Minute to Freedom

Have you ever felt like everybody had to be OK with anything you did?  One of the traits I carried into adulthood from growing up in an alcoholic family was constantly seeking approval for my actions.

Has it ever seemed like you are numb to the events in your world?  It has for me.  When I was 8 my grandfather died, and the family acted as if nothing happened, and I felt no sadness or emotions about it.  I had learned to stuff my feelings, and carried that into my adult life.

Have you ever felt like a little kid in an adult world?  Remember the movie Big, with Tom Hanks?  I was in an adult body, but in many ways I was still 13 year old Josh Baskin, sitting in a dumpy motel room in New York City, scared to death.

Have you ever felt like you're responsible for everything that happens? Whatever is going on - somehow, it is your fault?  You are to blame.

Isolation is one of the most damaging effects of growing up in an alcoholic household. Like many adult children of alcoholics, I had this trait.

Has it ever seemed like there were chunks of your childhood you just couldn't remember?  I know most people have things they have forgotten, but what I'm talking about is where there might be blank spaces in your past.

I decide in my early '20s the one thing I wanted most in life was not to be like my Dad.   Then I realized with a shock I had become just like my Father.

Has it ever felt like you give up easily if something doesn't seem to be working out? I discovered that for me, it was connected to being put down or humiliated when I successfully completed a project as a child.

Have you ever felt like you were so caught up in analyzing problems that you were immobilized? Stewing over problems without deciding was a way not to take a risk, and I had to learn to work on problems differently in order to actually solve them.

Have you ever wondered what was normal in a certain situation.  I often have, because in my household growing up, there were very few stable patterns of behavior - everything was unpredictable.

Yes, no, black or white, for me or against me.  Any of that sound familiar?  Either you agreed with me, or I would have to make you a bad person in my mind to defend my position.  I have learned to respect the opinions of others, and sometimes "agree to disagree."

Have you ever found yourself lying about something when there was really no reason to do so?  As a child, if I admitted to anything, it could lead to a negative and painful consequence.  I learned to always deny knowing anything.

Have you ever found yourself defending someone who is taking advantage of you? I had a friend who would call every time he needed some help with his house.  But he was never around when I needed something.  I had to decide my time was worth more than that.

Has it ever felt like you struggled to finish things - an assignment at work, a fixit project at home? As a child, I learned that things just never got finished where you could enjoy them.  I continued that logic into adulthood.

Is there something inside you that makes you sense that if you talk about what's going on with you, it will lead to bad things? I had to learn all over how to talk about what happened and what was happening, and how I felt about it.

Do you ever let people get close, and then it feels like they're too close, and you push them away? I would even create fights with someone after we'd gotten close. I had to realize that not everyone was dangerous and threatening.

Have you ever felt like you were out of step with the world around you?  I remember being at a church retreat with 70 people, and here I was, somehow separated and different from the others in the group.

Have you ever been told you're controlling?  I was told that, and didn't like it, but as I started looking at how I was living in my world, I discovered it was true. I was trying to control today's events like I couldn't control the alcoholic family of my teenage years.

Have you ever been told you overreact to things?  I've heard that a lot, because things that happened in my world all seemed out of proportion or scarier than they actually were.

Have you ever felt like you can't tell people who you really are? In my case, I couldn't because I didn't know who I was.  And I was afraid if people discovered how I really was, they wouldn't like me.

There's a saying in some literature that says we won't regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.  I didn't think that statement could apply to me. But as a result of doing the hard work of recovery, I've seen it come true.

I knew a guy once who was just waiting for his alcoholic mother die - so he would no longer have to deal with his issues around her drinking.  It didn't happen that way.  He tried to avoid it, but he would act like she was still in the room, telling him the same negative messages from childhood.

There's a saying, we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.  I didn't believe that was possible for a long time, until I saw it happening in my world.

If I am invisible and no one sees me, then no one can hurt me. A friend told me she used to watch me walk into our Sunday School class, trying to slide into the back and disappear into the crowd.

One of the roles in an alcoholic family is to be the hero - the one who fixes the problem, cleans up the mess from the drinking, and is viewed as a savior within that world. I did that a lot, but it was just a mask I hid behind, so people wouldn't see how scared and inadequate I usually felt.

Do you hate conflict?  Want to always make peace wherever you are? I learned that as a child - to smooth over the rough waters so conflict would hopefully go away.  If there was no conflict, there could be no dangerous backsplash on me.

Do you ever feel like you're responding to life based on some old messages stuck in your head? I was living that way, until I was introduced to affirmation.  I Dan, am a loving and worthwhile person.

Ever had an upset stomach?  I did for years, and thought it was exclusively a physical ailment. When I started working on my issues from growing up in an alcoholic family, I realized my upset stomach was something I had first experienced in the turbulence and uncertainty of the violent household.

Have you ever been confused by a double message?  By that I mean the sort of things I learned as a child.  "You're incompetent - take care of the house." I learned to be very responsible as a child, while at the same time being told I wasn't very good at whatever I was doing.

Have you ever joked around a lot and been the life of the party?  Has it ever felt like a mask? "Although I might be laughing loud and hearty, deep inside I'm blue."  I had a friend see through my clown one time, and helped me see how I used it as a mask.

Do you ever find it tough to make a decision?  I learned in business school that not to decide is to decide.  I discovered that when I was growing up, if I didn't make a decision, I didn't take a risk, and was less exposed to bad things happening.

Have you ever felt like there was some solution that was just going to magically appear and make your world better?  As a teenager, I would sit in my room reading Swiss Family Robinson, about a loving family, and think something would happen to make our family that way.

One of my favorite lines from that movie is "I think God gets ticked off if we don't see the color purple." I sometimes get so wrapped up in the big events of my world that I forget to stop to appreciate the small but very significant things that surround me.

Have you ever felt like you're still a kid in many ways?  That's the essence of the inner child, and although it sounds hokey and '80s to talk in those terms, I think there is a real truth to it.  I never learned how to grow up in many ways.

Have you ever wondered what serenity was, and what it really felt like?  When I first started dealing with the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family, it was just an abstract concept to me.

Recovery is hard work.  It is - it just is!  Growing up as the child with an alcoholic and violent father was not a path I chose.  Yet as an adult, I was left with the effects of it, and there was just no way around that.  Doing the work to move beyond those issues was just a lot of tough work!

Have you ever felt like you should be apologizing for being born?  I took on a sense of shame, of being a mistake, from an early age. The shame was so woven into the fabric of my being that I didn't even know it was there.

Frozen ego? What is that?  A therapist once told me that as a result of a traumatic incident, your ego might freeze at the age you were when the traumatic event happened. It really helped me understand my world - because I was operating as a terrified 14 year old boy much of the time.

Has someone ever said something, and you figure out the absolute wonderful response - 3 days later? At the time a situation happens, I feel frozen and can't think of what to say, particularly if there is a negative edge to what is being said to me.

Usually there's one child in an alcoholic family who gets lost in the shuffle.  I watched this happen with a friend.  Lucy was a bright, gifted and talented person, who didn't understand that about herself, and would instead fade into the background and be hard to connect with.

My creativity had been shut down by a bizarre comment made by my grandmother when I was 8 years old.  Publishing my first book was a tremendous thrill, since it signaled that I had exposed the lie, and conquered that old writer's block.

A friend once told me, "Dan, you put people in categories, you pigeonhole them into the type of person you think they are.  Then when they do something that doesn't fit the category you assigned them, you don't know what that means, so you get mad at them."

Have you ever found yourself taking on the blame for events in your world?  Somehow becoming the focus of bad outcomes? As a teenager I became the lightning rod for my Dad's anger, and it continued into my adult world.

I heard a guy say one time in a men's group that he could fall in love, become involved, get rejected and feel sad, all while walking past a woman he didn't know at the park. We all laughed because we related!

When I first started dealing with the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family, it was hard to feel grateful about anything.  But I have begun to realize how lucky I have been to have found resources to help me overcome those problems.

Has it ever seemed like you're angry at someone, and can hardly think about anything else?  I had a lot of resentments about how I thought others had mistreated me.

Have you ever felt like somehow you're getting in your own way? In the '80s, I was working in the oil industry in Houston, and when I attained the highest pay for my segment of the industry, I suddenly decided I was tired of that work, and needed to go do something else.

Has it ever seemed like you could see what others needed to do in a situation, but couldn't see the same for yourself?  One of my friends said, "you know what your friends say when they're mad at you? Why can't he take his own advice."  Well, that brought me up short.

Tough love.  So what is that?  Has it ever seemed like someone is taking advantage of you, even when you may have told them to stop? I teach people how to treat me, and if I don't change how we interact, it's me who is letting it continue.

Has it ever felt tough to trust that a friend is really there for you?  When I was growing up in an alcoholic family, I learned never to trust anyone. Yet in adulthood, friends who really did have my best good in mind were kept outside a fence that only I could break down.

Has it ever seemed like it was difficult to just let go and do something on the spur of the moment?  I have had a lot of trouble with being spontaneous - unexpected events were frightening.