Out of darkness

I stopped attending ACOA meetings after about two months.  I think I’m still in denial about my family dynamic.  In the meetings, I’d listen to everyone’s experience and think: I just don’t relate to their experiences. 

The ACOA trait that states:  ACOAs have stuffed their feelings from traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express their feelings because it hurts so much (Denial), resonates with me, although I still have trouble characterizing my childhood as traumatic.

Because my father wasn’t this raging alcoholic that terrorized the family with physical abuse, I could not relate to the stories I heard in the ACOA meetings.  But clinical research strongly suggests that the emotional and physical trauma that children of alcoholics endure does not go away.  In some cases the stored hurt creates a dissociative effect in adults.

The person appears to function normally in society, but the stored trauma is there, creating bodily ailments that can appear as depression, anxiety, hyperactivity, or laziness.  All my life I have suffered with all these traits at one time or another.

When my writing couch asked me about how my father’s drinking affected me, I was truly baffled.  I’ve not been affected at all, I quickly retorted.  Now I know that because I have been holding down or avoiding my feelings all my life, I have been living in state of perpetual denial.  It’s time to step out of the deep caves of darkness and into the light.

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