The Emotional Effects Of Growing Up With Alcoholic Parents

In this episode, Lisa A. Romano dives deep into some of the not-so-obvious effects of growing up in an alcoholic, toxic family system. The good news is, that there is a way to heal and to break through the damaging effects growing up in a dysfunctional home creates. The first step is coming out of denial.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough podcast.

There's a whole lot of wondering about what other people think.

Wondering about what other people think.

You will drive yourself mad trying to figure out what other people think.

As a general rule,

Someone who's an unrecovered adult child of an alcoholic,

Unfortunately,

Lots of times,

Dear one,

They're struggling with control issues because they have not been taught how to tune into self.

They have been taught to deny self,

Ignore self,

And there's a whole lot of control going on below the surface,

And what are they trying to control?

They're trying to control their emotions.

Why do they need to try to control their emotions?

Because we are emotional beings,

Sort of like trying to control Niagara Falls.

Like Niagara Falls,

The water is supposed to follow this beautiful waterfall.

Any type of a waterfall,

Water is supposed to flow,

And emotions are supposed to flow.

We are emotional beings.

So emotions are part of what we are as human beings.

When you're raised in a home that's riddled with denial,

You are being suppressed.

Your emotions are being held back.

You are being taught that your feelings don't matter.

How are we taught that?

Well,

When mother and father can't deal with any type of disorder because they're trying to control their emotions,

What they do is they try to control the little ones,

And they're so afraid of chaos and things being kept out of place that sometimes they're absolutely obsessed with cleanliness.

They're absolutely obsessed with vacuuming.

They're obsessed with pieces of paper on the floor,

Or the table has to be set a certain way,

Or you have to look a certain way.

There are so many dysfunctional ideas and attachments.

They're like weeds inside the mind of someone who really hasn't learned to master the self.

For instance,

My family,

My mom is an unrecovered ACOA,

And she had this thing about cleanliness,

And she was so afraid that people were going to judge her and think she was dirty.

So just stick with that for a minute.

There's a whole lot of wondering about what other people think.

Wondering about what other people think.

You will drive yourself mad trying to figure out what other people think,

And try to control what other people think.

If you care more about what other people think about you than what you think about you,

Do when you're in trouble,

Because there's absolutely no way of knowing what someone else thinks about you.

And so to get caught up in that vicious cycle,

It's a no-win situation.

And so adult children of alcoholics who have lived with parents who are alcoholics or drug addicts,

Or if you come from a dry home where the house was littered with denial and control,

Mom and dad had to control everything.

Parents who are controlling,

Who are unrecovered adult children of alcoholics,

So many things are going on.

It's a very complex dynamic to unravel,

Because there are so many reasons for why someone might be controlling.

If your mother and father were raised in chaotic homes,

Like my dad,

My grandfather was a lunatic.

He was a raging alcoholic,

So the house was very unpredictable.

My grandfather was physically abusive.

My dad told me a story about my grandpa was driving the car.

I was chasing my dad and his brother down through a schoolyard.

He was drunk,

And he was laughing behind the wheel.

He thought it was funny that he was going to be able to run his two boys over in the schoolyard.

He was drunk.

Of course,

Grandpa goes home and sleeps it off and has no memory of it,

Which is what Fs kids up.

Because here my dad,

Just imagine being those two boys and dad just tried to run you over in the schoolyard.

Now all your friends saw this happen.

Now you go home for dinner,

Or later on the night you go home.

Dad wakes up and he's just like,

Pass the mashed potatoes.

Nothing happened.

He has no memory of it.

You have these children who are sitting there terrified because of the experience that they just had that afternoon,

But dad is acting like it never happened.

He's blacked out,

So he really has no memory of it.

That will F a kid up because what that does is invalidate the child's experience.

What does a child do with all that anxiety and all that rage and all that confusion and sadness that came from that experience?

The child has to stuff it.

So what happens when you stuff emotions?

You literally short circuit and you create energy blocks and you create mental blocks and you don't know how to process these feelings.

So it's sort of like sticking a giant cork somehow,

Someway into Niagara Falls.

What happens if you clog up a pipe in your home?

It starts to back up and it smells.

And so that's basically what happens in our energetic systems.

So when we're denied the ability to express our feelings,

Then we get backed up emotionally.

And what happens to us as adults,

When we are children who have been invalidated time and time and time and time again,

Sometimes we turn into very overbearing,

Over controlling parents.

But what happens is you're so afraid of missing something that something's going to get past you and you don't know how to navigate the feelings inside.

You feel this bubbling,

This rumbling all the time,

This anxiety,

And you're out of focus because you're codependent and you're out of focus because no one ever taught you how to tune into self.

So what do out of focus people do?

They pay attention to things that are outside of them.

So let me rearrange my kitchen cabinets and let me vacuum and let me organize my husband's sock drawer and let me do this and let me organize the kid's schedule.

Let me do this and let me do that and let me sweep and let me,

We're neurotic.

We try to control our inner experience by controlling our outer experience and you'll watch people.

So when you're coming into this type of recovery work,

It's definitely happens in stages.

I had to stop because I was a neurotic nut job for a while.

I had to stop and just find time to listen to what I was running away from.

I had to spend time honoring everything that I felt,

Everything that I was afraid of facing,

My unhappiness,

My feeling unfulfilled as a wife and a young mother,

Face all the mistakes that I had made,

Face my own denial.

And I had to deal with the great tragedy and the great loss.

My life was a sham.

I was 33 years old and my life was a complete sham and I knew it.

And I had to let the dust settle.

I had to accept how I felt.

I had to learn how to feel those feelings.

And then I had to create new dialogue in my brain that would allow me to move forward and not get stuck again.

Things in stages,

Dear one.

I can tell you that when I stopped trying to control everything that was outside of me and I just allowed myself to embrace what was going on inside of me,

Something very interesting happened.

I'm just,

I'm getting the goosebumps as I tell this story.

What happened was I started to feel calm on the inside,

But my outer world went nuts.

My ex-husband was angry.

We were going through a divorce.

We had to sell our house.

He sold my business.

He towed my car out of the driveway.

I mean,

It was bad for a while.

And anyone who has not gone through a divorce or that type of a separation,

You don't understand the pain.

And I encourage anyone who's going through that now to hang in there because it's sort of like once you allow that to happen,

Once you let go and you accept how you feel and you start living honestly,

I'm not happy.

I'm not pretending like I'm happy anymore.

I'm not playing this damn game anymore.

This is my life experience.

I have a short amount of time to be here on earth and I'm going to make it everything that I can.

I'm going to live my life my way.

And I don't mean to hurt people,

But people are going to get hurt,

But in time they'll get over it.

If you find the courage to do that and you stick with that and you begin honoring yourself,

It is my promise to you that over the rainbow,

You'll find greener pastures,

But you have to go through this turbulent time first.

When you face being codependent and when you face like letting go,

Things start to get messy.

But that's all par for the course,

Dear one.

It could be no other way.

You've pretended for so long and then when you start telling the truth,

Things get a little bit ugly,

But only the truth shall set you free.

I'm hoping that this video has encouraged you to stay true to yourself because when you do,

You bring love and light into this world.

When you finally tell your children the truth,

You give them the courage to tell the truth.

When you tell a narcissist the truth,

They go get pissed off.

That's just too bad.

They'll have to get over that,

But it's up to them to figure out how they want to enhance their life experience.

We are only responsible for you,

But please know,

Dear one,

That as you bring love and light into this world,

The world becomes a bigger,

Brighter place and your life begins to change for the better.

Reviews

i’ve always known im an acoa but at age 67 just beginning to delve into it. great info and please do more talks on acoa 🙏🙏🙏

Thank u🩷

Thank you.

Awesome thanks

Truth!
Thank you

👍🙏