Minute To Freedom

There's a saying in some literature that says we won't regret the past, nor wish to shut the door on it.  I didn't think that statement could apply to me. But as a result of doing the hard work of recovery, I've seen it come true.

I knew a guy once who was just waiting for his alcoholic mother die - so he would no longer have to deal with his issues around her drinking.  It didn't happen that way.  He tried to avoid it, but he would act like she was still in the room, telling him the same negative messages from childhood.

There's a saying, we will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.  I didn't believe that was possible for a long time, until I saw it happening in my world.

If I am invisible and no one sees me, then no one can hurt me. A friend told me she used to watch me walk into our Sunday School class, trying to slide into the back and disappear into the crowd.

One of the roles in an alcoholic family is to be the hero - the one who fixes the problem, cleans up the mess from the drinking, and is viewed as a savior within that world. I did that a lot, but it was just a mask I hid behind, so people wouldn't see how scared and inadequate I usually felt.

Do you hate conflict?  Want to always make peace wherever you are? I learned that as a child - to smooth over the rough waters so conflict would hopefully go away.  If there was no conflict, there could be no dangerous backsplash on me.

Do you ever feel like you're responding to life based on some old messages stuck in your head? I was living that way, until I was introduced to affirmation.  I Dan, am a loving and worthwhile person.

Ever had an upset stomach?  I did for years, and thought it was exclusively a physical ailment. When I started working on my issues from growing up in an alcoholic family, I realized my upset stomach was something I had first experienced in the turbulence and uncertainty of the violent household.

Have you ever been confused by a double message?  By that I mean the sort of things I learned as a child.  "You're incompetent - take care of the house." I learned to be very responsible as a child, while at the same time being told I wasn't very good at whatever I was doing.

Have you ever joked around a lot and been the life of the party?  Has it ever felt like a mask? "Although I might be laughing loud and hearty, deep inside I'm blue."  I had a friend see through my clown one time, and helped me see how I used it as a mask.

Do you ever find it tough to make a decision?  I learned in business school that not to decide is to decide.  I discovered that when I was growing up, if I didn't make a decision, I didn't take a risk, and was less exposed to bad things happening.

Have you ever felt like there was some solution that was just going to magically appear and make your world better?  As a teenager, I would sit in my room reading Swiss Family Robinson, about a loving family, and think something would happen to make our family that way.

One of my favorite lines from that movie is "I think God gets ticked off if we don't see the color purple." I sometimes get so wrapped up in the big events of my world that I forget to stop to appreciate the small but very significant things that surround me.

Have you ever felt like you're still a kid in many ways?  That's the essence of the inner child, and although it sounds hokey and '80s to talk in those terms, I think there is a real truth to it.  I never learned how to grow up in many ways.

Have you ever wondered what serenity was, and what it really felt like?  When I first started dealing with the effects of growing up in an alcoholic family, it was just an abstract concept to me.

Recovery is hard work.  It is - it just is!  Growing up as the child with an alcoholic and violent father was not a path I chose.  Yet as an adult, I was left with the effects of it, and there was just no way around that.  Doing the work to move beyond those issues was just a lot of tough work!

Have you ever felt like you should be apologizing for being born?  I took on a sense of shame, of being a mistake, from an early age. The shame was so woven into the fabric of my being that I didn't even know it was there.

Frozen ego? What is that?  A therapist once told me that as a result of a traumatic incident, your ego might freeze at the age you were when the traumatic event happened. It really helped me understand my world - because I was operating as a terrified 14 year old boy much of the time.

Has someone ever said something, and you figure out the absolute wonderful response - 3 days later? At the time a situation happens, I feel frozen and can't think of what to say, particularly if there is a negative edge to what is being said to me.

Usually there's one child in an alcoholic family who gets lost in the shuffle.  I watched this happen with a friend.  Lucy was a bright, gifted and talented person, who didn't understand that about herself, and would instead fade into the background and be hard to connect with.