An Introduction
I am an Adult Child of an Alcoholic. I have been living in the shadow of my mother’s addiction for my entire life. As an adult I did not understand how her problem had affected me as I got older. I had convinced myself that her addiction died with her, I was not prepared to accept that it still had control of my life
After an emotional and mental break down because of a failed relationship, I went back into therapy. My therapist suggested ACA after a few sessions with me and talking about my mom. I resisted the idea because I had gone though Al-non when my mom was trying to get sober. Things however just did not work out well and my sense of responsibility for my mom’s addiction became even worse than it was before. My therapist gave me a new comer booklet and I sat down to read over the laundry list. As I read it, it was like looking at my life on paper. Someone else had felt the way I did, for the first time in my life I felt that I was not alone with the trauma of my childhood.
I finally worked up the courage to go to a meeting, and it was by far one of the best things I have ever done for myself. Though I didn’t understand things like the Inner Child, and Inner Parent, or the Inner Critic as I listened to the people in the room around me share their life experiences and how they were working on handling the problems I began to feel like there was finally hope that I could be ok with myself.
As I do with everything, (addictive personality I think) I threw myself into the step work and tried to really read as much of the red book as I could. What I did not realize was that I was going to learn a lot of things about myself that I was not ready for.
It’s been almost 2 years since then, and I had stopped working the program because of the lack of a good group in the city I had moved to, and a codependent relationship that was turning toxic.
Today I am out of that relationship, and trying to reparent myself again and learn to quiet my inner critic. I am starting this blog as a place for me to write about my therapy and the things that I go though on my journey to live a life of peace without the scars of someone else’s addiction.
