TRAIT 10
Sept 2, from “Strengthening My Recovery” daily reader
Trait Ten
“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).” BRB p. 17
If we came to ACA from another program and were familiar with Step work, we may have felt we had covered all of this ground before. We knew how to speak “program talk,” and our lives were already better, right? So why were these people in ACA not focusing on the Solution? What’s with all the complaining?
In ACA, we don’t hide from the pain anymore. To others this may sound like complaining, but we know that’s not what it is. We are locating our pain so we can heal. We allow our Inner Children to come out of hiding and flourish. First they may be angry and sad and need comforting. Then they become our best friends and companions in our Step work. We find new vitality as we see where this partnership leads us.
Our lives become the greatest adventure there is, totally unique. We learn more about ourselves each day by integrating the past into our present and seeing that we are no longer stuck. When we visit old neighborhoods of feeling, we are no longer parched and starving for attention. We nourish ourselves with the love and support of our Higher Power, the Twelve Steps, meetings and fellowship.
On this day I will chip away at the years of denial by being willing to be present for whatever feelings come up in my day.”
My experience:
My youth was consistent with the ACA principal of “don’t’ trust, don’t feel, don’t tell.” You hear things like, big boys don’t cry, suck it up, or other variations of these sayings meant to keep your feelings to yourself. However, as painful as they are, ACA encouraged me to get in touch with those feelings. When I was able to venture into the abyss and get in touch with those feelings I was able to realize that the consequence I surely would have faced as a young person no longer exists. ACA teaches you that we experience a sort of PTSD as our bodies continue to believe that rebuke (sometimes in a violent way, sometimes in the form of abandonment) is surely to come as it did as a child. But as we get through those feelings, shed some tears and acknowledge there is a better way to live, our lives get incrementally better, daily. There is still a lot of work to be done, but just knowing that it is ok to acknowledge that what you experienced was not normal, healing starts.
I am nourished daily with the love and support of my Higher Power, the Twelve Steps, meetings and fellowship. As stated above once you start to heal, your life changes and can become a great adventure with much more enjoyment. My mind is more present and I am fully enjoying every aspect of my life, whether traveling to different cities in America to watch my Nephew play professional football, playing a sport I recently picked up called pickleball or continuing to express my life’s journey through poetry. In this way I live “One Day At A Time[1].”
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[1] One Day At A time is a ACA slogan