Adult Children Secrets of Dysfunctional Families

by John Friel

  5. Recovery Means Getting Out Of Our Roles

  In Chapter 6 we discussed some of the dysfunctional roles that we get caught up in as we are growing up in our families. We noted that these roles are distorted mutations of truly healthy needs that we have. Recovery means giving up the role of mascot, hero, princess, enabler, and so on, and getting those same needs met in healthy ways.

  The family caretaker, for example, will feel tremendous guilt at first when he chooses to no longer take care of Mom’s feelings or Dad’s alcoholism.

  But the more a caretaker is able to give up this role, the more he or she will be able to have healthy mutuality in all relationships. Likewise, we must give up the roles of offender, victim and rescuer, breaking the vicious cycle that happens with these three roles.

  6. In Recovery, We Recover Our Choices

  This is so hard for us to grasp at first. Time and again our clients will state that they have no choices. This is experienced as the powerful feeling of being stuck, which is a key symptom of co-dependency. In our co- dependency traps, we become reactors to people and events around us, never realizing that we can choose and take action. Because of our dysfunctional belief systems, we paint ourselves into a corner where we are miserable but see no way out. This is one reason that we believe that family-of-origin therapy is essential to recovery, because it is those distorted childhood beliefs that keep us painted in that corner.

  “If I tell him that I feel he has a cocaine addiction, he’ll just leave me. If he leaves me, I will be alone. If I am left alone, I will not be able to survive. If I cannot survive, I will die. Furthermore, a good wife always stays with her husband no matter what. That’s what our marriage vows say. If I confront his cocaine addiction, I am being a bad wife because I will be causing the end of our marriage.” This is the kind of logic that we use to keep ourselves stuck.

  At some point in the recovery process we will be able to say, “I have recovered my choices.”

  7. Recovery Requires Transcending Paradoxes

  A paradox is something that appears to be contradictory but in fact is true. It is essential in recovery that we let go of black-and-white thinking, which is at the root of these paradoxes in which we get trapped.

  For example, can someone be “good” and “bad”? Can we love and hate the same person? Can we become powerful by “giving in”? The answer to all of these questions is “yes.” Yet, before recovery, we struggle very hard with these questions. We want to label him “good” and her “safe,” when in fact it is humanly impossible for anyone to be “good” all the time or always “safe” to be with. Likewise, love and hate are not opposites, in our opinion. The opposite of love is indifference.

  As Confucius wrote many centuries ago, “Only the truly kind man knows how to love and how to hate.”

  In Summary

  The basic elements of any recovery program will include one and usually more of the following:

  1. Regular participation in an ongoing 12-step, self-help group is a must. We always require this. (See the Appendix for a list of 12-step groups.)

  2. Individual psychotherapy.

  3. Group psychotherapy.

  4. Family therapy.

  5. Inpatient or outpatient treatment.

  If the dysfunction that we experienced in our childhoods was mild, participation in a 12-step group may be sufficient. The bottom line will always be the quality of life that we are experiencing (we do not mean the financial quality of life, by the way).

  Oftentimes people will expend a lot of time and energy in therapy during the first two years of recovery. They will then reach a point of new-found stability and then just maintain their recovery with a self-help support group. Then as life progresses and becomes richer, there may be a need to delve even deeper into issues that have not yet been addressed.

  A large precentage of women who attend inpatient treatment for chemical dependency are survivors of incest or sexual abuse, for example. The first two years of recovery may be just about the chemical addiction—quitting the use of chemicals, changing friendship patterns to others who are also in recovery, and so on. Later on, it will be necessary to address the sexual abuse issues in therapy but only when one is ready to do so.

  We have summarized the recovery process in the following flow chart. (See Figure 18.1.)

  Recovery is lifelong, and it becomes less and less painful as we progress. Stresses that five years ago would have thrown us into a deep depression are now handled directly with strength and wisdom. Stresses that put us on the verge of acting out our symptoms now, will not do so five years from now. It is not life that changes. It is we who change.

  Recovery is a relearning process in which, step by step, we come to see and feel and know the Little Child inside of us.

  Recovery is allowing ourselves to experience the truth. At first, this is terribly painful. In the end, it lets us make that Child inside of us feel safe, warm, lovable, whole, proud, honest, peaceful and real.

  Figure 18.1. Recovery Process Flow Chart

  19

  A Word about Healing

  and Spirituality

  All Adult Children and Co-dependents are victims of abuse and neglect. The core inside of us has been damaged. We have called this core inside of us our Little Child. What needs to heal are the guilt, shame and fear of abandonment experienced in our Little Child. Ultimately, our healing must take place from the inside out.

  In Chapter 3 we talked about our symptoms as being about feelings and about intimacy. Put another way, our symptoms block relationship. They block our relationship with ourself; they block our relationship with others; they block our relationship with the world at large and they block our relationship with our own spirituality. The only way to truly heal, then, is to restore our ability to be in relationship. This is why recovery never happens alone. It is a contradiction in terms.

  “Spirituality” itself is cause for much controversy and inner battling for so many of us. The idea of a Higher Power, which is an essential part of 12-step recovery programs, keeps many people away from Anonymous groups for a long time.

  “I don’t want any of that ‘God stuff,’” we proclaim loudly. “I’ve had it up to here with that.”

  The authors believe this is true because spirituality is misunderstood. We believe that many of us confuse spirituality with formal religion. Part of it gets confused because somewhere along the line we were presented with a lot of black-and-white thinking—you must either be a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Moslem, or you are nothing at all. This puts our Little Child in a double bind which makes us want to avoid the issue altogether. So we want to make it very clear that we are talking about spirituality, not religion. The religion you choose or don’t choose is your own business, not ours.

  As we view it, spirituality is one’s relationship with the unexplainable, ineffable, the vastness and power of the universe. Some of us call this entity God; others do not. Our spirituality is what allows us to let go of things over which we have no true control, such as other people, other people’s feelings and love or lack of it, accidents, tragedies or death itself. Our spirituality allows us to trust that our lives will make sense and that there is a purpose to life, which we will discover, paradoxically, if we stop fighting so hard to find it.

  If you have ever stood on the top of a mountain or at the edge of the sea and experienced a tremendous feeling of power and connectedness with the universe, while at the same time, experiencing a feeling of incredible smallness and personal insignificance, then you have had a taste of spirituality. It is frightening and incredibly energizing at the same time.

  But spirituality is more than just these momentary feelings that we have when we commune with nature. It is a feeling of connectedness with the entire human race—with all those who have gone before us and all those who will come after us. From there, it is the ultimate relationship with all of creation that becomes our highest form of spirituality.

  Imagin
e what happens to one’s relationship with something more powerful or unexplainable than oneself, when he or she is the victim of abuse and neglect. The first “higher power” (metaphorically speaking) that we experience in life are those who raise us from infancy—usually our parents. If those parents abuse us and neglect us, they will be teaching us not to trust entities more powerful than ourselves. We will always be fearful of people in authority. We will constantly defend against the unexplainable. We will seek comfort by trying to control everything around us so that we don’t get hurt again. And we will be destined to fail, because we are not gods, and we can never control everything around us.

  In our fear and in our damage, we will try nevertheless. In other words, we will try to become our own gods. This is why so many of us turn to chemical addictions—because chemicals give us the illusion that we are in control of it all and because they let us feel connected to the universe for a while, at least until the drug wears off. It is our spirituality that is perhaps the last part of us that is reclaimed after we get into recovery. And it, too, comes back in steps and stages.

  Recovery of our spirituality begins when we are truly able to say that we are powerless over our addictions, symptoms or our family systems. The paradox here is that at the very moment that we surrender, we gain back some of our true power. Rather than being left more vulnerable and defenseless by this surrender, we actually become less vulnerable, because now we are not operating according to a self-defeating, destructive logic that depletes all of our energies trying to control things over which we have no control. We are also less vulnerable because we are living in truth and reality instead of in denial and defensiveness. Without the denial, we can use that energy to make positive decisions about our life in areas in which we do have a choice.

  After this surrender, we are then able to trust others just a little bit, which begins to restore our relationship with other human beings. For many people, their “higher power” is initially the members of their recovery group.

  As we experience sharing our Little Child with others in a safe setting, we realize that guilt, shame and fear of abandonment do not necessarily have to happen. We see others doing the same thing without being criticized or abused. As we experience this gift of total acceptance, we feel a power in the room the likes of which we have never felt before. It is a power greater than ourselves. Many people in 12-step groups simply accept this kind of power as their Higher Power for years.

  For many more people, this ability to be in relationship with a group of other human beings eventually opens the door to trusting that it is okay to be in relationship with something even more powerful than the group. Many people call this entity God. But the words and labels don’t really matter. It is the relationship that matters, which is why it is God as we understand God, not as someone else understands God.

  The spiritual healing that takes place during recovery brings us full circle back to the first stage of life: trust versus mistrust. With the ability to trust that life is okay, that it will work out in the end even if it isn’t pleasant right now, we have wisdom. We have a sense of belonging. We have purpose and meaning. We have choices.

  And so as we heal deeper and deeper inside of ourselves, our lives become bigger and bigger and more connected with the lives of others outside of ourselves. Recovery is thus about the expansion of the self out into the universe, while at the same time, remaining humble and grateful that we are sharing in creation.

  Postlude

  20

  Kiss Your Monster

  on the Nose

  Once upon a time there was a little girl who lived in a village far from the big city. The village was nestled in a beautiful, sunlit valley surrounded by a tall snow-capped mountain range.

  As the little girl grew older, she began to hike in the foothills at the base of the mountains. And when she became a teenager, she asked her parents if she could hike over the mountains to the village on the other side to visit her grandparents. At first, her parents were very upset and worried, and they told her that she could not go. But the little girl pleaded and begged and argued that someday she would be a young woman, and that she would have to grow up sometime. After several months of debate, her parents finally agreed to let her go.

  Her father and mother taught her all that they knew about hiking and camping and surviving alone in the woods. They made her a backpack out of sturdy canvas, helped her pack, and then they all knelt down and prayed that she might have a safe journey. The next day she began her trek over the mountains.

  Her first night alone was scary, but she managed to build a good fire, ate some of the sausage and cheese that her father had packed for her, and then fell asleep, covered by the soft quilts that her mother had made for her. The howling of the wolves frightened her a little, but she kept her fire burning brightly most of the night, which made her feel safer. The next day she awoke with the sun, ate her biscuits and jam while sunning herself on a big granite rock, then began hiking up the mountains. Late in the afternoon as the sun slipped behind the tops of the mountains, she reached a fork in the path. She did not know which way to go. Perplexed, she sat down and prayed for wisdom.

  A few moments later she heard terrible frightening noises coming from the direction of both paths. Her heart raced and her palms sweated. Suddenly, from both paths, two monsters appeared. They were growling, gurgling, grumbling and snorting. The little girl grabbed her backpack and began to run down the hill, back toward her village. And then something inside of her told her to stop.

  “Other people have hiked over these mountains and returned to tell about it,” she thought to herself. “Maybe I’d better go back and see what this is all about.”

  The little girl stopped and turned around. The monsters had stopped right at the fork in the road, and something told her that they were trying to communicate with her. Slowly and carefully she walked back toward the monsters.

  As she got closer, the monster guarding the path on the left said, “Take this path. It is much safer, and much quicker. Take this path and you’ll see your grandparents tomorrow night.”

  At that very moment, the monster guarding the path on the right began to screech and howl a horrible blood-curdling howl. Fire belched from its mouth; smoke poured from its nose. The little girl was terribly frightened! She bolted toward the monster on the left! As she got closer, she noticed that the monster on the left was not as ugly as the one on the right; and it was definitely not as scary. The closer she came to the one on the left, the louder the one on the right howled. She was so confused that she did not know what to do.

  The monster on the left spoke in a soft voice, “Trust me. I am not as ugly as that other monster. And I do not make those disgusting noises.” With that, the monster on the right screamed and gurgled and snorted and puffed even more. She began to take the path to the left, fearful even more that if she did not hurry, the other monster would chase after her and tear her to shreds.

  A few hundred yards down the left path she looked back to see if the other monster was chasing her. It was still standing at the fork in the path, and it was screaming and howling more and more. But it was not chasing her. And then she stopped. The monster on the left path was walking a few steps ahead of her, and it just smiled at her, somewhat condescendingly, as if to say, “Don’t be a fool.”

  And then something inside of her told her to go back and take the right path. The closer she came to the fork in the road, the faster she ran, until only seconds later, she was running down the right path and up into the mountains. She didn’t know why she had made this choice, but she just kept going. As the last bit of twilight drifted into the blackness of night, she looked down the mountainside from whence she had come. She could see the fork in the path, and she could see the path she had taken as well as the one that she almost took.

  Then she heard a thundering, rumbling, smashing, crashing, crushing sound that came from the left side of the mountain. Straining to see in the near-darkne
ss, she saw a huge section of the mountain break loose and hurtle toward the left path below. Tons of rock and earth obliterated the left path at precisely the time that she would have been there had she gone that way. She fell to the ground and cried, releasing all the anxiety and tension of the past few hours.

  Then, just a few feet in front of her appeared the ugly monster who had been guarding the right path. She looked up and gazed into its eyes. It was not howling and grumbling at all. Its eyes seemed peaceful and deep. Its face had softened into a compassionate gaze. Without knowing why, the little girl jumped up and kissed the monster on the nose! The monster blushed, and smiled.

  “My name is Fear,” said the monster, “and that other one’s name is Destruction. If you run away from me without listening to what I have to say, you might end up avoiding something that is important for you. But if you listen to me just right, and learn to make friends with me, then you will have Wisdom. As for the monster guarding the left path, no matter how attractive it seems on the surface, nothing good ever comes from Destruction.”

  The little girl completed her journey after visiting her grandparents. Safely home in her own village, her parents noticed something very different about her. She was a young woman now, who had learned to make friends with her Fear, instead of being paralyzed or destroyed by it.

  References/

  Bibliography

  Adams, K. M. (1987). “Sexual Addiction and Covert Incest.” Focus on Chemically Dependent Families, May/June 1987. Pompano Beach, Fl.: Health Communications, Inc.

  Alcoholics Anonymous World Services (1985). Fifty Years With Gratitude. New York: Alcoholics Anonymous World Service, Inc.

  Bach, G. R. & Deutsch, R. M. (1970). Pairing. New York: Peter H. Wyden, Inc.

  Black, C. (1981). It Will Never Happen to Me! Denver: M.A.C. Publishers.