Let Go and Be Free
Discover tips on self-healing, overcome a dysfunctional childhood and find happiness.
I wonder if I’ll look back at these days and what I’ll think. As I write this, all schools are closed in my state (and in many others as well) due to the Coronavirus pandemic. In my county, all restaurants are switching over to being takeout only, and the Center for Disease Control (CDC) has recommended that all gatherings of 50+ people be canceled for the next eight weeks (weddings, conferences, sporting events, etc.).
People’s way of life is dramatically changing across the globe.
Each of us has a choice. When you get up in the morning, are you going to focus on the positive or the negative? Will you get back at the world for how you were treated as a kid and take it out on others? Will you repeat dysfunctional behaviors and become what you swore you would not?
As adult children of alcoholics/dysfunctional families, we can perpetuate generational behavioral problems. I’ve seen this played out in relationships, the workforce, and in families.
When the kids were little, and we were on vacation, I’d get up early, go to the beach, and see the sunrise. There’s nothing like standing on the beach, feeling the cold sand on the soles of your feet, and then feel the gentle warmth of the air around you. Often there would be lots of dew that had settled on the boardwalk and the lifeguard stand.
Who do you want to be when you “grow up”? That might seem like a foolish question, but in growing up in an alcoholic/dysfunctional family, often we took on roles to get us through the hard times.
Maybe we were the joker, the responsible one, distant, or checked out and tried to hide away from all the pain and suffering.
As adult children of alcoholics, we are hard on ourselves. Really hard.
But we can change that by taking a step back and having some time to reflect.
A few weeks back, a colleague of mine posted a message on our group’s message board, a thought that caught me off guard. She shared that she discovered that other people don’t have an inner dialogue with themselves throughout the day.
There are people in our lives that we need to either avoid or have strong boundaries when we interact with them. As adult children of alcoholics or having grown up in a dysfunctional family, we tend to take on more responsibility than necessary as that’s what we did as kids.
Maybe we helped our moms deal with their emotional problems or worked harder around the house, or maybe we took care of our younger siblings.
We can choose to see the world as “us vs. them” and create different classifications and silos among all the people in the world. But that’s not the truth. As humans, we discriminate and exclude those who are different from us.
Focus a moment on your own life. Who are you connected to? Family, friends, coworkers, neighbors?
