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Bad Childhood

Old 12-13-2010, 08:23 AM
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Bad Childhood

How many here had a really chaotic childhood?

I know it's part of the reason why I was drinking.

Growing up, my mother was always a distant, abusive, neglectful person. She did nothing but run the bars, bring strange men in the home and rage on me everyday. I really can't remember one happy evening I had when I came home. I don't think she was an alcoholic as I never saw her drunk and have never seen her be able to drink very much, I think she was a very depressed, selfish person with a personality problem.

To make matters worse, our relationship has finally ended this year. Her lack of connection with me is no different than when I was a child. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

I don't know how I'm going to keep not drinking.

How do you get over something like that? This is who she is and it will never change. How do you deal with it?
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:31 AM
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The steps of AA solved all this kind of stuff for me...i never managed to move on past stuff like this and i do know what you mean until i did them, it took seeing me for who i really was to be able to understand anyone else...counselling may help as well...this kind of stuff never "went" for me no matter how many dry days i managed by myself...
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:34 AM
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Originally Posted by goldengirl3 View Post

I don't know how I'm going to keep not drinking.

How is the drinking going to help?
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Old 12-13-2010, 08:48 AM
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I had a really rough childhood and the buried emotions and memories became crystal clear when I got sober. I had to do a lot of soul searching and still continue to grapple with how to reconcile my belief system and recovery to the pain I still feel at times.
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Old 12-13-2010, 09:24 AM
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Originally Posted by goldengirl3 View Post
How many here had a really chaotic childhood?

I know it's part of the reason why I was drinking.

Growing up, my mother was always a distant, abusive, neglectful person. She did nothing but run the bars, bring strange men in the home and rage on me everyday. I really can't remember one happy evening I had when I came home. I don't think she was an alcoholic as I never saw her drunk and have never seen her be able to drink very much, I think she was a very depressed, selfish person with a personality problem.

To make matters worse, our relationship has finally ended this year. Her lack of connection with me is no different than when I was a child. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

I don't know how I'm going to keep not drinking.

How do you get over something like that? This is who she is and it will never change. How do you deal with it?
i had a very abusive childhood.

in the end, it just came down to how i reacted to my present day life on whether i would ever get over my past.

I was terribly neglected and had low self esteem, with very destructive tendencies... but the longer i stayed sober, the better i got at putting all that pain to rest.

i hated how much i allowed my childhood family to rent space in my head, but now, for the most part, i've delt with it. i can't change what happend or even how they treat me now, all i can do is control how i react to it all.

so, it's just a choice for me..to live on and do what's right..or to believe everything that my parents told me i was ...a failure...a rotten sack of s#it that was worthless, someone they never wanted around...and someone who was obviously so damaged that nobody would want to be with me or around me.

in my heart of hearts i knew i wasn't a failure or worthless. i knew as an adult, i could either live in the past and die on my knees or move on and get better.

i think as adults when you know better, you have a responsibility to do better. to make the right choices for yourself even when it's hard to.
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Old 12-13-2010, 09:25 AM
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I would suggest trying to find a good therapist. I had a lot of childhood issues, very different from your own, but traumatic nonetheless. Mine revolved around life and death illnesses. I've found my therapist has helped me release these issues and move forward in a healthy way. But I needed to be sober to really do the work necessary to get well.

Good luck to you!
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Old 12-13-2010, 09:39 AM
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Goldengirl3 the only way I was able to deal with people like this was to pity them for the victims they are. Your mom is this way because of her childhood and poor parenting. My grandmother is the same way and it was very hard on my mother. The best thing you could do is break the cycle and don't copy her negative behaviors. But again the only way to deal with people like this when they are family is to treat them like a special needs child. Realize they probably are this way at least partly because of forces beyond their control, its nobodies fault, etc. I'm sorry I hope this doesn't offend anyone its just how I cope with having family members like you describe. Once you start seeing them as a victim of life you can pity them and if they give you crap its like you want to pat them on the head and say "thats nice".
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Old 12-13-2010, 10:05 AM
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Sometimes there's no rhyme or reason. I too was brought up in a very abusive manner. It has really screwed up my life. Now I have a therapist to help handle it. It's a life long process, I think. I do know I need to outlive my abusers. So I try to keep that in mind as far as drinking. But yes, it is very easy to want to escape from all the pain and loss. I stopped all contact with my parents (or donor and birth incubator as I feel they were not parents at all) over a decade ago and it was a good thing to do. I changed jobs, location, phone number... It was necessary. You don't have to engage. There are good people out there, you can find them... It's kind of a "family of choice" thing- which makes more sense to me personally as procreation and family are such arbitrary gambles. You can build your family. You can heal.
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Old 12-13-2010, 10:33 AM
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Unique...that's a great way of looking at it. When we see them as victims of their circumstances and realize that how they treated us was not about us, but about them. Then looking at them with compassion makes things so much easier!
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Old 12-13-2010, 10:39 AM
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I had a some very traumatic experiences in childhood. Those experiences shaped my personality in a way that made me prone for substance abuse as I grew older. I needed professional help with a skilled therapist to help me work past my trauma, well enough so that I would have a better chance of recovering from addiction.

Working on both my emotional and addiction issues is a must if, I want any hope for of living a healthy life.
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Old 12-13-2010, 10:53 AM
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I thought for years that it was my abusive childhood that kept me drinking. Turns out it was me holding onto my abusive childhood that kept me drinking. Long after I became an adult, I nursed the pain. It took getting sober, taking the steps (yes, AA), and making a decision to forgive and move on. In many cases, that meant cutting ties with family members.

I choose who I let in my life today. Shared DNA doesn't obligate me to anyone but my children.

Peace & Love,
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Old 12-13-2010, 11:45 AM
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Counseling.. lots of counseling. I grew up in an alcoholic home.. both of my parents drank actively until I was about 19, and thank goodness haven't drank since.. however, yes.. chaos, fear, shame, loneliness, disappointment, sadness.. were all adjectives of my childhood.

I discovered, with age, and recovery.. that I am the architect of my life. My foundation is not what dictates me, or destines me in any way. I am making the choices every day to live a wonderful healthy life despite anything that has happened before today.
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Old 12-13-2010, 12:30 PM
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Sugah said it all for me.

I used to think it was a lot of family factors that contributed to my addictions, when actually it was my inability to deal with them and let them go.

I think doing something, like counselling, is a great idea.

D
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Old 12-13-2010, 12:34 PM
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I've been going to counseling for a while. I think he is a good one. I think with him in time I will be better.

I thought I was over my childhood for about 10 years...almost 10 years I think?

The last year and a half has haunted me. I don't know if I suppressed it all before? Or I just didn't realize how it affected me? Not sure.

I know I did have the realization that I date men that treat me a lot like my parents did. And that was pretty scary.

Breaking up with my current one has brought back a lot of bad memories from childhood that I thought I had forgotten and moved on from. I think it made me reconnect with the pain that I felt back then.
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Old 12-13-2010, 12:39 PM
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I used to think it was a lot of family factors that contributed to my addictions, when actually it was my inability to deal with them and let them go.
My mother kicked me out to move a man from prison in the house when I was 15. My father called her and told her to make a choice - me or the man from prison because he didn't think a this man should be living in the same house with me. She chose the prisoner. (He was about to be released at the time my father called her.) After over a week, she found out that she would not be receiving her child support check. She called my father and told him to have me come back home so that she could get her check. She then had the guy move out and told me she just hated this because she was afraid he was going to get into trouble since he couldn't stay with her.

THAT is the woman that I lived with in h*ll for 18 years.

When someone has that low of a worth of you...it's just hard not to let that affect that it isn't about you...it's them.
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Old 12-13-2010, 06:49 PM
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Maturity and life lessons, my mother continues to drink until she either yells or passes out. It is sad but that's her not me. I was quickly becoming that person and 2 January's ago I said enough and never went back. I will never allow drinking to become me, rule my life and cause me the same distruction it is doing to her. I will be sober until I die. (that's real talk).
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Old 12-13-2010, 06:53 PM
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I had a bad childhood too...

I'm in my 20th year of recovery and what AA taught me was to bring my focus out of the past into the present. Also, I went into therapy. Just decide you're not going to drink TODAY. Forget the future, none of us has power over anything but today.
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Old 12-14-2010, 06:58 AM
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My abusive childhood was my excuse for being a drunken loser, what could you expect with my drunken abusive father and cold distant mother.... yeah my childhood sucked I really have no happy memories, if there were any my years of alcohol abuse obliterated them from my mind. Within a month of stopping drinking I came to the realization that yes the first 17 yrs of my life had sucked but I was totally responsible for having ruined the next 30, it was time to let go and let God. With prayer I learned to forgive my parents and the forgiveness came very easily and very quickly and the forgiveness truly did set me free. Harboring all that resentment all those years literally nearly killed me, in forgiving my parents I also forgave myself and it is the most awesome gift I could have ever received.
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Old 12-14-2010, 11:41 AM
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Originally Posted by goldengirl3 View Post
How many here had a really chaotic childhood?

I know it's part of the reason why I was drinking.

To make matters worse, our relationship has finally ended this year. Her lack of connection with me is no different than when I was a child. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

How do you get over something like that? This is who she is and it will never change. How do you deal with it?
<--- Raises hand. All sorts of that stuff in my house when I was little. I'm 42 now and still see find remnants of it in my daily life all the time. There was a lot of emotional abuse and heaps of physical abuse.

While that craziness exacerbated my emotional state, it doesn't "cause" alcoholism. My brother lived in the same house......actually got it worse than I did.....and he's not an alcoholic. There are also LOTS of alkies who grew up in "normal" loving homes.

I'm a real alcoholic. I drank because of alcoholism - which has nothing to do with my childhood. Alcoholism isn't a problem with booze either.....it's a problem that booze treats. If you're an alcoholic, and you suffer from alcoholism (the 3-part illness) like I do, then that's why you drank.

I got past it by working the steps with a sponsor and with a therapist who's also in the program. Those two things led me to finding a God of my own personal understanding. I did some work, God did a lot.....a lot more than I did, really.

.....and you're right.... until we can find a way to live happily in our sobriety - to get recoverED - we're not in serious danger of going back out again, we WILL go back out again.
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Old 12-15-2010, 07:53 PM
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Originally Posted by goldengirl3 View Post
To make matters worse, our relationship has finally ended this year. Her lack of connection with me is no different than when I was a child. And that's a hard pill for me to swallow.

I don't know how I'm going to keep not drinking.

How do you get over something like that? This is who she is and it will never change. How do you deal with it?

You will need to learn forgiveness. I sincerely doubt that you could hold on to the anger and resentments and expect to recover (irregardless of whether your anger is justified or not).
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