1Datatime

Just read this and am trying to keep from having a panic attack. How can I be 50 years old, both of my parents dead, and still have such a reaction to looking at my childhood as it REALLY was?

happybeingme

Hi data,

Welcome to the world of adult children of alcoholics and other dysfunctions. How you feel is perfectly normal. Don't have a panic attack. You are safe and ok. Your parents may be gone but their legacy of dysfunction is still inside you. There is help and a lot of hope. Please check out the Adult children sub forum here. You will find a lot of us there.

honeypig

The original thread is from 2007. And to all of us, it reads as if it was posted yesterday. There really are no boundaries, we really all are in this together, aren't we? It's not exactly the same for any of us but yet it's the same for all of us...

Thanks for unearthing this. I'm not an ACOA, but this describes the situation in my FOO nevertheless. It's also so helpful in understanding where my A, who is an ACOA, came from.

I finished reading this w/a sense of being overwhelmed and helpless--how can I hope to overcome all of this? Then I remembered I don't have to do it alone. None of us does. I'm grateful for that, and hopeful.

1Datatime

After posting last night about my impending panic attack, I logged off the computer, went outside and took a few deep breaths and remembered I am here in 2015 and safe. I think my biggest moment of horror (and this seems silly) but was admitting that my mother was an alcoholic. I've put her on a mental pedestal because she truly loved me and was the only one who took care of me. My alcoholic father worked overseas and was rarely home, but when he WAS home life was HELL.

I suppose what I'm fearful of right now, safe in the daylight, is re-opening that wound that had such a thick scab on it right now. Does that make sense?
Anyway, it's a long story and that was a long time ago.

Thanks for caring. :-)

Bookaboo2

This whole thread describes me to t minus the incest. Smh it's hard pill to swallow when your trying to heal and accept the person are in order to become a new healthier person. One day at a time

Tansy

this describes me except my parents weren't alcoholics:/ How weird.