ADULT CHILD DEFINED

Nov 6, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader

“An adult child is someone who responds to adult situations with self-doubt, self-blame, or a sense of being wrong or inferior – all learned from stages of childhood.” BRB p. vii, footnote

We may have grown up with parents who used anger and conditional love to control us. Maybe they were perfectionists and we could never measure up to their ideals. We were left with a feeling of certainty that our feelings, opinions, and perceptions were inadequate – that it was wrong to be an imperfect human being.

As adults, our sense of wrongness from childhood may have kept us from expressing our true opinions; we feared others would abandon us if we disagreed with them. This may have led us to make unhealthy choices about partners or careers because our self-doubt was more powerful than our ability to trust ourselves.

ACA meetings finally provide us with an opportunity to break the “Don’t talk, don’t trust, don’t feel” rule. As we face our shame and feelings of abandonment, we begin to realize that our self-image is not actually based on objective reality. We start to see more of the middle ground in situations and to approach life as balanced adults. As we learn to experience our Higher Power’s unconditional love, we see that our opinions matter, and that even when we don’t think and feel as others do, we are still lovable.

My experience:

I had to admit that I am an adult child.  Better still, I am an adult child in recovery.  This letter is to you!

I am sorry, I didn’t trust myself so I couldn’t trust you.  I could utter this to those that I left behind and didn’t know it.  How many jobs, relationships, etc did I leave because of my sense of inadequacy?  I didn’t trust myself to have made the right choice.  I am sorry love, when I said infinity, I meant infinity.  I just didn’t have faith in me.  I couldn’t ask what I needed, because I felt, like always, your love was conditional.  Now understand that this was only recently recognized as a subconscious thought.  I did not openly think this at the time.  But now know this is true.  I just wanted you to love me for who I am, but I have been provided conditional love for so long, I did not understand what real love looked like.  So I say to myself, you be who you are and those that love you will, for exactly who you are, without judgement, without trying to change you, without ridicule.