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 must shatter the illusion that we can reason out a painless solution." BRB p. 123
Adult children do not lack willpower. We have relied on our iron willpower to carry us through the most difficult of times. Sometimes, we may convince ourselves that in order to heal, we simply need more inner resolve. Even after we're in ACA, some of us try to will our Laundry List Traits away, thinking if we only had greater determination to get better, we could make different, healthier choices. Our desire is in the right place, seeking healing and recovery, but the method falls short. We may think we can read or learn about an easier solution and get better on our own, but we need the Twelve Steps of recovery and the fellowship to truly heal. There is no painless solution to our problem.
Throughout recovery, we will feel emotions and pain we may have suppressed. Grief over our childhood will surface, but it will not consume us. Our inner strength, once relied on for survival, will now give us the courage we need. We turn our determination not toward fixing ourselves in isolation, but to committing to our recovery in a supportive group setting.
On this day I accept the emotions that arise during my recovery journey, knowing any pain is temporary, and joy is possible as I continue to heal.
"Since alcoholism is a family disease, all family members are affected without having to take a drink. With an amazing predictability, the children grow up to be addicted or to marry an addicted or compulsive person." BRB p. 13
We may have been conscious of the effects of the alcoholic on our lives. Or more likely, we denied that their disease had any effect on us.
Slowly the veils of denial were lifted as we saw how, like it or not, we had been impacted by the disease, even if the alcoholic had been removed from the home. We may have unconsciously found a new and improved alcoholic personality type with which to continue the crazy-making game of dissociation.
When we attend ACA meetings, we seem to have an innate sense that the meeting space is safe as we speak honestly about what we are feeling and experiencing. We begin to see the patterns and habits in all of our relationships - that the dysfunction can spring from our lips without us even noticing it. We become more aware of the unhealthy choices we make, both consciously and unconsciously, and we choose different options.
On this day I acknowledge that I was affected by the family disease of alcoholism. I will pay attention to the patterns and habits I had denied so that I don't continue to repeat them.
"Attraction is different. Attraction is making information available about ACA without strings. There are no pitches and no grand promises." BRB p. 546
Many of us felt the rush of belonging when we started attending ACA meetings. We found so many answers. We wanted to give Big Red Books to everyone because we wanted them to know what we now knew. We may have even been tempted to wear an "ACA Rules!" t-shirt.
But we soon learned to slow down. We found out why this is a program of attraction, not promotion. It's more about actions and not so much about the talking. We allow our Higher Power to work magic in and around us.
We take things as they come. We no longer stay up at night thinking how to put ACA in the local water source. We are sad when newcomers come and then go, but we learn to let them go. We grieve as we watch people die from the disease of family dysfunction all around us while we get healthier.
We trust that there is an abundant source of love for us and for anyone else who is truly willing to walk the walk. We do our part and enjoy the results. As we keep the focus on ourselves, we see better results for us, and that's what positively impacts the world around us.
On this day I will remember that I can't force anyone to get this message. I can make the information available and let others make their own choices. The best message is the personal change I see in myself.
"Each of us comes to ACA with many talents. As we grow in our recovery, we discover even more talents within us." BRB p. 515
Many of us come to ACA not knowing what our unique gifts are. We may have always measured ourselves against others and decided we came up short.
But then someone we trust in our meeting pays us a compliment that we believe. With the support of such people, we learn to see, develop and express our special talents, large or small. Maybe our gift is the ability to provide encouragement, even a small amount, to another person that helps them stay on their path. It may not take much effort on our part, yet it can be huge to the other person. Sometimes we may never learn the positive impact we may have had.
Or maybe we have other gifts, such as the words to write a book that inspires millions. Whatever the case, we remember that each talent we possess is tremendously valuable, no matter whether it helps only ourselves or others.
Freeing ourselves from our cloudy thinking is what makes room for our ability to see, develop, and express our talents. That's part of the beauty of ACA: as we feel understood and appreciated, it frees us to express our gifts, becoming whole, well-rounded, recovering adult children.
On this day I recognize that I have unique talents. I am now willing to develop and express them as I learn how valuable I am to myself and others.
"Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs." BRB p. 190
In Step Five, for the first time we came clean about our real feelings and walked away from it more whole than before. We were not perfect and that was okay. We allowed our Higher Power to guide us through our histories with new insight. We were validated by our fellow travelers in the process, and we now knew definitively that we had been wronged and that we no longer need to accept abusive behavior from others.
This Step took a lot of courage. We paused before going forward to reflect on how far we had come and to enjoy the view. In a sense we had been reborn into selfawareness on a level we didn't know existed.
We started to put ourselves first because we were worth it. No one could take this new foundation away from us, because it was built on rock-solid pillars that could not be torn down by others anymore. We were gaining the inner strength necessary to face whatever was put in our paths. We were becoming free from those things that plagued us because we had been honest with our Higher Power and another person.
We looked forward to connecting with our Inner Child as we progressed. That child was awakening and knew it would never ever be alone again. We were there to provide the nourishment, giving everything we had.
On this day I will be honest with the most important person I will ever get to know: Me.
"We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect." BRB p. 590
The great advantage of teaching our Inner Child to look at life with as much good humor as possible is that it relieves tension. Think for a moment about the last time we heard someone say, "I'm right and you're wrong." Did we automatically assume a defensive posture and scan the speaker's throat for their jugular?
With the help of ACA, we can teach our Inner Child that instead of reacting, it's possible to reach instead for humor and say something like, "Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, so who knows who's right or wrong? What time is it, anyway?" Learning to smile in the face of criticism is an important skill. It helps when we learn that going to war isn't always required if we can sometimes use our wit instead.
Using humor to ease tensions is good for us. On days when we feel unlovable, silly good humor can be just the remedy to lift ourselves out of a funk. Maybe we can tell ourselves "Go find a mirror, look at your wonderful self and give yourself a kiss." That person in the mirror is our Inner Child who will be grateful for our attention. When we find the humor, we're helping our Inner Child's urge to have fun, something that didn't happen nearly enough while we were growing up.
On this day I will remember that humor has a purpose and I can use it to my advantage in the care and nurturing of my Inner Child.
"One of the keys to being restored to sanity involves surrendering our need to harm ourselves or to run from our feelings." BRB p. 137
It is not sane to have a battle within ourselves to keep feelings from surfacing. By running from our emotions, we lose out on the valuable lessons they may teach us. When we deny or stuff feelings, they continue to hide just under the surface. They become jumbled and confusing and tend to come out with the slightest trigger.
When feelings are experienced rather than denied, they lose their power. By learning to sit with our feelings and acknowledge them, we practice self-love. As we start to love ourselves more, we will want to harm ourselves less and begin to treat ourselves with genuine kindness and compassion.
But we don't just stop the behavior of self-harm all at once. Part of the process is to surrender this need to our Higher Power, knowing that we will be shown how to love ourselves. Whether quickly or slowly, we come to have faith in the Promises of ACA.
On this day I will nurture myself by accepting my feelings as they arise, knowing they hold opportunities for me to grow and love myself more fully.
"Family dysfunction is a disease that affects everyone in the family. Taking a drink is not necessary to be affected. This is an ACA axiom, and it serves as a basis for our First Step." BRB p. 22
Whether we are teetotalers or "self-made" alcoholics, our perfectionist and risk-taking attitudes and behaviors far outlast the seemingly temporary effects of alcohol and other dysfunction in the family body.
In Step One in ACA, we admit that we are powerless over the effects of alcoholism and family dysfunction. Those effects seem infinite in number, just as with the stars in the sky. No matter which effects we start to work on in recovery, we will most assuredly uncover more subtle effects each time we do the Steps. It is a process of discovery - that we are all affected by this disease of family dysfunction.
As we keep coming back, we experience the everexpanding foundation of our recovery as we continue to admit the effects over which we have no control.
On this day I will remember that I am powerless over the effects of alcoholism and family dysfunction. However, I am not powerless over myself. I now have the willingness to face the impact my childhood has had on me.
"ACA is a worldwide fellowship…. New groups are established each week somewhere in the world." BRB p. 350
We suffered such confusion and chaos as children. Feeling horribly alone, on display, hunted, in danger, and lost, we wondered when our world would ever look like other kids' worlds. What was wrong with us that made our world different?
Many of us grew into adults who became jaded and numb and shut down. We gave up on our world becoming like others. We were just hoping to get by without too much drama, too much pain. We did little things daily to hang on, but we were aware that our lives were a struggle and very disappointing.
When we got to our first ACA meeting, we discovered that we were not the only people who felt like this - we weren't alone after all. When we heard that ACA was a worldwide fellowship, it was exciting to know that so many people were finding help. Sadly, this disease of family alcoholism and dysfunction exists everywhere.
Now that we know this is a global problem, we also know it wasn't created by our particular parents, and we must admit they weren't the only problem. It's bigger than that. Knowing that we're part of a world of people who are now recovering together as adult children gives us great hope and a feeling of comfort.
On this day I join hands with the world of adult children as I remind my Inner Child, "We were never alone."
"During these years of family dysfunction, our Inner Child or True Self went into hiding and remained heavily fortified under addictions or dependent behavior." BRB p. 106
Before ACA, we might have heard about and even had glimpses of our Inner Child, or True Self - the part of us that hungers for the unconditional love and support we didn't receive in our families. This is the part of us that is most often buried pretty deep behind defense mechanisms and addictive behaviors that we thought were somehow protecting us from further harm.
But in recovery we learn the reasons why our True Self went into hiding. It finally starts to makes sense why that part of us can be elusive and hard to access on a regular basis.
As we identify and release our childhood trauma, we come out from behind our addictions and self-destructive behaviors to make it safe for our Inner Child. We reparent ourselves and give ourselves what we didn't receive. We begin to blossom inside and make ourselves whole with the help of our Higher Power, our fellow travelers and the tools of ACA.
On this day I will welcome and nurture my True Self. With the support of my Higher Power and ACA, I am able to provide for myself the unconditional love I've always deserved.
"In ACA, we have stories of relapse and the importance of getting back to the program if relapse occurs." BRB p. 391
We may have thought that relapse was only for others with more serious, life threatening addictions, not those of us in ACA. We had been abused. We were the ones in the right. If we let our character defects get out of hand once in a while, we were entitled, weren't we? That wasn't relapse. That wasn't even life-threatening.
By taking an honest look at ourselves in the Fourth Step, we see that emotional relapse can be just as lifethreatening as anything else. We realize how we may have relapsed when we've gone back to our family of origin too often, hoping things would be different. But instead, we watched them tear each other to shreds and found ourselves participating, even a little bit. Maybe we've ignored our screaming Inner Child as we practiced other self-harming behavior, ignoring our Higher Power in favor of our old compulsive self-reliance.
Seeing how susceptible we can be to relapse, just as those who deal with substance abuse, we become more vigilant, but not in the way of our childhood hypervigilance. This vigilance is an awareness of how "awake" we are. We are mindful about maintaining conscious contact with our Inner Child and our Higher Power through our daily inventory. We create the time and space we need to move forward on our journey, no longer abandoning ourselves.
On this day I will maintain daily contact with my Inner Child and my Higher Power to help me stay focused so that I avoid emotional relapse.
"At an appropriate time, we review the relationship we want to have with our families. We will choose to avoid some family members because they are draining or abusive." BRB p. 123
Even though we lived through the same experiences as others in our families, we may have reacted differently and developed different scars and ways of coping that often divided us much more than it united us.
When we begin our recovery in ACA, this divide makes it more difficult to be around the circus that is our extended family. With practice, resolve and support from other ACAs, we give ourselves permission to avoid situations that can drain us of all energy and even cause us to revert to our own dysfunctional behaviors.
If we think some family members are too toxic and abusive, we can disconnect. We don't have to participate because we know how emotionally draining they are. We have a choice. We don't have to go down with a sinking ship.
This separation doesn't have to be forever. Many of us eventually get to the point of reintroducing our True Selves to the family, and we let them make the choice to interact with us on our terms, or not.
On this day I give myself permission to separate from my family's dysfunction. This gives me the opportunity to become who I am meant to be, not who I am expected to be.
"The more I change, the more I get these little hints from people around me to go back to my prior behavior, because that's when they felt safe with me." BRB p. 411
As we started to break out of our old patterns, others became unhappy with us. They felt betrayed and abandoned as we became more self-sufficient. We were no longer taking care of them, and our healthy detachment put a distance between us that was uncomfortable for them.
Taking care of ourselves is new behavior because we were taught to always placate others. Our new reactions are helping us gain ground for the first time. We are no longer bludgeoned and bullied by the silence of others as they try to manipulate us. We have begun to trust our own feelings over the desires of other people, no matter how much we think we need those relationships to be okay.
We allow others to own their own feelings. When someone is angry, we no longer assume it's our fault, and we don't let their anger control us. We move forward.
If others break off relationships with us as a result, or act wounded, we don't try to fix things; we are no longer willing to throw ourselves under the damaging tires of shame. We have learned to walk around those spiky pits of guilt and move on.
On this day I will trust that if one relationship ends, a healthier one will take its place when the time is right.
"By taking the action of responding to one another with love, we simultaneously allow ourselves to give and be given to in a way that heals the wounds of our childhood and meets our simple human requirements for attention, love, and respect." BRB p. 363
Taking action coming from love challenges the family of origin belief system. As children, our ability to love and trust was forced into hiding due to either abuse, or neglect, or both. Deep in the recesses of our soul, our Inner Child knows the truth and waits for the right opportunity to give and receive love.
Once the space for an inner loving parent opens, our Inner Child emerges and engages us in a loving, caring, discerning manner that often may surprise us.
As we grow, we give service in our meetings and within the fellowship. We come from a place of love and gratitude, which reinforces our commitment to our Inner Child and inner loving parent. We feel the effects of our changed responses; so do other ACAs who witness our growth.
On this day I open a space for my inner loving parent so that my Inner Child can emerge, feel loved and show gratitude, especially to other recovering adult children.
"Our experience shows that the Steps are a proven way of life, yielding new meaning and a sense of purpose in one's life." BRB p. 95
Did we save a life today?
Did we smile or have a kind word for a stranger? We might not know if that stranger was in the midst of despair, wondering if life was even worth living. Could our simple act of kindness have brought even the smallest spark of hope to that person?
We are not responsible for what others do, but we can consider the possibility that our recovery brings us new awareness of what is happening around us and the positive impact we can have in seemingly meaningless everyday contact.
We go through each day deep in our own thoughts. Often, we unwittingly avoid eye contact with others.
Even if we are not having the best day, smiling at a stranger and perhaps seeing a smile returned feels good. Maybe we let the person in line behind us go ahead when we have a basketful and they have one item. Or we take a few extra seconds to make eye contact with the clerk and wish them a good day.
These random acts of kindness can brighten someone's day and help us feel connected. We may never know the impact we make through our actions, even if we only spread a bit of joy in the moment. But it is worth the effort to carry this message of hope.
On this day I will remember that what I learn through ACA and the Steps is not just for me. My progress can affect everyone whose life I touch.