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.