Adult Children and Forgiveness

Adult Children of Alcoholics and those from dysfunctional families often struggle with forgiving the wrongs of the past. I've heard it said that "Forgiveness means giving up all hope of having a better past."

To me this means that although wrongs were done, I no longer seek revenge or hold anger about them. I am free to live without the bondage of past injustices. This frees me to forgive myself and accept forgiveness from others for my wrongdoings.

Drs. Henry Cloud and John Townsend discuss the healing power of Forgiveness

Grace Is the Ultimate Fertilizer



The Nature Of Forgiveness



Empathy is Ultimately about Love and Grace



Q: How do you forgive hurts that are continuously being committed? (2:55)



Q: I am an only child of two alcoholic parents, and I am now fifty-seven. My mother is still alive and continues to be emotionally abusive. Would God want me to forgive and submit to this abuse, or is it ok to cut her out of my life?



Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Denial Is A Good Thing!

"The first step toward acceptance is denial."

What?

Had to reread this a couple of times before it made sense. I had always relegated denial to a negative, useless place where people hid from the truth. I thought insulating with denial was a backwards move. It was my enemy.

The rest of this quote helped me understand:

"The first step toward moving through denial is accepting that we may be in denial, and then gently allowing ourselves to move through."

In this way, denial serves a very valuable purpose. It is a stepping stone to reality. I had never thought of it that way.

So instead of judging denial as being a bad thing, I have decided to try and see it as a necessary part of the process. Instead of the problem it is part of the solution.

Judging things never seems to get me anywhere anyway so here is one more thing I hope to let go!

C

Quote from "Letting Go" by Melody Beattie

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Jef Gazely on Codependence & How to Develop Healthy Relationships




Jef Gazely- Dysfunctional Families and the Shame Cycle



Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

The Power Of Now

Jim Carrey on Eckhart Tolle:


Eckhart Tolle first gained attention as a spiritual teacher with his 1997 book, "The Power of Now". In 2008, Oprah Winfrey chose his follow-up work, "A New Earth", for her book club. Her 10-week online seminar with Tolle has since been downloaded 27 million times.

Listen to a fascinating interview with Eckhart Tolle-


Adult children of alcoholics can be prone to living in the past or fantasizing about the future rather than being in the present moment. There is a force within us that works to keep us from living in the now and experiencing the peace and serenity that is our birthright.

Tolle coined the term "the pain body" to describe a subconscious force in people that is fed by painful memories and thrives on them. The pain body is below the level of our awareness, yet reacts strongly to everyday events and affects our thoughts and behavior negatively. The pain body seems to be it's own sovereign entity, surviving alongside your conscious awareness and influencing feelings and actions.

Tolle came to this realization by observing that strong emotional reactions from people are often out of proportion to the event that triggered them.

"And so I realized that there's something in everybody that is a remnant of past painful emotion. And these remnants of past painful emotion from pain that you suffered as a child, perhaps even pain that was passed on from previous generations."

Tolle believes the pain body has two ways of feeding on further emotional pain. One is through YOUR thinking and one is through OTHER people's reactions.

"If you are sitting alone in a room and the pain body gets awakened from its dormant state because it needs to feed on an experience of pain, what happens is the old emotion, perhaps triggered by one thought in your head about your sad story from the past, the old emotion rises up into the mind, and suddenly your entire thinking becomes extremely negative. It reflects the emotional energy. So all your thoughts that you're thinking about your life and your life situation and your past and other people is deeply, deeply negative. Totally distorted, of course. It's distorted by the pain of the past."

"It's an addictive thing. So it feeds on the one hand on your thinking. On the other hand, if there are people around you at the time when the pain body awakens the favorite way of feeding for the pain body is to provoke a negative reaction, for example, in your partner. It could be a little situation, something he or she says or does, and you push the buttons in your partner and you amplify something that otherwise would be a relatively insignificant thing perhaps. And you know the pain body has a certain cunning intelligence to it."

"It knows exactly what buttons to push in your partner or the person close to you or your family member. And it'll say those things that are most likely to provoke an intense negative reaction, and then it'll feed on the drama. So that's the second way, then, in which the pain body feeds, is the drama in relationships. And many couples recognize this truth and say, "Oh, yeah. That's true. Every week or every two weeks or every three weeks we go through our drama."

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"...there is a place inside me that is far more powerful than the continuous mental noise with which for many, many years I had been completely identified..."- Eckhart Tolle

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Tolle believes that the way to eventually become free of the pain body, is not to reactively reject it or the experience that triggers it but "just to see that it's there". The key is to be the awareness.

Recognize the emotion and allow it to be because it already is. Accept the reality of what is currently present. The goal is to reach a state of alert attention to what is, where compulsive thinking no longer operates. Being in the moment, in the NOW keeps you from jumping into regret from the past and fear of the future.

"This means you rise above thinking to a large extent in your life. Where you can face life without the interference of the mind, still being able to use the mind when it's needed but not being used by it".

"And then you become deeper. Or rather, you realize that you are deeper than the emotion. And that frees you from being controlled by the emotion. Then gradually the pain body weakens because it can't feed anymore on your relationship or on your thinking. And now if you have a lot of emotional pain from the past, you may always experience from time to time some painful emotion arising."

Tolle says, "The ultimate thing is the realization of the formless essence of who you are because if God has any reality in this world, it cannot be separate from who you are in your essence. And finding that in yourself, really, I see as the purpose of human life. And then the external world, the temporary world, the world of forms, also changes as a result of that. But the essence is finding who you are beyond form, beyond time."

Tips on developing still and alert attention, freeing yourself from mind noise and audio meditations can be found HERE- Exercises For Your Awakening.


Interview quotes are excerpted from: http://speakingoffaith.publicradio.org/programs/2009/tolle/


Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

The ACA Promises

Many adult children of alcoholics have heard "The Promises" of ACA recovery. If you haven't or if it's been a while, someone was kind enough to post a creative video of them on Youtube as seen below.

The ACA Promises



Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Dr. Drew On Addiction

Some Q&A with addiction expert, Dr. Drew Pinsky:



Dr. Drew on celebrity addiction:

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Recovery Radio:

Check out "Recovery Advocates" Sunday night 10pm till midnight. Host Peter Tilden with Dr. David A. Kipper & Stuart Birnbaum on AM radio KABC 790.

Listen on your computer here: "Recovery Advocates"


Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Hiding From Love

Is some part of you hidden, locked away in a "safe" place and never to be released?

In Dr. John Townsend's book, "Hiding From Love", he describes the hiding patterns that, as children, protected us. Patterns that now imprison us as adults, keeping us from finding the healing we need and enjoying the intimacy we deserve.

Townsend explains that, when people are damaged by overwhelming dysfunction and emotional trauma, they isolate the injured pieces of themselves in order to survive. The broken parts caused by the pain of withdrawal from love are covered over with a veneer of denial. This denial attempts to nullify the pain with the belief that the need for connection to this part of ourselves does not exist or isn't really important.

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"When we hide, the time and energy that we need to spend in loving and being loved is diverted- it's channeled instead into maintaining our isolation."

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But "forgetting the past" does not work. Continuing hiding and isolating feelings keeps people frozen in that moment of trauma. This can go on for years and even decades. We cannot heal, grow and progress as long as we continue to engage in avoidance and denial. Broken parts of ourselves remain unrepaired, immature and in limbo. For example, when a child's boundaries are violated, emotional hiding usually results. And when the hurt part is isolated (hidden), it's as if the child is now left in a locked room with her abuser- doomed to relive the experience and barred from healing.

One indicator that you are hiding in denial is feeling shame. Shame keeps us stuck because it encourages further isolation, convincing us that we are beyond redemption.

According to Dr. Townsend, you are not to be blamed for wanting to hide. And "demanding that you function on an adult level with capabilities that aren't developed yet" is not only fruitless, it is casting judgment on the innocent. You can't do anything about that which you do not have access to.

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"Transference" then takes place. Transference happens when a part of us that is stuck in the past colors our current view of others. It is experiencing people through the eyes of your past injuries. For example, someone with unhealed attachment injuries tends to see others as more needy, intrusive and demanding than they actually are. Reality is distorted and we remain locked in our negative pattern.

Humility- the ability to experience our "badness" within the confines of a loving relationship, helps us to bring issues into the light where they can be healed. This is hard work. To display the ugliest most broken parts of ourselves to others is very difficult. It's like that terrible nightmare where you are naked in front of a large crowd.

Moving your injured parts into grace and truth is a risk that takes continued practice. In time the injured, formerly hidden parts mature and catch up to the rest of the functioning adult parts. I takes patience, time and work.


Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children

Relationships Foster Resilience

We hear and see it all the time in ACA/ACOA meetings and literature: "The first step is coming out of isolation". This sentiment is now being echoed by those studying overcoming adversity and increasing "resilience".

A recent article from psychologytoday.com suggests that regardless of your past or your genetic ability to handle stress, anyone can cultivate resilience. Psychiatrist Steven Wolin, M.D., defines resilience as "the capacity to rise above adversity". His findings are based on 20 years of his own research on adult children of alcoholics. Most of them, he has found, do not repeat their parents' drinking patterns.

Those who overcame adversity yet lacked strong family support systems growing up, sought and received help from others—a teacher, a neighbor, the parents of peers or, eventually, a spouse. They were not afraid to talk about the hard times they were having to someone who cared for their well-being.

Resilient children often hang out with families of untroubled peers. As adults, the resilient children of alcoholics marry into stable, loving families with whom they spend a great deal of time.


Psychologist Edith Grotberg, Ph.D., urges people to propagate their own resilience by thinking along three lines:

1. I Have: strong relationships, structure, rules at home, role models; these are external supports that are provided

2. I Am: a person who has hope and faith, cares about others, is proud of myself; these are inner strengths that can be developed

3. I Can: communicate, solve problems, gauge the temperament of others, seek good relationships—all interpersonal and problem-solving skills that are acquired.

It's often been said that the path to healing and maintaining recovery involves being around healing, balanced people; a safe group, family, friend, recovery org., therapist, church group, etc. The biggest challenge to improving resilience may be to overcome the long standing isolation that once provided protection from trauma and dysfunction.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200305/the-art-resilience

Check out the Orange County ACA website at: Orange County Adult Children