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 [...]
There are control freaks, and then there are control freaks. You probably didn't know that you had control issues until you began to take stock of who you really are, your behaviors and motivations, and/or began therapy–because you'd assumed that control freaks were that highly-recognizable type person who is…well, the annoying, uptight, nosey person who always has to be right, [...]
Growing up as an adult child requires 3 steps:
1. Processing your pain
2. Learning about healthy living
3. Putting new behaviors into practice
Each of these three aspects will deliver you into your own version of true adulthood.
I've always been uneasy with the label "Adult Children of Alcoholics." It's part label and part diagnosis. And for me it carries ultra-icky feelings with it. For one, the label "Adult Children of Alcoholics" feels left-over from the 1970s. As terminology, it feels dated. Plus, it's a term created by and passed down from [...]
This post is for people who love an adult child. I receive a lot of emails from people who are in a relationship with an adult child of alcoholics. They are trying to understand the person they love, or are trying to love, but they don't know how to decipher the code of adult [...]
The shortest and probably the most concise book about why children of alcoholics have the problems they do is The Adult Children of Alcoholics Syndrome: A Step-by-Step Guide to Discovery and Recovery by Wayne Kritsberg. (It’s $8 on Amazon.com) You’ll see yourself written in this book — you’ll see your whole family. The book [...]
Authority figure issues anyone? Oh, yes. We've got them. I've posted before about our complicated relationship with authority figures (in college, it's professors, in the work world, it's our bosses, our new "moms" and "dads"). Mainly, I wrote about authority figure issues in the context of handling criticism but I also mentioned it in terms of our [...]
When plans change, even something as small as making a stop on the way home that my sister suddenly wants to make; or my fiancee not feeling up to a movie we’d agreed to see; or everything I want to order in a restaurant they’re run out of; or my doctor having to re-schedule my appointment…these are all common changes to our plans. And I’m not sure we know how to cope with them very well.
ISOLATION. This one is probably the most straightforward characteristic of alcoholic households. Growing up, we were isolated in that we couldn’t reach out (we were kids!) to express our discontent and distress. As a household, we were cut-off from others and our family was like an island.
