Hello,
This is my second time round at higher learning. I struggle with the old authority figure issues, over-reacting and a sense of superiority/inferiority OLD OLD things I haven't felt for a long time.....it's like university ( college for my USA recoverers) is triggering me as the unwell family did - my old patterns of coping are so UNFAMILAR that now it is has been quite a shock to feel bouts of old depression and raging rebellion.....
I feel this is part of me getting more well, another layer of the onion but it hurts! Would love to hear any ESH on how to accept the gifts of recovery (because being able to go back to study is, for me, a gift - not only because I'm one of the few in the world that get to, but also because I know what I grew up with - and it's a miracle for me) and how you walk through these growing pains.
The first time I was at university from age 18, I started Alanon about age 19/20 - had been struggling with depression and bouts of suicidal ideation, I remember high school was a backdrop to the excited misery I lived every day before I know about alcoholism the family disease - a few years into alanon recovery and into university it all came to a head, memories, flashbacks and I dropped out via a nervous breakdown and was in therapy for years, unemployed for several....but now I am 30 and the program has brought so much positive changes into my life....
one of my fears is change for the better because it's foreign but also the fear on what is on the other side....I used to fear the Jekyll Hyde of the alcoholic family I grew up in....now I fear my feelings as a simple assignment stirs up so many feelings - memories of being punched in the head because I couldn't play Chopin when I had never seen a piano....at age 4.....many more of those memories but inside at age 4 my response was to try harder and then maybe the A would be happy and I would be safe....
Today I still struggle with the ingrained perfectionism and tendency to rebel and rage against contorting to an academic system - a pattern I have found tempered at work and definitely present in alanon service (which is why service is soooo good for me)....I have been working the Steps and I think Step 2 has been of use - that I can be restored to sanity and complete my degree somehow...there's a sense of sadness that I was hindered because of my childhood, knowing how many lives and people the world may have lost because of alcoholism, ballerinas, doctors, loving parents etc....but first things first is awareness before acceptance and action.....