PoetryandHums

Sorry this is sooo long...and a little bit ramble-y.

I haven't really introduced myself yet, so I will do some of that before I get to my question. I am 21, and was raised in a household with two alcoholic parents. I attend (and live at) college fairly far away. It is hard for me (and maybe pointless) to try and separate out those features of my childhood, and continued effects, that are about alcoholism, and those that are about abuse. My AF's drinking was a constant feature in my life, whereas my AM alternated cycles of drinking, being sober, and abusing prescription drugs. She was herself the child of an alcoholic, so I "learned" how to respond to alcoholism in my family in part by watching how she did it in hers. Physical and emotional abuse were also consistent, if random, features.

From an early age, I played protector, comforter, and distraction to both my parents from the other. AM would decide to leave AF, taking me with her for days-long, destination-less car trips where I was trapped with her abuse, mania, and binging in the vehicle, not knowing what we were doing, where we were going, or if we were coming back. It was me she came to drunk ready to hurt or kill herself "because of" my father, my bed she passed out in (I slept on the floor or in the closet), and me that she hit and bit when she crashed. AF would come to me raging (and drunk), accusing me of joining with her against him, or looking for me to validate his experience of abuse. Or crying (also drunk), seeking comfort and forgiveness for his guilt about MY abuse. One thing I've noticed is that I often see him as an innocent bystander, or even a younger sibling that I failed to protect from my mothers' abuse. This is not accurate.

I did tremendous work as a child to support and maintain my hurtful family. I hid my own abuse and my parents' violence toward each other, even when they were painfully obvious, and used my ability to seem adult-like to convince many that "I could take care of it." I made every effort to protect my parents physically and emotionally from themselves, the alcohol, each other, and outside blame or embarrassment. At times, I feared for my life and yet didn't demand the help I needed and deserved because of of three things: the belief that to do so was selfish, and not protective of my family, that I would be wrong to do so and others would judge me; the "fact", well-ingrained, that no one would believe me because everyone hated me, I was ungrateful, bad and a liar; the fear of being "caught" telling "our secrets" and not able to protect myself.

I don't live with my family anymore, and I have made a lot of great steps in the last couple of years. I have limited contact with my parents, and on my terms--they can visit me in a safe place not my home (i.e. a coffee shop, museum), but I will not go to their house and they are not welcome in mine. We talk on the phone, but only if they are a) sober and b) respectful. If I'm ready for the conversation to be over, it is. I'm financially independent. I'm learning and practicing taking care of myself in a lot of ways. I've been seeing a therapist for a while, just began going to Al-Anon meetings, and am learning to pay attention to my reactions to events, the tendencies that come out of my childhood but don't serve me well in my real life.

So here's the thing. Specifics are very, very hard for me. I am good at silence, and even better at shame. The work that I want to be doing right now is not great with abstraction. I have a lot of anxiety and fear in my life, and often it is linked to a memory of some specific incident or pattern. I have a very, very difficult time saying those things to others, or even thinking them to myself. Not only is it important, but I really want it. I am tired of secret-keeping, and have a really strong desire for someone to hear the truth of my experience, and to learn to validate it for myself. It hurts, physically hurts, when I start to worry about whether the person really wants to hear, whether it will be too much for them, whether I'm being selfish, whether maybe it wasn't so bad, sometimes even if I am, as AM and AF say, a liar. The tension in my body and knot in my stomach just grow.

Even as I do this work, there is a part of me that firmly believes that "I can and should deal with this by myself". I feel like I am responsible for keeping the experiences of my childhood appropriately secret, protecting others from them, correcting my failure to protect myself, and "fixing" it without making too much of a fuss or asking for help. I really don't know how to quiet (or just ignore) that voice. Has anyone had a similar experience?

GiveLove

Hi poetry,

You are doing all of the best possible things for yourself - separation, therapy, inner work, etc. Congratulations. I didn't start my healing process until I was in my 30's!

I put off working with a counselor for a long time because I did not have the strength or the desire to address specifics. I simply didn't want to bring these things back into my mind, not even long enough to talk to a therapist about them.

But really, what they say is true: The best way out is through. The only way to defuse these bombs still inside you is to get them out into the bright sunlight and blow them up. That's what I had to do....though it took me WAY out of my comfort zones.

The therapist you are are working with, are they someone who has experience with ACOAs ? Can he/she refer you to a group setting where you might be able to practice getting things out verbally, so you can truly be heard? Can he/she tell you some ideas for speaking your truth? I know the pitfalls of leaning on friends to hear our story...sometimes it's just not worth the trouble because they just aren't wired to understand. I ended up being a writer because it was a tremendous outlet for the pent-up stories inside. You might consider that, or journal therapy, or poetry therapy. All are ways to get it out.

So you really have to do a sort of treasure hunt, try to find settings where you can gradually tell your story and get it out of the dark places you've tried to keep it.

You can share it here too. We all "get it."

Hang in there

dolce7dolore

Well, GiveLove always seems to give great advice. I particularly agree with a couple of things that she said. The first was the fact that sometimes "friends aren't wired" to help us. I've found that it's not easy to talk to "friends" that I've had for years about my problems. They usually change the subject. I spoke about my parent's recent divorce with a close friend recently and she did listen. I guess it just depends on the person. Also, from what I've heard and experienced, once we ACOAs start healing, all we want to do is start talking about it all the time, even to strangers. This makes sense as we have been silent for so long. That wasn't right. However, I've found that it's necessary to have some self-control (easier said than done since we never learned that), find the right time and place to talk, and when it's excessive or not. Okay, enough rambling about that The second piece of advice I want to address is finding an outlet. I agree that writing can be a very soothing experience and has been for me.

I wanted to comment on various things that you said about silence, fixing it all by yourself, being selfish, feeling at times that it wasn't as bad as it really was. I try not to use the word normal (as some authors have said), but in functional families, such considerations wouldn't exist to this extent. I'm not saying it's uncommon for you to feel this way; I could have written that paragraph myself. However, in a functional lifestyle, it is right for you to want to speak to people about what's hurting you, it is right to feel better, it is right to seek help without feeling selfish.

It sounds like you're doing great work and I enjoyed reading your post.