happybeingme

I am reading the Big Red Book and they are discussing hitting bottom in ACA just like an alcoholic or drug addict. I think I recognize when I hit bottom or at least entered a phase that I knew was going to do me in. But, what about the rest of you. Have you reached a point where you knew the dysfunction had to end no matter what?

Mracoa

Not sure about knowing the dysfunction had to end. I just knew I was in pain, and letting others rule my life and that my life was unmanageable.

I didn't know it was my dysfunction that brought me to that place, I didn't recognize that until after I found and started working my program.

OGK

When I was home last, my a sisters and brother had to get together and plan for my moms moved into assisted living after a bad stroke. I hadn't really done the 4 of us thing since my Dad died over 15 years prior. Anyway, my older brother is an addict and....subjected me to some pretty vicious torture when I was younger. I was rationale in my responses, I was pretty level headed. He kept talking over me, bullying me by shouting....he kept saying the same thing over and over again. Fighting every suggestion I brought up. I lost it, almost killed him. I was shouting uncontrollably, saying the same thing over and over, blinded by anger......I caught myself unraveling, grabbed my things and walked out. I called my wife and told her about the situation. Explained how my brother talked over me, argued his point relentlessly with me, "fixated" on 1 thing and wouldn't let it go or listen to what people were saying.....silence on the phone and then my wife's says, are we still talking about your brother or you? That was one of my first aha moments or bottoms. I was my brother and everything I hated about him and WE were our parents and everything I hated about them. Very strange and my first thought was, omg, what am I doing to MY children?
Great topic, thanks for stimulating my mind to recall it.
OGK

Kialua

I had two episodes of realization, I call it.

When I was about 3 or 4 I was in my bedroom at 7 pm with the light shining listening to my older siblings playing and having fun outside. When they were called in later all heck breaks lose as usual, it was such a trauma listening to it that I stood up and said to myself over and over again, "These people (my parents) are NUTS! I will never be like them when I grow up, I will be nice to kids and not hurt them." It was the beginning of my emotional disconnect with them that enabled me to live through being abusively raised by them.

The second one was when I over drank one weekend and was sick for 3 days. My boyfriend, now husband of many decades, said that was it -I had to quit drinking or else. I realized I had become my drunk dad and didn't want that so I quit. I still had a year of high school left and it was very hard without my escape of drinking but I did it.

happybeingme

OGK- quite shocking and shame making when we discover we are just like our parents isnt it? I spent most of my life down playing my moms behavior and just chalked it up to "shes kinda thoughtless" It wasnt until I realized that the reason why I thought all my problems were unresolved issues with my dad (mom told me it was this) was the lifetime of crappola my mom handed me about my father and she did this deliberately and it was false. I knew then that I had to try to peal myself away from my enmeshment with her and figure out what was really going on.

I still struggle with the it really wasnt that bad. Its your mom and you dealt with it for this long. Ticks me off. Ugh. I dont know.

Kialua- it is amazing that you had such resolve at such a young age

Kialua

Thanks, but I've often wondered how I could think like that at such a young age. I wonder if I didn't hear my older siblings say something like that and I picked it up. Can't remember and they don't remember either. One counselor I talked to recently told me it isn't unusual though and that she had seen such awareness before from very young abuse victims.

They say "we become one or marry one" about our alcoholic parents. I slipped into it, drinking out of control to mask the pain I lived in.

happybeingme

Kialua-I dont doubt for a minute that you had those thoughts. I would imagine if your home life was chaotic enough to preclude focus on normal developmental milestones at that age and learning survival techniques was instead the focus a child of that age could think the way you did.

DesertEyes

That experience you described is _exactly_ what I felt. At about the same age, I have this extremely vivid memory of making a promise to myself that I would _never_ grow up to be like my father. I didn't use the word "Nuts", I saw them as "evil". I was the oldest of my generation, so I did _not_ pick it up from anybody else.

From what I have heard, a very large percentage of ACoA's have that same "moment of clarity". So many that the first book on ACoA was titled "It will never happen to me."

Mike

Kialua

Yes, moment of clarity is what the counselor called it. That is very helpful to know that you and others had that moment. The other people I've told that to over the years just look at me askew and don't quite believe it, it overwhelms them. Thanks for that insight Mike.