Episode 1- Discovery of the problem

This episode dives into the emotional journey of navigating trauma and reclaiming self-worth amidst familial dysfunctions. I am sharing my heartfelt experience of struggling through hopelessness, searching for help, and discovering transformative tools like meditation, inner child healing, and self-awareness. Learn how I confronted deep-seated childhood emotions and rewrote the patterns of behavior, finding clarity and light along the way. This story emphasizes the importance of reconnecting with your true self, breaking generational cycles, and embracing personal growth to shape a more fulfilling future.

Through a thought-provoking questionnaire sourced from the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, listeners are encouraged to reflect on their own experiences and recognize how familial patterns might shape their reactions and self-perception. 

Transcript

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Hello and welcome to my podcast. You are a cure adult children of alcoholics. I'm so grateful that you are here with me today. So let's start from the beginning. So for me, the beginning was discovering of the problem. So the first time I heard about children of alcoholics, ACOA, was in my early 20s. My dad had just started attending his AA group and he suggested to my sister and me that we might want to try ACOA group therapy. It might help us work from some issues, he said. At the time, I had no idea what problems he was talking about. I mean, sure, I was... Constantly feeling sad, riddled with anxiety and terrified of talking to people. I was completely convinced that I was stupid, unworthy of love and hopelessly craving someone to love me and for me to love them back. The idea of having my own family, it felt about as impossible as me landing on the moon. I was sure I'd never have a husband or kids. Honestly, I couldn't even bring myself to leave the house to meet new people. So when my dad suggested ACOA therapy, I figured it was just something he had to say to us as part of his own process in the AA group. Nothing more than that. I didn't give it much thought. To me, I felt normal. This is how I'd always felt. I'd come to think of it as just my natural state. But the idea was like a seed. It planted itself in my brain. It stayed there, dormant for the time being. But it was still there. The conditions for it to grow just weren't quite right yet. The next amazing thing that happened was when my mom got a book from her friend and passed it on to me. It was called Women Who Love Too Much by Robin Norwood. This must have been about two years after my dad started his AA group. That book completely shifted my perspective and opened my eyes to so much truth. She was really describing me in the book. I realized I was neglecting my own needs and desires just to get a little bit of love and acceptance. There wasn't even a me in the equation anymore. The most impactful sentence in the book for me was about how these toxic behaviors and traumas are passed down through generations. So our parents got them from their parents and their parents got them from theirs. And it hit me, I would end up passing them on to my kids too. When I discovered Robin Norwood's book, I was in a relationship, a tough one, as you can probably imagine. By that point, I could actually picture myself having kids. That's when I decided to try out the therapy my dad had mentioned the other day. I knew I had to heal for them, my future children. I didn't want to create a living hell for them. Living in a family with addiction is so toxic. It's like this, you're not even aware of your traumas and you don't realize there's another way to live. You don't understand why you act or react the way you do. You don't know why you're sad or angry. You might not even know what you are feeling. When you are stuck in the same patterns and reactions, it's impossible to imagine behaving any other way. All you know are the toxic thoughts and responses. When you become a parent, you just repeat what you know. You react the same way you always have and those same thoughts keep running through your head, creating the same words you heard as a child. And the hardest part, if you were never given love, understanding, acceptance or support as a kid, you have no idea how to give those things to your own children. It all started clicking for me. So I made the call to set up my first meeting with an ACOA therapist, which is adult children of alcoholics. That's when I realized something huge. I couldn't name any emotions besides anger, sadness, happiness, the basic ones. I also discovered I was sabotaging my relationship by picking fights. In those moments, I would feel the same emotions I had when my dad came home drunk. It was like I could step back into that victim role all over again. I went to about five or six therapy sessions and then my therapist suggested that I could get even more out of joining a support group. So I did. I was really determined to learn more and help myself. And I started noticing small changes in my life. I became more aware of the emotions that I felt whenever I... Normally, pick a fight with my partner and slip into the victim role. I began telling myself, these emotions aren't coming from this situation. They are from the past. And slowly but surely, I was able to break out of these repeating patterns one step at a time. In the group, I realized that deep down, they were all the same. Sure, we would... Each been through our own version of hell, but it shaped us in similar ways. Some of us took on the role of the hero, the mascot or invisible child. But at the core, we were all dealing with the same struggles. We felt different, inferior to others, judged ourselves harshly and wrestled with a lack of love, acceptance and respect. Biggest realization I had during those nine months of therapy was just how incredible these people truly were. Amazing, beautiful, intelligent. And yet they couldn't see it. They were still repeating the lies they heard in their childhood and adolescence. And me, I was no different. Of course, I'd be doing the same thing. Reprogramming those beliefs about myself and the world around me was so hard, but I didn't want to give up. I knew that behind all the masks, my true self was waiting. I wanted to dig deeper and see what I could heal. As I kept at it, I became braver, happier, and even started recognizing how intelligent I really am. That was a huge shift for me because for my entire life I'd been told and shown that I wasn't. I struggled in school and I even had a teacher tell me I was stupid. During the time when I was participating in the group, I started journalism as a postgraduate student. I loved it. I was so good in writing and I was thrilled to receive amazing feedback from the professors. I finally found the thing I was good at and felt proud and confident. And then life happens. I got married and a few days after the wedding, I left to a different country, away from the family, people and the language I knew. I was on my own for three months. I found a job, a place to rent and settled down. That was such a brave step and I did it. After three months, my husband joined me and we started trying to build our marriage in the way we knew how. But the truth is, he also came from a dysfunctional family. And our ideas of what marriage should look like were far from what a healthy relationship should be. We hurt each other and I felt trapped and deeply unhappy. I found myself wondering over and over. Where did a happy, confident girl who loved studying journalism disappear to? I wanted help so badly. I searched for a therapist or a group nearby, but there was nothing available. I went through moments where I felt completely disoriented, helpless and on the verge of giving up. It felt like I was falling. There was no one there to catch me. There was no support, no one to talk to. I felt like I was losing my mind. I even started looking up how to file for divorce. I just want to break free from this man who only made me miserable. I had two kids and the book that I read was constantly on my mind. You are passing shit onto them. Why wasn't therapy helping me? Why these old traumas and behaviors keep coming back? Why couldn't I be happy like I was back when I was studying journalism before I got married? These questions were haunting me. I couldn't sleep anymore. I just lay there staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I could leave my husband and manage on my own. I was really terrified, but I kept fighting for the sake of my kids' mental health. I told him, I was thinking about divorce. He didn't take me seriously at all when I said it. After a while though, I started noticing small changes in his behavior. He became kinder, more understanding, even more loving. At first, I didn't trust it. I thought it was temporary, but I waited and eventually this new behavior became the norm. It wasn't perfect, definitely not, but it was so much better. It was as though the tension between us had eased, like we both ran out of steam. We still didn't understand why we reacted the way we did in certain situations, but our reactions were calmer. I'm not sure what sparked this change. Maybe it was because he saw that I decided to treat myself better and and started demanding respect. Honestly, I don't know. Still, I started feeling more confident in my actions. I began taking back control, trusting my intuition more and opening myself up to the positivity and beauty in the world. Once I felt safer in my home and in my life, it was like more light could reach my thoughts and reshape the way I saw things. In 2020, when COVID hit, I had to work from home. At some point, watching the news and TV became way too much for me. It felt like we were constantly being bombarded with fear, uncertainty, anger, hopelessness. I went from my own stages, first fear, then anger and finally I decided to turn off the TV and radio altogether. Instead of looking outward, I turned inward. The world outside had become too overwhelming. That's when the magic started happening. I began meditating, reading spiritual books about the power of our minds. The more I learned about how our minds and emotions work, the more light and understanding entered my life. And my husband also started doing the same things. We were lucky to have the chance to sit in silence and face the truth of what had happened to us as kids. We had to confront those emotions fully all the way to the core because they'd been stuck in our throats. and hearts for so long. To uncover the truth, I started paying attention to how I reacted to certain situations and asking myself why I was reacting that way. I also observed my emotions and questioned whether they matched what was really happening in the present or if they were just echoes from the past. By becoming more aware of my feelings and reactions, I slowly began to change my beliefs and in turn my reality. I realized I needed to tune in to what my inner child was going through. I had to allow myself to relieve those moments, to give that little girl safety, love and acceptance she had been missing. Whenever I would revisit a specific moment from the past, I'd bring her exactly what she needed but didn't get at the time. So I just prepared for you a questionnaire that you can take now. If you maybe have some paper and something to write, you can take it. So the questionnaire... is basically to find out if you are an adult children of alcoholics. And I got it from the Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization website. So the first question is, do I fear authority figures and angry people? Do I see most forms of criticism as a personal attack? Do I have difficulty identifying feelings? Do I involve myself in the problems of others? Do I feel more alive when there is a crisis? Do I judge myself without mercy? Do I recall anyone at my home drinking or taking drugs or being involved in some other behavior that I now believe could be dysfunctional? Did one of my parents make excuses for the other parents drinking or other behaviors? And the last question is... As an adult, do I still feel like a child inside? If you answered yes to one of those questions, it's likely you grew up in a family where you had to take on a specific role just to survive. You might have had to ignore your own needs and even act as a parent to your parents. What I've learned on my journey is that being part of a family like this does not define you. You just need to reconnect with your true self. In families like this, we often grow into certain roles and lose sight of our unique talents and gifts. And by the way, in the episode two, you can find out more about the roles in those families. And that's why healing and discovering your truth is so, so important. It's the key to uncovering who you really are. Stick around for more episodes if my story resonates with you and always remember you have the power to change your life. All the best. Love you.