Editor’s Note: E. Victoria Lee is a published author and spiritual teacher. In 2000, she wrote “Secrets in the Soul,” which is now available on Amazon.com. A fellow traveler, we are honored to have her guest blog on soberhelpnow.net.
Session #5 – Developing a Higher Belief System About ME (My Energy)
From Workbook on Healing the Inner Child/Self (Updated, © 2009)
Written by E. Victoria Lee, D.D., Author, Los Angeles (sobriety date 10/21/1981)
You deserve to have the life you envision for yourself. When you begin to move with clarity toward that life, the Universe (Higher Power, God=Good Orderly Direction, known also by many other names) will step into make sure your BIG LIFE happens. It is very important to remember to believe and to have faith in your life process in sobriety and to stay in the work that will bring success. This session, let’s look at what life has been beginning in childhood.
1. Are you an “adult child” whom within the adult frame is a person who has survived harmful events and conditions in his/her family of origin? This survior is tough, but has carried much pain. Within this person is a stifled inner spirit in a still-wounded child who has been hurt and who now needs to validated.
2. The term, “Adult Child” is not meant to act as a label that limits you, but does provide a helpful way to speak to your unhealed pain and “acting out” through substance abuse and addictive behaviors. Often adult-age people feel as emotionally vulnerable as any young child (this does not mean you behave like children though you can do so in a given situation such as sulking, throwing tantrums, blaming others, crying at the drop of a hat about little or nothing, needing to be taken care of, etc.).
3. More likely these adults continue to carry the pain of hurt and losses quietly most of their lives until one thing tips them over into negative behaviors. Although some parents were wrong without a hint of how to raise a child, it does not mean that every parent didn’t do what they thought was right for us as children, but more to do with how we understood what their “best” was for us and the person that came from the parenting. I picture an “adult child” as a 9-year old or 12 year old with thirty-five and more years of pain. A person of any age whose family of origin was characterized by chronic loss or trauma, inconsistency in discipline or “blunt force punishment” (physical /emotional hurts or being overlooked and put down, just to name a few) is an “Adult Child who Can Recover.”
4. When you are able to accept these truths, you will reach a turning point that will change the course of your life. No longer will it be necessary to use any substance just to make it through the day or rely upon abusive relationships to survive. You learn that you are better than all that and learning to be Higher Power directed thus self-reliant, find your clarity in life one day at a time.
Assignment: So where does one begin the work so life is lived at a empowered and sustained level? It begins by looking back at your life time.
1. Ouch! Was that a pain you felt or, rather numbness, at the thought of having to look back? Answer this question as best you can. If you do, you have made a start at recogniizing and correcting the torments from your childhood and youth acted out as an adult.
I suggest that you not carry this discovery alone, you don’t have to any more in sobriety. Find someone outside of your family with which to discuss this and that’s why it is suggested that you talk with a 12 step sponsor or your counselor. As an “Adult Child”, don’t continue to live your life without choice or relive old pain subconsciously or unconsciously. This will cause you to find a way of controlling the pain which usually comes down to using and/or drinking and repeated attempts at achieving sobriety.
So where does one begin the work, so life becomes lived at its highest degree? Firstly, by reading and relating to the Bill of Human Rights.
5. At birth, a child has a “Bill of Human Rights”.
A. A child has the right to be loved for whom he/she is rather than for being what others wish him/her to become.B. A child has the right to be nurtured and parenteed rather than to make up for the parents’ losses.
C. A child has the right to unconditional love.
D. A child has the right to be protectedf from traumatic situations to mind and body.
E. A child has the right to come to his/her proper decisions for his/her own life outside the family, having been guided in this directions through childhood.
Write on – What does this say to you versus your life from past to present day?
THOUGHT: Until recognition and healing occurs, Adult Children are doomed to a life without choice AND reliving old pain THROUGH old life scripts in every relationship throughout ones lifetime. Is this what you want in sobriety? I hope NOT!
About E. Victoria Lee
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