Adult Children of Alcoholics

Growing up with a parent who suffers from alcoholism can have long lasting effects. Even as an adult, those early experiences remain with you and can have an impact on how you see yourself, your relationships, and the world in general. Three common rules learned by children who have an alcoholic parent are: Don’t speak, Don’t trust, and Don’t feel. You are told directly or indirectly not to talk to others about the pressure and issues in your home. You are taught that confronting a person on their issues is not an option. You are also taught not to trust. If you cannot trust those who are supposed to care for you, it becomes difficult to trust anyone else later in life. You also have to learn to control your feelings. Given the level of stress and chaos in the home, you learn early to suppress your feelings, needs, and fears. They are still present but hidden beneath the surface. As a child you make these adjustments in order to survive a difficult environment. As an adult you want to do more than survive, you want to figure out how to thrive.

The first key is recognizing the ways in which your childhood years have affected you today. For some this means coming to terms with the fact that denial is not the best coping strategy. For so long, the alcohol or other substance abuse problems may have been denied so you learned to pretend things were OK when they are not. You have to come to terms with the reality. The things you were exposed to were not OK and were not healthy.

Another issue is the need to release perfectionism. When you live with an alcoholic parent, you often end up walking on egg shells, trying to figure out how you can be good enough to either change your parent or good enough to not end up like them. The reality is you are a good person and all of us have faults, short-comings, and growth areas. While it is good to strive to become a better person, you don’t want to hold yourself to impossible standards and fail to appreciate the great steps you have taken. You especially don’t want to pass down perfectionism to your children, leaving them with the feeling that nothing is ever good enough. You can break this cycle.

One challenge to work on in yourself is either/or thinking which some people call viewing the world in black or white terms. Sometimes because of the pain you saw growing up, you can be quick to cut people off. You may do this to protect yourself but you want to be able to live with balance and not automatic assumptions and extremes.

Some adult children of alcohols who couldn't acknowledge their emotional pain ended up expressing their distress in their bodies. This is called somatic complaints – or physical complaints for which there is not a medical explanation. You may experience muscle ache, back pain, migraines, and nausea. By acknowledging your feelings and expressing them to people you trust, you can often experience a decrease in some of these physical symptoms of distress.

One final issue to address is difficulty letting go. When you grow up in a highly stressed household you always have to be on guard. Now however, you have to begin to separate the past from the present so you can actually learn to relax. Give yourself permission to have fun, to build trusting, comfortable relationships, and be at home with yourself.

This is not an easy journey as you are trying to turn around messages you received for many years. However awareness is a large step toward wholeness. To continue on your journey read about adult survivors of alcoholics on-line or at the local library, consider counseling, talk with supportive people, and take ownership for your present life. Take a deep breath as you consider how far you have come.

Adult Survivors of Child Abuse

Child abuse can be physical, sexual, verbal, or emotional. The range of experiences can include neglect, humiliation, routine physical assaults, or molestation. As an adult, survivors of childhood abuse may feel frustrated with themselves for still carrying the wounds of past experiences. It is important to be compassionate with yourself and recognize the truly deep ways we are affected by our early experiences. As children and adolescents we are figuring out who we are and our identity is largely shaped by how people treat us. Even if the abuse or neglect happened decades ago it may affect you in a number of ways.

Sometimes adult survivors have challenges with trust issues. You may have difficult trusting others or even trusting yourself. You may also find it difficult to relax and as a result you feel on edge most of the time. Being guarded or distrustful can make relationships difficult. Some survivors carry the trauma in their bodies which means you may for as long as you can remember suffer from migraines, nausea, or muscle ache. Childhood sexual abuse may affect your ability to be intimate, to feel good about your body, or your ability to sleep. Whether you suffer with depression, post traumatic stress, or dependence on substances such as alcohol, cigarettes, or other drugs, it is important to know that help is available.

Given the prevalence of child abuse and neglect, you are very likely surrounded by other survivors who simply have not shared their stories. It is critical to know that you are not alone and that is normal for you to be affected by the way you were treated. Recognizing that your past affects you but doesn’t have to define you is also a key to your recovery. You will not be able to erase the past but you can take ownership over your present and work to live a healthier life. Feeling better about yourself and your abilities are important priorities. There are a few strategies for life after abuse that I want to share with you:

1. Continue to remind yourself that you are not and were not to blame for how you were treated as a child. As an adult you may better understand what your parents or others were thinking or dealing with but the challenges they were facing does not make what happened to you OK.
2. Seriously consider going for counseling. Seeking help is a sign of strength not weakness. People often invest in their physical health and should also invest in their mental health.
3. Challenge negative thoughts instead of holding on to them. Start to change the way you think about yourself and others by interrupting negative thinking patters.
4. Use positive coping strategies instead of negative strategies. Reading, exercise in moderation, artistic expression, talking to a friend, and journaling are all good options.
5. Commit to breaking the cycle. You do not have to become like those who hurt you. Commit to building healthy relationships. You can interrupt the negative patterns and create healthy ones in their place.

Compassion: Considering Haiti

Yesterday an earthquake hit Haiti leaving countless dead, injured, and missing. This crisis can lead us to a place of growth or can result in us cutting ourselves off. The key here is compassion or the capacity to feel the connection, strong empathy, and concern for those who are suffering. This disaster presents an opportunity for us to realize the fullness of our humanity as sisters and brothers around the world. Unfortunately, some of us have difficulty with compassion. An inability to experience sincere care for others is often rooted in either an over-focus on the self or fear and avoidance. On the other hand, some people’s compassion becomes so overwhelming that they are immobilized by grief for the all of the suffering in the world. Healthy compassion that is from a balance and grounded place is important. Here are a few keys to keep in mind.

First it is important to know that emotions are a good and healthy part of our experience. Some of us have lived with the myth that emotions are pointless or only make us weak. Actually being able to tap into and express your feelings is a true sign of emotional strength. Seeing large-scale suffering may result in a mixture of feelings including but not limited to sadness, anger, frustration, survival guilt, and fear. Often when we don’t connect with our feelings we end up letting them out in unhealthy ways such as being quick-tempered or destructive. We may even experience signs of depression but are not aware of the cause of our deep sadness. It is important for us to remind ourselves that feeling emotions, even the painful ones, are a part of living full lives.

Secondly some of us dehumanize or blame those who are suffering as a strategy for relieving our guilt for not helping. We have seen this throughout human history from slavery and the holocaust to rape and child abuse. We even see people blaming victims by using religion. Some people have said the earthquake hit Haiti because Haitians made a pact with the devil. This response to human suffering is damaging, immoral, and psychologically stunted. The truth is bad things do happen to good people. Instead of trying to create a rationale to justify a person’s suffering, the humane response is to determine how we can help.

This leads to the third point. Some of us avoid the news and world events because we feel overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness. In actuality we can make a difference, even if it seems small in our eyes. Small action is ten times better than no action. So what can we do in the face of suffering? We can bear witness by listening and making ourselves aware of the situation. We can raise awareness in others by sharing what we know. Then we can give. We can give through prayer, donations, contributions, and advocacy for those in need of care.

The final point I want to make about compassion is the importance of seeing a person, community, or country completely not merely as victims or lacking. We should aim to see others the way we want to be seen. In other words the suffering is a part of the person’s experience but it is not all that they are. Haiti has faced many challenges including poverty, oppression, political corruption, and natural disasters. These things however do not come close to capturing the strength, beauty, culture, and rich history that is Haiti. I heard someone say today, “Well I was so sad about what happened in Haiti but then someone told me it wasn’t a good country anyway.” Wow! Let us all be careful that we never view people as either deserving of suffering or undeserving of our compassion. A person who does not care about others is in need of intense care themselves. Compassion is a key aspect of emotional well-being.

De-Stress

There are seasons we can be overwhelmed with stress. It may be that you have many things to do or everything seems to fall apart at once. There are different areas of stress such as financial, relationship, or work. There are also different degrees of stress. You may experience the low stress of simply having to juggle multiple responsibilities or you may encounter the severe stress of a major life event. Stress can eat away at your physical and mental health. When we don’t deal with our stress, it often balloons into larger issues with incredible consequences. There are a number of good strategies to help you to de-stress.

The first thing is perspective taking. You want to get an accurate sense of the situation. Are you letting everything stress you out, small and large or are you truly facing a difficult circumstance? When you are not in a good place emotionally, you can find yourself irritable and easily distressed. You need to take some time to really look at the circumstance to decide is this a mountain or a molehill.

Along with perspective taking, emotion-focused coping is helpful to many people in addressing feelings of sadness, disappointment, frustration, and anger. You want to find people and activities that help you relieve your feelings of distress. This may mean talking to a supportive friend, therapist, or minister. It may also mean reading a self-help book for inspiration. For some of you, emotional relief may be found in working out, writing, cooking, singing, listening to an encouraging speaker, or meditating.

In addition to emotion-focused coping, you will also need some problem-solving coping skills. You need to brainstorm about potential ways to address the issues. Weigh the pros and cons of each option. Begin to take action steps to improve your situation. The problem solving may involve a range of things including but not limited to: ending a relationship, seeking couples counseling, taking on an additional job, going back to school, creating a new budget, filing a complaint, setting boundaries, seeking professional help, or attempting to resolve a conflict by talking it over with the person involved.

Here are a few more strategies to help you de-stress:
• Set realistic goals.
• Reduce time with stressful people and stressful situations.
• Get rest.
• Set priorities by knowing what is really important to you.
• Deep breathing, visualizing, meditating, and/or prayer.
• Don’t turn to things that will make your situation worse: drugs, alcohol,
over-eating, casual high-risk sex, smoking, and caffeine.
• Learn to release and let go. Accept the fact that some circumstances
are outside of your realm of influence
• Practice better time management and money management.
• Change your attitude. Learn to shift your thinking and your focus to obtain greater peace of mind and clarity.

All of us face challenges. Take care of yourself before, during, and after the various storms of life, so you can maximize your mental and physical well-being.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is the letting go of bitterness and resentment resulting from an offense. Most major religions promote the importance of forgiveness. From a mental health perspective, being unable to release negative feelings can result in a sense of despair, rage, powerlessness, and depression. There are a few key points to remember about forgiveness.

First you need to be able to take perspective about the level of the offense. In other words, if everything anyone ever says or does rises to the level of severe offense, you will find yourself constantly angry and bitter. In essence, not everything is drama-worthy. On the other side of this coin are those of us who do not recognize when someone has indeed crossed the line in a significant way. If you constantly ignore offenses and various forms of disrespect, this is also not a good place to be in terms of self care and self respect. You want to get perspective such that you can distinguish serious offenses from more minor offenses.

A second key to forgiveness is recognizing it is a process. Process implies both time and effort. In terms of time, some people jump to quickly say they have forgiven someone when they haven’t given themselves time to process all of their feelings. This may result in forgiveness that is in words alone but the actual bitterness, sadness, and anger are still under the surface waiting to bubble up. It is natural and healthy to experience a range of emotions and it is important to give yourself space to work through those feelings. The working through is the process. In others words, it is not true that time heals all wounds. Time passing alone is not sufficient. If you want to forgive yourself or someone else for an offense you need to actively work toward it in your mind. You need to acknowledge the impact of what occurred and then work to heal those wounds.

A third element to forgiveness is the need to determine when to forget and when to remember. Some people will say if you remember it, you haven’t really forgiven. This is not always the case. One way to determine if you should actively remember it is whether the person has shown evidence of being truly sorry and committed to change. Here is an example. If you were molested as a child, you may have decided for your mental health to forgive or release the bitterness toward the person who molested you. However to pretend it never happen by letting that person watch your children is unhealthy. Likewise if you are in abusive relationship and the person has promised to change but continues to abuse you, you need to remember the pattern of abuse regardless of your decision to forgive. On the other hand, if a friend, family member, or romantic partner has hurt your feelings but has expressed in word and deed regret for their behavior and a commitment to being better, then you may choose to totally release it. Releasing it in this case may include both not dwelling on the past in your mind or continuing to bring up the past to the person who has changed.

The ability to forgive yourself and others is an important spiritual and emotional skill. It can free you from having to harbor resentment and anger. It also shows that you recognize that all of us are imperfect. It is wisdom and compassion that allows us to look at the whole person instead of reducing them to their negative deeds. In the end, it is for you to decide for your safety and growth, when and whom to forgive. For it to truly liberate you, it needs to come from the heart.

The Psychology of Clutter

As you prepare to enter into a new season, it is a good time to commit to living a clutter-free life. This can be a challenge to those of us who hold on to things and end up living surrounded by stuff. If we don’t heal our mindset, we can de-clutter today but new piles of stuff will appear tomorrow. So to really have a life change, let’s take a moment to consider the psychology of clutter.

For some of you, the tendency to clutter is based in past experiences of not having your basic needs met. You may have grown up in poverty or you may have been neglected. As a result, you really cherish stuff and end up hoarding things with the fear that one day you may need them. You may feel that you don’t want to throw something out that it is in good condition because that may seem wasteful or unappreciative to you. The beauty of the situation is you appreciate things that many people take for granted. The difficulty is you end up holding on to so much that you don’t have room to live and enjoy your space. Work on trusting that you don’t need to constantly live in preparation for an emergency. Try to live in the present and to see the way your behavior is limiting your present happiness and/or the happiness of those around you. Also consider being willing to bless someone else’s life with the many things that you have. Things that are in good condition but that are not being used are perfect items to donate and share with those who are living with less than you have right now.

There are another group of people who are suffering from depression and low self worth. You literally have difficulty mustering the energy to clean your space. You also may feel some sense of balance that your outside world matches your inner world: turmoil and confusion. You may try to clean up a little for others but don’t value yourself enough to believe you deserve to be in a clean environment for yourself. You rationalize this by saying the mess doesn’t bother you. The reality is your space can affect your mood so continuing to live in clutter is actually supporting your depressed mood. Consider going for counseling to address your underlying issues. In the meantime, try what is called a behavioral approach which means to change my thoughts and feelings I start by changing my behavior. So if you start to clear your space, in the cleansing you may also experience an internal cleansing and renewal.

There is another mindset around clutter which is a lack of responsibility. Some of us are just waiting for someone else to do it. You may have grown up in an environment where things were always done for you by parents, siblings, or housekeepers. As a result, it never occurs to you to cleanse and organize your space yourself. You see the piles growing but unconsciously or consciously you hope someone will come and just take care of it: the pile of dishes, the pile of clothes, and the pile of papers just keep mounting. The truth is you are an adult and need to take responsibility for your space. You have two options. You need to do it or if you can afford to you need to pay for someone to help you do it. If you pay for help, you still need to take responsibility for keeping up with your space in the in between time so that you are not living in clutter and filth.

Heal your mind and cleanse your space. You deserve a fresh start and there’s no better time than the present.

Addressing Addiction

There are many forms of addiction. Some of you may be addicted to alcohol or other drugs, while others may be addicted to shopping, sex, pornography, gambling, cutting, compulsive exercise, internet use, or overeating. Addictions are largely a symptom of an underlying issue. They are a compulsion to do a particular activity even though it has negative consequences for you, physically, mentally, socially, and/or financially. We use our addictions to cope with pain, disappointment, anger, depression, fear, and insecurity. To address our addictions, we have to be honest with ourselves about what we are medicating. What are we trying to numb, forget, or erase with our behaviors? When we really look at it, we will discover not only what we’ve been trying to cover up with our addictions but we will also discover that the addiction has not helped us. Using substances to distract us from the substance of the problem is never successful in the long run. It is a temporary fix and often our tolerance increases so we need more and more to try to give us a glimpse of peace. We begin to drink more, smoke more, hook up more, shop more, gossip more, eat more, all in an attempt to escape. But as the saying goes, wherever you go, there you are. We cannot escape ourselves so it is better in the long run to face ourselves and confront the issues that are under the covers.

To address addictions, we have to first acknowledge that the behavior is unhealthy. Take responsibility for the ways you have used substances, food, credit cards, or casual sexual encounters in a manner that does not serve you or benefit you. We cannot heal what we do not acknowledge. By stopping the denial, we interrupt the silence and shame and gain the courage to face our issues.

The next thing you need to do is get around supportive people. This may be family, friends, therapists, sponsors, an AA group, or your faith community. You need to surround yourself with people who are supportive of the changes you are trying to make. When we are constantly with people that encourage unhealthy behaviors, it is hard to make a change. These also need to be people you can truly be honest with and accountable to for the decisions you make. Resist the shame and stigma that often keeps people from seeking professional help. Addictions are a major challenge and you deserve the support you need to heal and empower yourself.

Another key to addressing addictions is replacing the addictive behavior with a positive coping strategy. The way you are currently coping is not good for you. You need to try other strategies such as talking to someone you trust, meditation, prayer, healthy amounts of exercise, problem solving, relaxation, and engaging in activities/hobbies that boost your self esteem. Develop an action plan of activities you will do both when you are feeling stressed and as a prevention tool to improve your mood before negative things occur.

A final important key is the use of positive self-talk. Often we give ourselves self-defeating messages such as, “I am a bad person. It’s too late for me. I’m stuck. Nothing is going to work for me. I’m hopeless.” These statements increase our feelings of guilt, shame, and despair. You have to begin to challenge those thoughts when they come up. Everyone may have a negative thought pop up from time to time but you can decide how you respond to it. Instead of feeding it and freely accepting it, challenge it. There is more to you that the addiction. With support, your life can improve. Your life and health are worth fighting for so be encouraged and begin to address your addictions today.