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.