Transitioning from Surviving to Thriving in Life

More specifically and accurately: transforming from surviving alcoholism in one’s childhood to thriving in one’s adult life.

Somewhere in between completely forgetting about one’s past because you can’t change it and completely reliving it so that it immobilizes you for the rest of your life is the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) program with its ‘Big Red Book.’ Inside that ‘Big Red Book,’ early on in that book, on Page ‘x’ you will find “The Laundry List,” the 14 Traits of an “Adult Child.” (Source: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA.)) This term “Adult Child” refers to people that are now adults but as children grew up in alcoholic homes like me.  I am an Adult Child too.

“Adult Child” also means that when confronted, we regress to a stage in our childhood per founder Tony A. This generally is not good and limits our enjoyment of life on life’s terms. But when honestly accepted and worked through via the Twelve Steps this is a really good thing. It brings a full life of peace, joy and freedom completely into play for anyone impacted by the disease of alcoholism as a child.

We can literally transform our perspectives, our attitudes, our behavior, our lives… ourselves into our True Self while still maintaining that special Eternal Child Within. That is what I am working on and will continue to work on through ACA and an umbrella TROML program. Inspiration springs forth from overcoming challenges in life and it can come from you too without a doubt, absolutely, positively without a doubt. First you will inspire yourself with your God’s help and then you will go on to inspire other people living out your life’s innate design.

Here is “The Laundry List” and the 14 Traits of an “Adult Child.” (Source: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA.))

If you identify with them maybe you are an Adult Child too. If so, that realization and the subsequent opportunity could be the biggest gift God has presented to you in your life. But you have to do the work, no matter how painful at first. ACA and TROML are programs of action, not merely intellectual pursuits. I know as a child I was always trying to figure it out in my head. How could I make everything okay? I literally thought I could grow up to be president, fix everything and make all the pain in myself and others throughout the world go away. Looking back that was when I started acquiring and using the 14 Traits to survive my childhood.

I chose to let the disease of alcoholism impact me in adverse ways. Of course I could rationalize that away that I was only a kid and how unfair it is to put a kid in that situation. We do what we do to survive anything in life, don’t we? But the reality was that kid grew up, at least age-wise, into an adult and was in denial that using these same traits that enabled me to survive in childhood were no longer serving me well as an adult. I needed to not only understand what happened and how I coped but learn new behaviors to thrive as an adult.

More will be written later on this transformation in ACA and TROML. For now, here is “The Laundry List” and the 14 Traits of an “Adult Child.” (Source: Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA.))

Are you an “Adult Child” too?

1.   We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.

2.   We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.

3.   We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.

4.   We either became alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.

5.    We live from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.

6.    We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.

7.    We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.

8.   We became addicted to excitement.

9.   We confuse love with pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”

10.   We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).

11.   We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.

12.   We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.

13.   Alcoholism is a family disease; we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up any drink.

14.   Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

CLICK here for more information from the Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA) website.

Attending your first ACA meeting is the gateway to changing your life!

Have a TROML Day today!

Your Personal Revivalist,

Anonymous Andy

I am an ‘Inspiration Seeker,’ always searching for inspiration from out there in the world and from within me to add to, update and improve my own personal TROML Program. My goal is to maintain an ‘inspirational thought-life’ from the moment I wake up to the moment I fall asleep. I don’t avoid reality or negative feelings and emotions. I embrace the bad side of things, feel them completely and when passed, re-frame them to extract the good. There is always good in any encounter or life experience. My TROML Program gets amazingly stronger in the face of, even what appears to be, negative worldly trends. As I learn more about me and about me and my God I find there is an endless source of inspiration from within that emerges through the TROML Process too. Maybe it is as simple as seeking the right things in life and if you are lucky and/or persistent you will find them.

“I wanted to be as emotionally honest as possible.” were the words I heard from Adrianna Haslet-Davis on the ‘Chasing Down a Dream’ feature on CBS This Morning. They struck me quite directly as a unique combination of the words emotion and honest I had not heard before. Emotional Maturity, Emotional Recovery, Emotional Intelligence—yes I had heard before, But not—Emotional Honesty. It was as if Adrianna had brought two of my TROML Worlds together—my pursuit of honesty or transparency to the world with personal boundaries and my personal growth understanding, accepting and being inspired by my feelings and emotions.

This, of course, is a feature on a young women, innocently injured by the events at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the world’s oldest annual marathon, on April 15^th, 2013. Adrianna was one of 260 people injured that day. Three people were killed tragically that day with no earthly, moral or spiritual reason for their death. The good offered for the many has emerged from the bad done by a few who have nothing to offer me or my TROML Program. Good always overcomes evil in the outside world as Adrianna referred to it. Inside me the recovery always wins out over the slip with the slips becoming of less and less magnitude and the recovery taking me to a higher, more stable altitude and attitude in life.

The moments before and after she uttered those words—“I wanted to be as emotionally honest as possible,” were as inspirational to me. Recounting her recovery, she said “I feel like I can stay as positive as possible but it doesn’t mean the outside world is not going to hurt me.” Then later after revealing she documented the whole recovery experience, she said “I was thankful it was as raw as it was and that I captured those raw moments. I wanted to be as emotionally honest as possible.” The she shared what it was like to stand on her own for the first time—with a prosthetic device where her lower left leg used to be.  “That moment was amazing. I remember standing up and just like anyone would adjusting my shirt at the bottom with both my hands free. The emotion built up and I lost it.”

Honesty with our feelings and emotions, first with ourselves and then with others is key in life. We do so much to develop our body and our mind growing up but really our feelings and emotions are always there except, of course, when we bury them, which always comes at a personal cost to us. In my TROML Program if I can develop spiritually I feel, think and know my emotions balance into my life along with the mental and physical aspects. It all starts with honesty and if you can’t put words down on paper in your TROML Journal then who are you really fooling other than yourself?

Adrianna went from not being able to walk away from the finish line area that day to now running in her first Boston Marathon though one could argue she has already demonstrated the incredible endurance of ten marathons already in her life and she was not even a runner.

She’s completing a race that she never dreamed of running. Think about that. She’s accomplishing something she never dreamed about. How many times have we beat ourselves up for not finishing something we chose with our own will to start? Maybe if our race in life is something other than what we envisioned then it is the right race.

I am always seeking inspiration and when I find it I now look for the power behind it. What spiritual principles are out there that I can add to my TROML Program?

The thoughts, words and behaviors of Adrianna Haslet-Davis from Boston surely demonstrate a few.

She “believes in feeling every single bit of that (experience) and not burying it.” Why? “So you can enjoy the good days. You get in these mindsets, it is important to see how far you have come.”

“I want my life defined by how I live it not by what happened to me.”

TROML Baby!

She’s documented the whole thing… life voyager and documentarian is she!

Please consider a donation to #AdrianneStrong Runs Boston Marathon though the Limbs for Life Foundation.

Thank you Adrianna for sharing your story and to Norah O’Donnell and CBS This Morning for passing it along!