The Lost Child II

Greetings followers:

Happy Holidays!  Beginning today the My ACOA Life Blog will be posted every Thursday.

I was reading an article online by Louise Behiel entitled “The Lost Child: Invisible and Unheard.”  She said that the lost child, which I identify as, understands or feels the strain the family is under.  As a result, they try to minimize their demands on their parents and siblings.  I certainly avoided any push back my parents might have given by not asking to go to parties and other events that I knew they would not approve of.  I didn’t fight for the things I really wanted.  To this day, I feel somewhat guilty when I attend a number of events in close proximity of each other.  Behiel says, as a result, lost children are often overlooked.  This leaves them feeling lonely, rejected and isolated.  The conundrum is they get what they want but that result leaves them feeling empty.  The lost child spends much time doing activities such as daydreaming, fantasizing, reading, and watching television.  This describes my childhood to a tee. 

This article also got me thinking about another article I read, in which I learned that I was a compulsive eater.  It got me wondering…does compulsive eating mean I’m feeling empty inside; that the inner child in me is starved for affection or attention.  Am I denying that this exist in me because I was taught to be strong and independent?  This is more eye-opening information to ponder.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

The Forgotten One

For those of us who grew up with one or both parents that were alcoholics, we learn first and foremost that we do not matter.  I remember when I was five years old waiting for my father, who was an alcoholic, to pick me up from school.  I waited and waited for him.  I watched child after child leave with their mom or dad.  They’d wave good-bye to me and say “see you tomorrow.”  Some of the mothers even asked if someone was picking me up.  “My daddy is,” I’d replied proudly.  But when all my classmates were gone, I stood alone.  Then, I decided to walk home alone. 

It was only a five minute walk to our apartment.  There were crossing guards at every street that I had to cross.  When I arrived at the four-unit building where we lived, I entered the hallway and proudly knocked on our first floor apartment door.  I just knew my father would be proud to know that I could come home all by myself.  But he didn’t answer the door.  I knew he was there; his car was parked right out front.  He was inside the apartment; passed out. 

For some reason I was unfazed.  I sat on the steps and read my school book for nearly an hour.  Then suddenly I saw my father dart out of the apartment and out the door.  He didn’t even notice me on the steps.  After another 30 minutes or so he returned looking crazed.  That’s when he noticed me on the steps.  You see, alcoholic parents are selfish, self-absorbed, and often forget the important things that go on in their children's lives, which leaves the child feeling as though they don't matter.  This caused me to have no faith in others growing up and to this day to some degree.

Whether they realize it or not, alcoholic parents teach their children to suppress their pain and their emotions to survive.  I don’t remember feeling any particular emotion that day when I couldn’t get into the apartment.  I just knew he was inside and had learned at a very young age how to entertain myself.

Alcoholics also teach their children that the things they say and hear didn't really happen; that reality isn't really reality, and the children grow up, unsure if there really was problem in their home.  I was in denial about the dysfunction of my home growing up for more than 50 years.

The only way to become a survivor is to separate our messed-up childhood from our present.  When we feel as though something is wrong, it's probably the pain of our past.  Only when we separate our present from our past can we truly begin to heal.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

The Perfect Daughter

There’s a book that put on my list of “books to read” called Perfect Daughter by Robert Ackerman.  It’s said to be a pivotal book in the ACOA movement that identifies what differentiates the adult daughters of alcoholics from other women.  It’s also said to have so many good concepts in it that a few were capsulized in this poem by Kara Di Giovamma so we might better understand the long term effects on children - even into adulthood.

 “After a while you learn the subtle difference

Between holding a hand and chaining a soul.

 And you learn that love doesn’t mean leaning

And company doesn’t mean security.

 And you begin to learn that kisses aren’t contracts

And presents aren’t promises.

 And you begin to accept your defeats

With your head up and your eyes ahead

With the grace of a woman or man

Not with their grief of a child.

 And you learn to build your roads on today

Because tomorrows’ ground is too uncertain for plans

And futures have a way of falling down in mid-flight.

And after a while you learn

That even sunshine burns if you ask too much.

 So you plant your own garden and decorate your own soul

Instead of waiting for someone to bring you flowers.

 And you learn

That you really can endure

That you really are strong

And you really do have worth.

 And you learn…

And you learn…

With every failure

You learn.”

This is what it means to come out of a dysfunctional home and to try to change your own life.  I am reminded of the ACOA Serenity Prayer: “God, grant me the serenity to accept the people I cannot change, the courage to change the one I can, and the wisdom to know that one is me.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Codependency and ACOA

Adult Children of Alcoholic (ACOA) literature talks about being codependent; I never have identified as codependent.  I didn’t think it was applicable to me.  However, I’m learning that being ACOA and codependency go hand-in-hand. 

Children from alcoholic families tend to take on roles in order to survive such as the role of caretaker, which I felt a tremendous need to look out for my alcoholic father by making sure he ate and driving him to the liquor store so he wouldn't drive drunk.  True, I was enabling him but I felt there was no other alternative.  I also became somewhat of a clown; laughing and making jokes in order to conceal my shame and pain.  And of course, I am a classic avoider; avoiding conflict, difficult conversations, and anything else I perceive to be hard or uncomfortable.

Codependency makes it difficult to see your own thoughts, feelings and actions clearly because your focus is primarily on others.  In codependency, value comes from the opinions of others and safety comes from feeling needed.  I thought codependency only pertained to two people that depended heavily upon one another.  Now I’m learning that my strengths of being helpful, self-sacrificing, hard-working, trustworthy, and self-sufficient can turn into codependency when the need to be needed becomes a major factor in order to feel valued.  I have to admit that I have felt the need to be needed many times.  This is heavy duty stuff y’all.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Burdens Carried Over from Childhood

Comedy is tragedy plus time.  This is a famous quote by American author and humorist, Mark Twain, and this quote is a fundamental truth about much humor.  Imagine that you see a person riding a bike down a hill and flipping head over heels into a pond.  If this happened as you watched, it would be a tragedy -- head injuries, etc.  But imagine looking back on this event, given the distance of time, and distance from the upsetting emotions of the moment.  The visual imagery can be quite funny.  Many times we can look back at events in our own life -- a lover breaking up with you, for example -- and we can laugh about this years later.  

This is what I’ve been doing regarding incidents involving my father’s drinking when I was growing up.  My father died over 30 year ago and my mother and I still laugh at some of his incidents of disappointing us; like the time he failed to pick us up from the Greyhound bus station after we traveled 22 hours from Florida.  When we finally arrived home after midnight, he had locked the storm door and was in the house passed out.  We stood outside knocking and calling him for over an hour.  Now when we recall this and other stories we laugh.  I guess we laugh to keep from crying or being incensed about it all over again.  But I fear we are only kidding ourselves.  My mother, like me is an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.  Her coping mechanism was to laugh or joke about the embarrassment her father caused.  I chose to ignore my father as often as I possibility could. 


ACOA literature teaches that ACOAs are unable to relax and have fun because it is stressful, especially when others are watching.  I feel that this is spot on in my case.  I didn’t want anyone to know that I had a drunk for a father.  To this day, I really don’t want people to know that I am married to an alcoholic.  Well, they know now --- but the child inside me is frightened, and in an effort to appear perfect, I try to exercise strict self-control.  It’s just more built up burdens from childhood.  It’s getting mighty heavy.


Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

 

Guilt and Depression

When you ask people what are the signs of depression you usually get responses such as lackluster, despair, hopelessness or loneliness.  This too would be my response if asked to describe depression.  So I confidently declare that I am not, nor have I ever been depressed.  However, ACOA is showing me something different.  I may have to change my opinion.  I read an article on WebMD about guilt and depression and it struck a chord with me.

 

My mother is 84 years old and I thank God for her; but sometimes she drives me crazy.  She can get an unreasonable notion in her head and no one can change her opinion.  She can also be downright ornery in public at times, which is just not cool to me.  I feel guilty about writing this and even thinking it.  ACOA has shown me that I have an obsessive-compulsive trait and as such, I am prone to excessive deliberating about my own actions; driving up my guilt quotient.  The article reminded me that women build self-esteem through relationships.  And as women we have to make sure no one thinks we are being selfish.  That truth just smacked me across the face.  Now I understand that guilt is an underlying cause of my stress. 

 

The article warned that guilt also takes a toll on an already fragile mental state, and contributes greatly to depression and anxiety.  I believe these feelings have been building up in me since childhood.  It’s going to take some time to unravel all the suffocating.  But it can be done.  I’m just taking it one day at a time.

 

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

 

The Grief Build-Up

I have read a number of articles on the Internet listing the characteristics and personality traits of adults who grew up with alcoholism in the home; many list the same traits.  However, I stumbled upon one article that listed something that I never saw before in my research.  It said that ACOAs suffer from an accumulation of grief; a build-up of sorts.  The article stated that the losses ACOAs experienced during their childhood were often never grieved because the alcoholic family does not tolerate intense uncomfortable feelings.

This got me thinking about my childhood.  I spent a lot of time alone but when I was seven my mother’s employer gave me a kitten named Tiger.  Tiger and I were best buds; we did everything together.  But as unneutered boy cats will be boy cats, Tiger longed to go outside and commune with the wild; or a close facsimile, namely our backyard.  One day, Tiger got into an altercation with a squirrel; and the squirrel won.  Tiger was rushed to the veterinarian and never returned home.  My mother never told me what happened to Tiger, not even now after 45 years!  I suspect he had to be put down.  The point is I never had the opportunity to grieve the loss of my favorite pet.  Coincidently, two other family pets went to the vet’s and never returned.

As I got older and began attending funeral services of church members, my mother often pointed out to me that when people made a scene at the funeral, guilt was the root cause.  If she had been a good daughter to her mother she wouldn’t have been doing all the whooping and hollering, my mother often said when we returned home.  That stuck with me for a long time.  Thinking about it now I recall at my grandfather, aunts and father’s funerals, I displayed little emotion and there were no outbursts from me.  The article also mentioned that ACOAs are frequently depressed.  I think that a build-up of grief is cause for depression.  I will examine this further.

Hi I'm Liz Hawkins and I'm an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

A Heavy Burden

The Laundry List is fourteen traits of Adult Children of Alcoholics.  Number six says that we have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults.  This trait has me pegged to a tee.  When I was young I felt like I was the only one in the family that cared about my father.  I made sure he ate, helped him to bed when he passed out on the sofa or the floor.  I even drove him to the liquor store when I got my driving permit because I didn’t want him driving drunk; endangering his life and the lives of others.  When I was twelve, my mother had enough and wanted to leave him.  Although I understood her feelings, I also worried about my father being left alone.  What would happen to him? I’d ask myself.  I can’t count the number of times he fell asleep after putting food on the stove to cook.  This was before smoke detectors.  I would wake up in the middle of the night to the smell of smoke traveling through the house.  It was my greatest fear that if we left him to fend for himself, he would surely die in a house fire.  As an adult, I seemed to have sought out relationships with men that I could rescue.  I had the tendency to confuse love with pity; this is number nine on the laundry list.  I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but almost all my past relationships have been with men that drank, smoked and needed help.  They say hind sight is 20/20 and I can see clearly now that my blinders are off.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

It's not apples and oranges

My father was an alcoholic.  Although I loved my father, I hated is habitual drinking.  For one thing it was embarrassing to me.  Do you remember the old Andy Griffith television shows, where Andy played the sheriff and Don Knotts played his deputy, Barney?  Every weekend Otis the town drunk stumbled into the jailhouse; locked himself up in one of the cells, and slept it off.  In later years, the television show Good Times had a similar character they referred to as Ned the wino.  These characters were always good for a laugh but I secretly despised them.  To me, their image represented all alcoholics, which included my father.  I didn’t take on the habit of consuming alcohol.  Don’t get me wrong, I drink and have been drunk on occasion, but I’m no alcoholic.  I have been proud of that fact for years.  However, ACOA material has opened my eyes to my addiction, which is food.  I learned that common addictions include unhealthy and repeated over-use of alcohol, drugs, gambling, smoking, and yes eating.  Food addiction is, quite simply, being addicted to junk food in the same way as drug addicts are addicted to drugs.  It involves the same areas in the brain, the same neurotransmitters and many of the symptoms are identical.  I have a bowl in my office that I used to fill with peppermint candy.  I had to stop filling that bowl because by the end of the day, the candy would all be gone.  I would compulsively eat the peppermint when I was stressed and anxious working on a project.  As I write this blog post, it’s important to note that I just finished off a huge slice of carrot cake because getting my blog post completed on deadline is stressful to me.  I realize that my junk food addiction is as serious as alcoholism and drug abuse.  Compulsive eating can lead to type 2 diabetes and obesity.  So here’s another eye-opening revelation in my quest to understand the effects of being ACOA.



Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins, and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic

The Procrastinating Me

There is a poster that depicts a huge polar bear lying flat on the ice.  The caption reads: "When I get the feeling to do something, I lie down until the feeling goes away".  This is the sign of the resigned procrastinator: broken by frustration, unable to catch up, chained by depression and sustained by the simple apathetic response, "I don't care anymore".  Well, I cannot say I’m that bad but my procrastination really gets on my nerves sometime.  I find myself having arguments with myself, saying “you know you need to do this or that” or “if you don’t get started now you’re not going to be able to finish on time.”  It’s maddening.  I know procrastination must be an ACOA trait because it seems to go hand in hand with my propensity to avoid situations that I find uncomfortable or tasks the dread undertaking.  When I do prod myself to work on whatever job I’d been putting off, I find that it’s so easy for me to get distracted.  I can be researching something on the Internet for a school project then find myself checking my Facebook page.  During my continued research in ACOA characteristics, I learned that in fear-motivated procrastination, you have to try to identify the fear.  For example, as a Trinity University student, I may drag my feet in completing a class project because of a fear of obtaining a poor grade.  An accounts analyst may find it a chore to complete even one assignment towards his or her CGA certification because of fear of the material itself.  This example may in fact have to do with the persons’ lack of aptitude in his or her chosen field.  In a nutshell, both the fear and the sources of that fear must be confronted before the behaviors expressed by procrastination can be addressed.  I’m trying to get to the source of my fear so I can start dealing with my problems head on and quit procrastinating.  One day at a time.

 Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

The Lost Child

My research on the characteristics of the Adult Child of an Alcoholic (ACOA) has been both eye-opening and disconcerting.  On the one hand, I am gaining a greater understanding into my own psyche; getting in touch with my inner self or inner child.  On the other hand, it’s a little unsettling to learn all this stuff so late in life.  I’ve been surfing the Internet and reading various articles about ACOAs.  In my reading, I discovered that I identified with being what is called the “lost child”.  The lost child demands little and receives the same.  Positive characteristics include having good observation skills, being a good listener, being independent, and not demanding of others.  Negative characteristics include denying one’s own feelings, being detached, unable to develop close relationships, and depression.  This made me depressed just reading it.  It reminded me of some of my past romantic relationships.  For example, I would always be the one that gave the great Christmas gifts, especially if my boyfriend at the time had children.  I rarely received gifts in return.  When asked what I wanted, I always said that I didn’t need anything.  I think I secretly wanted them to be creative and come up with a gift for me on their own.  This proved to be a double edged sword because, when I did receive an occasional gift, I was generally disappointed.  However, I never expressed my disappointment.  I always conveyed my gratitude and told myself that it was the thought that counted; thus denying my feelings.  Thinking about it now, I have to ask myself how much of this disposition had to do with being ACOA or the religious teachings that were imposed on me.  We were taught in bible school to be like Jesus, who was meek as a lamb.  I will have more to ponder another day.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

ACOAs fear emotions and feelings

Today I learned that ACOAs fear emotions or feelings.  We tend to bury our feelings (particularly anger and sadness).  Since childhood, we are not able to feel or express emotions easily.  Ultimately, we fear all powerful emotions and even fear positive emotions like fun and joy.  This sounds crazy to me but now that I am aware of it and hindsight being 20/20, I can clearly see that this is true.  I remember the day of my father’s funeral feeling like I had to hold it together.  I refused to display any outburst of emotion.  I reasoned that the root cause for such outcries was guilt.  I felt that I had been a good and dutiful daughter.  There was no need for tears, sobs, and any other eruptions.  Although I cried my eyes out when I got home; alone in my room, thinking back on it I must have seemed odd or even cold to the casual observer.  I always thought it was just who I was; calm in the face of great sadness, chaos or confusion.  I remember when I was a child that crying didn’t get me anything.  You get no sympathy from me, my father used to say when I cried constantly about one thing or another that I had ask him to do for me or buy for me.  Eventually, I learn not to ask for anything unless I was sure of an affirmative response.  It all goes back to my fear of being disappointed.  My father and his drinking was a great disappointment to me as well as an embarrassment.  I feared people would judge me harshly because of him.  I swear, learning all this stuff about me so late in my life is heavy duty.  I just hope the adage “Knowledge is Power” proves to be the truth.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

The Peacemaking People Pleaser

I always thought axioms like “Walking a Mile for Peace” and “Avoid Conflict at all Cost” were good words to live by.  Now I understand that as an ACOA it’s simply my go-to approach to conflict.  Conflicts are inevitable.  Conflict is part of all relationships between individuals who live and work together.  But ACOAs have a fear of people who are in authority, people who are angry, and we don’t take personal criticism very well.  We also tend to misinterpret assertiveness for anger.  So we are constantly seeking approval of others; sometimes losing our identities in the process.  I have definitely been guilty of going along to get along and people pleasing.  I don’t like the back and forth people go through trying to get their point across or trying to get their own way.  Aggressive people do, at times, intimate me.  Although not the alcoholic in the family, growing up my mother was very aggressive and I could never win an argument with her to save my life.  She would have a hundred reasons for why I couldn't do something or go someplace.  I learned only ask for things that I knew fit her specifications.  Consequently, I spent a great deal of my youth in a self-imposed isolation.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Showing Little to No Emotion

Today I learned that ACOAs fear emotions or feelings.  We tend to bury our feelings (particularly anger and sadness).  Since childhood, we are not able to feel or express emotions easily.  Ultimately, we fear all powerful emotions and even fear positive emotions like fun and joy.  This sounds crazy to me but now that I am aware of it and hindsight being 20/20, I can clearly see that this is true.  I remember the day of my father’s funeral feeling like I had to hold it together.  I refused to display any outburst of emotion.  I reasoned that the root cause for such outcries was guilt.  I felt that I had been a good and dutiful daughter.  There was no need for tears, sobs, and any other eruptions.  Although I cried my eyes out when I got home; alone in my room, thinking back on it I must have seemed odd or even cold to the casual observer.  I always thought it was just who I was; calm in the face of great sadness, chaos or confusion.  I remember when I was a child that crying didn’t get me anything.  You get no sympathy from me, my father used to say when I cried constantly about one thing or another that I asked him to do for me or buy for me.  Eventually, I learn not to ask for anything unless I was sure of an affirmative response.  It all goes back to my fear of being disappointed.  My father and his drinking was a great disappointment to me as well as an embarrassment.  I feared people would judge me harshly because of him.  I swear, learning all this stuff about myself so late in my life is heavy duty.  I just hope the adage “Knowledge is Power” proves to be the truth.
Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

It's All About Control

As an ACOA, one of my fears is losing control.  I must maintain control over my behavior and feelings.  When things aren’t clicking on all cylinders, I am not a happy camper.  The ACOA literature that I have been reading says that we do this because we are afraid that if we relinquish control, our lives will get worse, and we can become very anxious when we are unable to control a situation.  For me, I think this relates to my father because I never could completely depend on him.  He might promise me something like buying me a new bike; but when the time came he would renege.  He’d offer an excuse like it cost too much.  I’d be thinking to myself - dude you knew the price when you made the offer.  If there was an event at school that I wanted him to attend, I couldn’t count on him actually showing up.  Even worse, if he did show up, I couldn’t trust that he wouldn’t be drunk and embarrass me.  I eventually learned to do a lot of things on my own.  And if I couldn’t do it on my own, I did without.  It’s been a coping mechanism that I have employed for over four decades now.  Unlearning these habits is not an easy task.  But what is worse is the awareness of it all.  Now I know what I am doing and why.  It’s like an inner voice inside me is pointing out my faults to me at every turn.  You’re trying to control the situation again Liz, I often hear it saying these days.  When I was selecting my courses at Trinity for the spring 2016 semester I heard it say, you’re just avoiding signing up for that class because you think it’s hard.  It’s so annoying.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.

Denial and Discovery

So for nearly a decade I’ve been working sporadically on a project to write a book about my father’s life.  The trouble was figuring out exactly what the book is about.  Is it about his life growing up in the south; the product of an unwed union, and the shame and stigma that comes along with it in the 1910s?  I really had no clue how to proceed, so I hired a writing couch/editor.  The first thing she asked me to write about was how my father's drinking affected me.  What did she mean, how did his drinking affect me? I wondered.  It hadn’t affected me at all, I believed.  It wasn’t until she really started to probe me that I realized and had to admit out loud that my father was indeed an alcoholic.  I just hated that he drank a lot; I used to say totally missing the irony in that statement.  What did I think an alcoholic was; someone that drank only on special occasions?  I was in total denial.  My writing couch told me about an organization called Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) and that I might benefit from reading their literature and attending their meetings.  My controlling nature, inability to express emotions and conflict avoidance are classic characteristics of ACOAs.  At long last: discovery.

Hi, I’m Liz Hawkins and I’m an Adult Child of an Alcoholic.