Hesitant when asked to do something? Always want to know what’s going to happen–when, where, how long, and who’s going to be there? Cautious? Wary? Unable to wholly trust others? Yes, and of course. With all the chaos around us as children, caution and being slow-to-trust makes complete and utter, not-your-fault, 100% sense. In his [...]
I just can’t keep myself from writing about self-control again. Must be a lack of… Last post, I wrote about how another person’s self-control makes them seem more trustworthy to us (based on the results of a recent study). And vice-versa: they also found that when others’ self-control was erratic, people had trouble trusting them. [...]
Readers, you are in for a real treat. This winter I was fortunate enough to have two conversations about post traumatic stress disorder PTSD with trauma specialist Dr. Marylene Cloitre. The following article is based on our conversations. Do You Have PTSD from Childhood? Panic. Anxiety. Fear. Nightmares. Insomnia. Fuzzy-brain feeling. Indecision. Confusion. Out-of-body numbness. [...]
I expected to be writing a mega-post about PTSD, but today I need to rant on about a well-meaning phrase (in truth, I hope this is much more than a rant—I hope there’s something insightful and helpful by the end). You all know this phrase. It makes me want to scream whenever I hear it, [...]
In this post I’m focusing on Practice #1, the practice of discovery, and taking a deep, deliberate look at who you are in the context of what happened in your past. The Four Practices to Raise Yourself Up! 1. The Practice of Learning Who You Are & What Happened 2. The Practice of Therapeutic Work [...]
When you’re in emotional pain, you want to know—is there a cure? Am I a puppet of my family or an independent agent with choice? Will I ever feel better—like, happy? Will I ever stop crying? Will I grow out of this and, promise me, not repeat the past? Not repeating the past is really, [...]
AllTreatment.com just featured an interview with me on their site today! Check out the interview here. Here's a quick excerpt and a link to AllTreatment.com: AllTreatment: How are you coping with recovery today? Amy: I'm still discovering the impact of growing up with alcoholic parents! When I think back on my twenties, I see that I was [...]
It turns out it’s not so simple to distinguish between depression and plain old adult child of alcoholics syndrome. (Throw in anxiety disorder, and the differentiation is even murkier.) If you’re trying to diagnose yourself this dark, cold, depressive season, as I know a lot of us are, there’s a lot to consider. And once [...]
I’m excited to share this book excerpt from Life Lessons for the Adult Child: Transforming A Challenging Childhood with you all. Judy was kind enough to show me her rough manuscript of this book before it was published — and now the book exists…in print!…for all to read. You may remember reading my interview with [...]
For normal people, lying is about deceiving others. Manipulaiton. Control. Sneakiness. For us, people raised by alcoholic or otherwise addicted, narcissistic, or depressive parents–lying is rooted in fear. Our lying is based in a deep sense of uncertainty about what's acceptible, and our unconscious need to prevent abandonment (the abandonment of our earlier, child-age self). We lie because we think it [...]
