PREVIOUS: They did the best…. #2

See ACRONYM page for abbrev.

Part 1. General info, Denial
Part 2. Denial – Problem & Reality

3. AWARENESS INVENTORIES
Staying in denial keeps us stuck.  Accurate information is the beginning of change, because we need to stop pretending everything was “not so bad”. If we can be totally honest with ourselves, YOU CAN :

a. Make a list of all the ways they hurt your feelings, disappointed you, let you down, made life harder for you, said mean things, were disrespectful, demanded too much of you, didn’t help you learn … past & present (“5 Harmful Mothers”)
EXP: One lady said that when she told her aunt about her recent marriage, the aunt said: “Oh yeah, your mother mentioned it. She wondered how you got such a nice guy!”  GRRRR

b. If possible, talk to anyone (safe) who knew your family when you were young, & ask their honest feedback about that they saw & heard.  If not, then ask anyone who has dealt with them more recently
EXP: Another woman, in denial about how neglectful her mother had been, was talking to her oldest friend about those early years. Her friend said “Oh yeah, don’t you remember all the times she just left you alone to go out with her boyfriends?  I even told you then it wasn’t ok!”

c. Make a detailed inventory of all your adult mates, lovers, bosses, friends….. identifying what they all have in common, to see what you’re attracted to (how much are they like your family?) That will tell us your pattern of reproducing your upbringing
EXP: A young woman grew up a nice middle class family who were socially active, well dressed, not highly educated but practical & intelligent, generally admired & well liked.
On the surface all looked great, but behind the scenes, much psychological, spiritual & emotionally damage was being done – which was not acknowledged or dealt with. After all, they were “doing the best they could”!  (Hint: Both parents were unrecovered ACoAs)
THEN:
When the girl finally got out on her own, she ‘went wild’ & fell in with angry, disappointing friends, worked at inappropriate jobs & dated alcoholics. Most people treated her much worse than her parents had, so she must be crazy. Right? Only on the surface. Actually, she unconsciously found situations which expressed the inner reality of her home life – bringing to light the hidden abuse.

For expl: She realized that….
✓ …. her secret goal in life was to be dead! She remembered the first time she wished she were – at age 10.  At 13 she told her parents & they just shook their head. In her 20s she acted that out with dangerous men who had the potential to kill her, since she’d never do it herself

✓At 16 she found a high school Psych Class list of psychotic / schizophrenic characteristics, thinking it identified her (NOT), & was brushed aside by her father

✓ She believed her greatest ‘character defect’ was her need for love. After all, if she never felt loved & definitely didn’t deserve it – why was she still chasing it? What a fool!

✓ She hated herself for being ‘so dramatic‘ & intense. Her mother often claimed she herself was perfect, & was glad she wasn’t sensitive like her kids. SO, one way to be acceptable & ‘good’ was to not FEEL, which this young woman couldn’t do, being artistic & emotional.
✶ With therapy & Program she was eventually able to undo much of the damage & claim her natural self.

4. RECOVERY
• You may still think they did the best they could – but it wasn’t good enough to prevent seriously wounding you & your siblings
• The sad, enraging truth is that our family carelessly dumped their damage on us, & now we’re stuck having to clean up their mess. Unfair!! screams the WIC
• The important question is whether of not we’re willing to do the hard work of healing. There’s much to rage & mourn about.
For most of us, Recovery is long & stressful, but do-able, and WE are WORTH IT, even if our family didn’t think so.

NEXT: “Negative Benefits….” #1

PREVIOUS: What is Guilt (#2)

POINT 3. “GENERAL” Types

POINT 4 – MAIN REASON for ACoA Guilt (cont)

ACoAs feel guilty FOR :
• getting sick, being tired, not wanting to do something ….
• having our own opinions, likes, dislikes, needs & desires
• ‘making’ anyone angry at us, no matter what the reason
• standing up for our rights (we think it’s selfish & being confrontational)
• taking time for ourselves, needing down time, taking a vacation, enjoying ourselves
FOR NOT:
• being able to stop someone from drinking, drugging, or doing other self-destructive things
• being perfect
• being smarter, more sociable, more successful, more outgoing…
• knowing something, or taking too long to learn things (so many ‘shoulds’)
• making our parents, friends, lovers, children… healthy & happy

DEFENSES against FEELING Guilt
• Avoidance = “I’m too busy to deal with it”
• Condemning the agency = “The universe is against me”
• Denial = “I didn’t mean anything by it”
• Dissociation = “I never said that”
• Justification =  “I can’t help being bad”
• Minimizing = “I think you’re being too sensitive”
• Projection = “They asked for it”
• Rationalizing = “I did it because you were being a jerk”
• Self-abuse = “I feel better when I hurt myself”
• Self-deprivation = “I don’t deserve anything good”
• Sharing = “Listen to this….(ha, ha) I’m such an idiot”

 RESULTs of BREAKING Toxic Rules:
✧ Internal Backlash, in the form of abusive self-talk, being irritable, getting sick, feeling depressed, heightened anxiety, panic attacks…..
These can be countered by understanding where the backlash comes from, knowing that we’re doing the healthy thing, & comforting the scared WIC

✧ External Backlash – possibly from family, if we’re in contact, since they want us to ‘stick to the plan’ & not abandon them by being different.
Also from friends, bosses, mates, even children – for the same reason – they’re used to the ‘old’ us, & don’t want to make any changes in themselves to accommodate our growth!

OK, so NOW :
▪︎ we’ve identified our specific unhealthy rules
▪︎ & understand that obeying them retards / prevents progress
▪︎ & decided that to Heal & Grow, we have to stop obeying them —-
What then? ⬇️

POINT 5. HEALTH
Yes, at first we can expect the painful emotion of guilt.  But:
✶ This time – the guilt is a SIGNAL we’re doing something good for ourselves.  Since we don’t want to return to obeying sick rules, we can confidently say:
“This feeling of guilt is actually telling me that I’m on the right track – so by NOT obeying a harmful rule I’m doing something healthy for myself”. YEAYH!

✶ If we continue to dis-obey toxic rules, guilt will eventually diminish & in some areas even go away completely. So, it’s imperative that we tolerate this kind of guilt & backlash, in the short-term, & continue thinking & acting in self-esteeming / self-empowering ways, even in the face of opposition.

✶ Because this process is stressful, we need the right kind of supportive people in our life, to encourage our efforts, process confusing thoughts, reinforce our resolve & applaud our progress.
As long as the support is positive & realistic, it can come from anywhere – healthy family members, friends, therapy, books, internet, 12-step meetings, co-dependence rehab, clergy & spiritual disciplines….

NOTE : ACoA recovery-guilt is different from guilt about things we’re actually done that harmed ourselves or others. We need to deal with them separately.

We’ve heard that “confession is good for the soul”, & when done in the right places it provides forgiveness, which alleviates guilt.
The 12-Steps remind us that “We’re only as sick as our secrets”, so after writing out the Step 4 Inventory, Step 5 says: ” Admitted to God, to ourselves, & to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs”.

From “PERCEPTIONS”, the tv series (Season 2, #7)
Lecture on Confession & the Brain:
“…… Got a secret? Right now there’s a war going on in your brain – your cingulate cortex wants to tell the truth, but the orbital prefrontal cortex is calculating how bad it’ll be…
If the prefrontal wins, your stress level goes up. If the cingulate wins, stress drops.
So if it’s biologically healthier to confess our secrets, what is it about human nature that make us fight so hard keep them hidden?  Although we may be desperate to bury them, the more we try, the more they surface. We are neurologically compelled to confess……”

✶ As for ACoA Recovery-guilt, repeating new, healthy actions that counters our harmful beliefs will create new pathways in the brain – making it easier & more natural to be comfortable & successful in all aspects of our lives.

NEXT: What is SHAME? #1

PREVIOUS: What is Guilt (#1)

SITE:   “How to ditch the guilt of putting yourself first“

POINT 4 – MAIN REASON for ACoA Guilt
GUILT is an emotion that ACoAs feel often & intently. It’s a familiar companion of negative self-talk & of actions we believe to be bad, but which are not always.
G is an inevitable side-effect of self-hate, since our WIC’s default position is that we’re intrinsically bad, so anything that goes wrong for us (that hurts) is OUR FAULT.

This self-hate assumption is never to be questioned & is very hard to give up, even when we ‘know better’ – because we think it makes us less vulnerable, a little more powerful!
After all, if “it’s my fault – then it’s in my control to stop the pain – up to me to fix the problem, change something about myself or the other person – which will make it all better”!

Perfectionism leads to ACoA guilt. “If I fail at anything, no matter how small, then I’m not perfect & then I’ll never get the love, acceptance & validation from my family, & then by no one else in the whole world.”

MEANING: “I can do something to make things better.” We naturally thought that obeying their rules would work
PROBLEM : Not only were those rules cognitive distortions, they also kept changing, were endlessly contradictory or simply impossible to fulfill. And the adults didn’t follow their own rules! Remember “Do as I say, not as I do” ? ? It was crazy-making!

In childhood – having power over our circumstances was an illusion, since the cause of our pain came from outside of ourselves. Alcoholic, narcissistic family members & others were the source of our suffering, which we had NO control over – no matter how hard we tried to please. There never was a way to win!  We were not a failure.
⬅️ Hogwarts’ Wall of Rules

HOW IT WORKS for ACoAs:
1. Guilt is the emotion – generated by ↩
2. Breaking a law or rule – of ↩
3. Society, government, religion, community, school or family
4. Category of rules we feel guilty for breaking ate Toxic FAMILY Rules
(“If you don’t like it you have to stay! / Only other people’s needs matter / don’t trust anyone, don’t have fun, don’t think for yourself….”)
✶ If the family’s rules had been healthy, we would currently be doing positive, self-esteeming things, most of the time
✶ Because most of the rules were unhealthy, we continue to act on them in ways that hurt ourselves & others, on a regular basis.

Therefore – ACoA guilt is caused by any thought or action which disobeys any direct or indirect rule we internalized as kids.

NEXT: What is Guilt (#3)

PREVIOUS: Recovery Loneliness #3

SITEs : Beating 4 Types of Loneliness
🔐 Healthy Loneliness (for Seniors)

With RECOVERY
If we diligently stick to the growth process, we find that loneliness is no longer a major issue, because the emptiness is being filled with the Healthy Child, The Loving Parent, perhaps a Higher Power, appropriate companions & guides. In recovery we’ll feel connected & able to handle things – more of the time – even when things are rocky.

We don’t suffer L. as often, since we:
1. found our True Self. The goal is to be a whole person, not fragmented into compartments that don’t communicate or are always at odds. We accept even the imperfect & still wounded parts. The PP & WIC voice are much quieter, which once created the inner loneliness

2. willingly accept ALL our emotions, having learned to comfort ourselves when stressed or in pain, & allow ourselves to revel in the pleasant or joyful ones, becoming the Positive Parent we never had

3. have internal permission from the Loving Parent in the form of Healthy Introject to receive respect, attention, validation, love….
For some of us it took a great effort to take in positive regard form others, because it forced us to feel the contrast with the enormity of childhood emotional & psychological deprivation

4. don’t have to hide from others, since:
• knowing who we are, we don’t have to depend on unreliable others
• our wounds are no longer raw & over-sensitive. FoA no longer runs us
• we’re not afraid of our anger, being in charge of our rage
• we’ve developed reasonable boundaries, knowing where we end & others begin, which makes us feel safe

5. are more comfortable being visible & able to take appropriate risks. It allows us to be more pro-active when connecting with individuals & groups, sharing our thoughts & talents – without the self-conscious worry about being judged

6. know what we like, want, have a right to, what we’re good / great at….and so:
• actively follow our dreams & freely express our creativity
• can ask for as much help as we need, since we can’t possibly know everything, & don’t have to do everything alone (nor go without)
• go to the right people for those needs or wants. We’ve developed a large enough pool of support & resources to draw from so we don’t feel bereft, even when faced with difficulties

7. can leave unsuitable people & situations much sooner, by picking up on many large & small Red Flags (cues), from them & in ourself, when something isn’t working. We don’t have to stay bored, uncomfortable or annoyed by PPT that are not a good fit, AND can keep looking until we find the ones that do!

8. don’t spend much time worrying what others think of us, want from us or if they’ll reject us, because we’re no longer desperate to stay connected.
NOR do we waste energy obsessing about others who are NOT taking care of themself, & so don’t rescue them by doing for them what they can do for themselves.

We can think of Recovery as progressively healthier Dependencies:

NATURALLY – we need to remember that no Recovery process is ever complete or smooth. The list above is a general outline of a healthy person, but as ACoAs we all have some regressions, occasional depression & loneliness. These can come from present circumstances or from past trauma. In any case, we’re responsible now for creating a safe environment for our Inner Children.

❇️ We are NOT looking to get rid of the WIC, but rather integrating him or her into a good Inner Family who work to help each other – Good Parent, Skillful Adult & Happy Kid.

NEXT: Website site-map // What is guilt?