From Dictionary.com (one of my favorite sites):
Recover: to cover again or anew
Simple enough. The word that peaks my interest most is "anew." I realized this is the aspect that relates most to myself as an ACOA.
When I hear the word, "recovery," I immediately think of those trying to cope with some sort of addiction. This always frustrated me when learning about ACOAs. I found that, as the statistics show, most of the ACOAs quoted in my resources were alcoholics themselves. This made me angry, because I felt like I couldn't relate, or that the information was somehow skewed, because I was not actively coping or struggling with a personal substance abuse issue.
However, in this past week I've come to accept that I too am in "recovery." You are in recovery, too. We are recovering from others' problems that have caused a multitude of our own. Dammit...
The problem with many ACOAs, especially those who grew up with alcoholism in their families from the start (such as myself), is that we have no sense of "normality" to regain. We have to discover this state of affairs on our own--to cover something anew, so to speak. This is harder than I thought, and I'm sure you're finding out the same, too.
Based on recent occurrences in my relationships, I realized that reading one book on ACOA wasn't going to cut it. Of course, being financially strained does not help the situation when you need to buy books on the subject. But then I remembered that great source: the library. One book that I found particularly interesting was Lifeskills for Adult Children by Janet G. Woititz and Alan Garner. When I looked at the table of contents, I realized just how seriously growing up without an example could hinder our lives. While I don't feel I relate to all of these struggles, I wonder if some of you do:
- Making Contact With Others
- Expressing Feelings
- Active Listening
- Asking For What You Want
- Giving Others What They Want
- Solving Problems
- Asking Others To Change Their Behavior
- Handling Criticism
- Establishing And Defending Boundaries
- Fighting Fair
- Ending Conversations, Ending Visits
- Ending Relationships
Recently, it seems that my largest struggle is expressing my feelings. More of a struggle than that, though, is actually identifying them. My famous response to the question, "How are you?" was always, "I'm okay." Even when people would comment, "You don't look okay," I'd come back with, "Well, I'm alive, so I'm okay. It's when I'd be unable to breathe, move, or speak to you that I'd consider myself 'not okay.'" This was always the case, whether I was truly angry, sad, frustrated, happy, etc...I was just "okay."
I've been practicing the act of being honest with my feelings over the past few years when it comes to these sorts of greetings--usually because when the question is posed is the only time I consciously think about it: "How are you?" or "How're you doing?"I think this is a great start, because these are greetings that we so easily brush off. Try it: next time someone greets you in this way, say how you honestly feel, it's good practice for us ACOAs who have traces of being pathological liars. "Eh, I'm kinda bummed out about something right now," is a perfectly fine answer.
Of course, the trick is carrying this act through our entire life. I realized recently that I was not being honest in my relationships about a lot of my feelings. For instance, when I was discussing the idea of dating my now-boyfriend (non-ACOA, religious, faithful, hard-working, smart, loving...just an amazing guy) I was able to voice that "I have unknown struggles with alcohol, and I don't know how I'll really feel or react to your use of it. I recognize that alcohol is not evil, that people who use alcohol are not bad, and that I have been shaped by having examples of its abuse rule my life, but I still feel uncomfortable around it. It's something I've realized is going to take me a long time to get over..." Yay for me and my honesty! Of course, whenever he went out with his friends, or if I was with him and his family, I never said that his drinking of one or two beers was still bothersome to me. I also didn't tell him that I cried myself to sleep the handful of times he called me or visited me in a happy, drunken state. Why? Because I didn't feel like I had the right to feel like the way I did, considering he was doing nothing "wrong." He is a responsible (mostly), occasional, social drinker, and yet it KILLED/S ME!
Of course, I'm starting to ramble (take note of the title of this blog) and I'm trying to take on too much in this single post, but the point is that I exploded after two years of just pretending like I was okay, and it has made things even more difficult. Moral: START PRACTICING BEING HONEST WITH YOUR FEELINGS.
Of course, like I said, a whole other aspect of this is being able to identify those feelings. This is where I'm currently stuck. For instance, last night my boyfriend met up with some of his old friends from college at a local bar (I was not present). I talked to him afterwards and asked him some questions about the evening. At one point I asked, "Did you have anything to drink?" "I had one beer," he said. Then he asked, "Does that bother you?" My answer was, "Yes and no. In my head it doesn't bother me--there's nothing wrong about what you did. But, emotionally, I feel like you having that beer is a punch in my face." "Why do you feel like it's a punch in your face?" he asked. "...*sigh*...I...don't....know...." I guess I need to read through chapter 2 very slowly...
Recovery: "The act of obtaining usable substances from unusable sources"
Our parent(s) may have been an unusable source. Our recovery is to find something useful to take away from the situation in order to build upon it and create anew the "normal" we never had. Basically, we are left to create something from nothing, which would mean literally breaking the laws of science. Well, we have feelings...I guess that's a place to start. Let's work to find out what they are, and how to use them to our advantage...even if that advantage is just to learn more about ourselves.
__________________________
Random(I'll do this from time to time): I feel like I made a large step in my "recovery" today. I finally looked up support groups and finally found my first ACOA meetings. I realized I had been looking in the wrong place all along. Here is the link to find ACOA meetings. Search for Al-Anon and look for titles with "AAC" for ACOA-specific groups. I found two potential locations. I sent two emails asking for more information. As someone who has had awful experiences with counseling over the years, and has completely discarded the idea of recovery support groups, I wonder if I'll be able to bring myself to go...
Here is another good link for ACA/ACOA meetings:
ReplyDeletehttp://allone.com/12/aca/