get - that we are good enough. We can now pass this sense of worthiness on to those who mattered in our lives.
On this day I remind myself that I am good enough, and I fill myself with praise and good feelings.
"We cannot forgive another until we forgive ourselves." BRB p. 233
As children, we learned to be critical of ourselves and to see ourselves as never being good enough. This was told to us so many times and in so many ways by the adults in our lives that it programmed itself into our self image. The thought of forgiving ourselves for doing or saying something wrong never entered our minds.
In ACA, we learn that self-forgiveness is essential for honoring and loving our True Self. It is how we learn to affirm our worth and build a foundation for being able to forgive others.
Learning to love ourselves unconditionally opens up a new world. It may not be easy for many of us because of the critical inner voice that seems to keep beating us down, but it's possible - we know that because we see it happening in others.
Once we begin to give ourselves this gift, we are then better able to give this same gift to those around us. But doing so does not mean we excuse unacceptable behavior; we simply learn to forgive and accept others for who they are. Only then can we make a decision about whether we want them in our lives. But we will make that decision from a healthy place, not one of anger and resentment.
On this day I will strengthen my spirit, showing myself unconditional love by accepting myself for being human.
"This is a description, not an indictment." BRB p. 589
Even though it says in The Problem that it's not an indictment, it may still feel that way at first. Many of us felt locked forever in continually repeated patterns of family dysfunction. But in spite of that, we see the wisdom of what's written down. We come to realize that this description, based on The Laundry List, can actually feel comforting. We're no longer alone when we enter an ACA meeting and find we can share these Traits openly without criticism, because others have the same "habits."
We cannot change where we came from or what happened to us, but we can choose to work the ACA program of recovery and find a way out. Each day, we can use any of the tools of the program, such as the Steps, the phone, the meetings, a sponsor, and so much more.
We are no longer trapped in a horrible past. We may sometimes feel bad, but we are not bad in our inner core. Whatever traits or shortcomings we have, we look around us and see that we are not alone. We now have the support of others in the program and our Higher Power.
On this day I rededicate myself to living this new life. I will pick up the phone, go to a meeting or spend time reading the Big Red Book to nourish myself.