Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 1 (You Are not Alone)
Welcome to the first episode. I share my background, talk through the reason behind making the podcast, and share a tip about how to set healthy boundaries and leave codependency behind.
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Transcript
Welcome to the let go and be free podcast, A podcast for those who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. I'm your host, Ron Vitale, author of the Let Go and Be Free: 100 Daily Reflections for Adult Children of Alcoholics series. On this podcast, we'll talk about everything from dealing with ruminating thoughts, to stopping dysfunctional behaviors that you learned as a child in an alcoholic home. Together, we'll share a light to dispel the shame you might have been secretly living with, about your upbringing, and practical tips that will help you center yourself and live a healthier life.
If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit letgoandbefree.com. And with that, let's get on with the show. So, welcome, everyone. This is my first episode, I want to thank you for taking the time to come and listen to this show, I wanted to give a little bit of history of who I am. As well as I want to end with one simple practical tip that will help you if you're struggling, if you're new to learning what an adult child of an alcoholic family is, and the traits, I recommend that you do a Google search and visit the ACOA site, the adult children of alcoholics website, it is well worth your time.
I also wanted to set a little bit of understanding of you know, what the philosophy is for this podcast, just to kind of help you understand where I'm going with it. So first off a little bit of who I am. I have been a writer for I guess he's ever since I was maybe eight or nine years old. I love fantasy and science fiction. And that was my way of basically finding a way out of the struggles that I grew up with in my dysfunctional family home. So don't want to get into today's episode about all the nitty gritty of where I grew up. But I'll simply say that back in 2019 is right before the pandemic started.
I decided to write the let go and be free series. My goal was simple. Every day, I was going to write a blog post about what I had learned about growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family. And over time, I wound up having 400 different blog posts and those books, those posts became the books that I wrote four volumes of the let go and be free series. To date, they are the best selling books that I have written they have outsold my fiction books, and I realized that I must have tapped into something that people were really interested in. And that got me thinking, How else could I reach people who are struggling?
And some are just finding out, you know that the term ACOA, adult children of alcoholics even exist? And I thought, well, you know what, I've done podcasts in the past, why don't I sit down and just start a podcast and start sharing this with the world. So I have decades of experience between going to ACOA meetings, self help reading, going to therapy, following the 12 steps, which are the cornerstone of the adult children of alcoholics, philosophy. And so I thought it would be helpful to share what I've learned.
So that way, if you are struggling, or if you are new, to figuring out how you want to have a healthier life, I can help I wanted to pass that on. So with that said, I do want to talk a little bit about, you know, some of the philosophy. This podcast is not a religious podcast, it might be spiritual in the sense that I might talk about God, I might talk about some of my personal beliefs. But I want to make it very clear. This is a safe space for those who believe in whatever religion or no religion that that is not for me to debate. I have my personal beliefs. I expect you as a listener have yours.
I will share something and if it is something that you don't think it's gonna fit for you. That's fine. We, you know, we can agree to believe different things. This podcast is not meant to be a mechanism for me to say you must follow these things. But that is not the purpose of what I'm trying to do here. Instead, what I like to focus on is, here are the things that I have tried over the course of my life, some things worked, some things didn't work, and hopefully, you will see and you will be able to build your own toolkit as to We'll help you. So just to kind of take another step back, you know, one of the reasons why I'm doing this is that when I was younger, I didn't understand, you know, what had happened coming from, you know, my family upbringing, the trauma, the stress, the divorces, the things that I saw happening in my family, I didn't fully comprehend how they had affected me, you know, I just looked at it, as you know, went through some rough times, grew up, used education is a way to get to college, I got my degrees, got my master's, got a job, and I was onward and upward and no one was going to stop me.
What I didn't understand at the time, is that as I started forming relationships, and started thinking about marriage, that the way I handle conflict, the way I handle stress, the way I work in interpersonal relationships is intimately tied into how I was raised, you know, in my alcoholic and dysfunctional family upbringing, and the direct connection of how certain situations trigger a response in me, which typically would be a dysfunctional response. So if I'm, you know, what I realized is I was younger, in relationships, or romantic relationships, I'd be fighting with, you know, girlfriend at the time, and you know, things were going great. And then suddenly, we hit a rough patch.
And the way I argued the, you know, how I dealt with being defensive, how I solve problems, I realized that I did not have the appropriate tools to help me, I kept repeating the same frustrating patterns, time and time again. And I started, you know, being honest with myself and saying, okay, as I'm getting into my mid 20s, why am I still having the same challenges, it's not the people I'm dating, there must be something, quote, unquote, wrong with me. And so there was a lot of shame, a lot of confusion, a lot of fear, a lot of I didn't know what to do. And it was pretty hard on myself, you know, at that time, I wanted to find a way to fall in love. I wanted to get married, I wanted to have children.
And I wanted to have a healthy and happy life, I had, what I thought, pretty simple goals. But what I realize is that these patterns have dysfunctional behavior of, you know, fighting, you know, through arguing about the same thing, and not being able to let certain things go. being defensive. There were certain things behavior patterns, in how I argued how I tried to solve problems within a relationship, that, frankly, did not work.
You know, I always look back. And, you know, even till today, I'm embarrassed with, you know, some of my early relationships of how I handled conflict. I did not do it in a mature and healthy way. I can't go back in time, I can't fix those things. But to honor, you know, the people that I was with, and to honor my past self, I can say, here I am. Now, I have learned some things. If my wife, we're listening to this, and I expect at some point, she will, you know, she wouldn't, she wouldn't say, Oh, he's solved everything. And he's figured everything out. That's not what I'm saying. I'm human, I still make mistakes.
But the good news is, I now have a framework to help me as I move forward, you know, on my journey, and to set the stone the foundation of where I'm going with this podcast. It's really simple. If you're listening to this podcast, I'm hoping that you can take some, you know, helpful tips that are going to help you in your own life. I want to be very clear with you. I am not a medical professional. I am not a therapist. I do not have a secret answer. I do not have the magic pill that's going to cure all your wrongs, though.
That's, that's not the purpose of this podcast is meant for me to be honest and open with my listeners to say, here's what's worked overtime in here is what hasn't worked for me. And to begin with what hasn't worked with me in the past was ignoring, you know that I had a problem that I needed to learn better skills in how to argue I needed to find out how to set boundaries. I needed how not to be codependent I needed a lot of different things. And to get to that point, it took years of time. That is not for me to say that the amount of time it took me, it's you might be on a different path, you might have started the path path, you may not have started the path, the amount of time doesn't really matter. In my mind, what does matter is, for the rest of my life, the skills that I'm learning on a day to day basis, are going to help me to become not only a better person, but also to become a better father, friend, lover, husband, etc.
And, to me, that is the most important thing. It's not about being perfect. It is not about, you know, finding, you know, all the answers to the universe, so that, you know, suddenly you've got everything right. No, that that's, that's not, that's not the case. So, with this first episode, and with this, you know, welcoming everyone to the podcast, I thought I would just, you know, kind of share a story. And then at the end of the story, you know, a tip. And so, let me, you know, kind of go into the story. So, years ago, you know, I was in a relationship, and by serious relationship, thought we were going to get married. And we kept arguing, breaking up arguing and breaking up. And I could not understand, like, what was I doing wrong? What I realized now, and looking back at things is that because, in my, you know, family upbringing, there is a lot of angst and fear and confusion around my own personal fear of abandonment. And I've spoken to other people who have grown up in alcoholic and dysfunctional families.
And they have a similar, you know, behavior traits, that when they're in a relationship with someone, and you hit a rough spot, you start arguing about whatever. And if that person that you love starts pulling away, it tends to flip a switch, like inside me, and, you know, the old fears of when I was like, six come back, if like, everybody's leaving me on being abandoned, nobody loves me, what am I going to do. And my natural reaction is to go closer to the person to try to fix the problem. And as you can see, that usually doesn't work. Because the person is trying to get distance and set a boundary. Whereas, you know, I'm pushing forward to that, you know, to try to solve the problem and make it happen now to feel better, because I feel icky and uncomfortable, you know, because I'm afraid the person's going to leave and never come back.
With those feelings. You know, it got to a point, you know, in this relationship, that I just would have these ruminating thoughts, what am I going to do? Oh, my God, I don't know how to solve this problem. And, you know, I don't want her to leave me and what can you know, it was just like a circle, that the fear of abandonment would create worry, the worry would cause me to react, the reaction would cause my partner to want to back away more. And then the cycle would repeat over and over and over again, until, you know, the final breakup became the final breakup. And I just fell apart, because I didn't know, you know, I love her, and I gotta get her back. And what can I do?
It was just, you know, I just had no clue what what I was doing, I was young. And that doesn't excuse, you know, you know, my behavior. It's just, I didn't know where to turn to. So at that point, I had started to go to therapy, started to learn about different skills. And that was the first time that I learned about adult children of alcoholics meetings. And I started going to those meetings, and I learned about the 12 steps. Similar to the 12 steps for those who are in Alcoholics Anonymous. I don't want to get into the 12 steps today, I expect that they will be part of future episodes. But I do want to talk about that tip that really helped me. So when I went through that dark time, and I'll be honest with you, other dark times, you know, in the in the year since that, that time that I went through the breakup. I have fallen back on the Serenity Prayer. And this is where I want to have a quick little disclaimer. The Serenity Prayer is something that I learned in the 12 steps of Adult Children of Alcoholic meetings that I started going to, I'm going to read the, the Serenity Prayer. But before I do that, I simply want to say, if you don't believe in God, if you're an atheist, if you just are like, this is nonsense, I don't want to say a prayer, I get that.
What I do want to say is, there are ways of taking the nuggets of the context of what the prayer is actually saying, and to basically secularize that. So for those of you who aren't familiar, Reinhold Niebuhr, hopefully, I'm not butchering his name, he passed away in 1971. He's credited for having written the Serenity Prayer, and that prayer is God, grant me the serenity, to accept the things, I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.
So if you don't like hearing God, you don't want to talk about prayer, you could take that out. And you could take the nuggets that are within these words, and simply say, you know, grant me the serenity, to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. And when you break that apart, and you think about what these words are actually focusing on, it's essentially putting a line in the sand on boundaries. And it helps to get at what most people who grew up in alcoholic and dysfunctional families, the center that is codependency and investment, getting pulled into other people's feelings, when they're going through rough times, you you kind of latch on to their feelings, and you want to save them or you want to fix them with the Serenity Prayer.
Or if you just want to call it the serenity, meditation, again, whatever you want to call it, the the basic tenets of it are, you know, I need to have the serenity, I need this peace within me to accept the things I cannot change the boundary line, somebody else is going through something, if I make a personal when I was in the breakup, the person that I was with, she wanted distance, she wanted to have some space, I cannot change that I couldn't change it, then I couldn't change it. Now, there's nothing I can do for that. And the next part of the, you know, the prayer is courage to change the things that I can, which in that circumstance, when I was going through that breakup was I can change how I feel, I cannot change how any other person person feels, or what they think I am responsible, and accountable to my feelings, my thoughts, and my actions.
And then the ending part, the really, you know, powerful part is the wisdom to know the difference between what you can change which is within yourself. And when you cannot change something in someone else. So essentially, this prayer, again, if you want to call it meditation, that's fine. Whatever works for you, essentially has you focusing on understanding the boundary line between you and another person, in any relationship. This could be at work, this could be in your marriage, this bit between you and a sibling, or you and your children, it doesn't matter. The nugget that's here is you can be an understand and be responsible for how you feel, how you act. And what you're going to do next.
What you can't do is you can't change somebody else. You can't try to, you know, fix them by understanding where they're coming from, what their feelings and you know, you want to make them happy that none of that's going to work. They're going to feel what they feel. And there's that strong boundary line. What I realized is that when I was going through the breakup, by using this prayer, as an as a mantra, you know, as a mantra, it helped me better understand that boundary line, that when I would go to bed at night, and the ruminating thoughts going through my head like I you know, I screwed up. What am I going to do? Oh, no, I got to get her back. Whereas I would say this in my mind. Again, if you just say, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I can't get somebody back. They decided to move on. They've decided to have a different life.
Courage to change the things I can, I need to fix myself. And when I say fix, I simply mean, I needed to go to therapy, I needed to learn skills, that were going to help me deal with setting boundaries, getting away from codependency and enmeshment. And then the wisdom to know that the difference simply meaning I can spend my days, you know, pondering of how I was going to get back into this relationship, or I can understand that the Wiser thing to do, the healthier thing to do for me, and to respect the other person's boundaries, was to simply say, this isn't going to work out, she's decided to move on, I need to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life. And that hard line of understanding, I have to let this go, I have to let go, the feeling that I was going to be in a marriage with someone, and we were going to have kids together, it didn't work out.
For whatever reason, I was responsible for the things that I did wrong, I needed to accept that responsibility, be accountable. And I needed to find ways of helping myself to move forward, I have found that the Serenity Prayer in my darkest of darkest times, over the course of my life has always helped me always, because it is a clear way for me to get the neural pathways in my brain, instead of the stuck in the groove of I learned certain behavior patterns, having grown up in, you know, the alcoholic and dysfunctional family. By going back to that same problem solving ways of when I was in an argument, you know, yelling, fighting and pleading it, none of that worked.
That was what I learned, that didn't necessarily mean that it was healthy. And it also didn't mean that it was effective, and solving problems. So with the Serenity Prayer, I was able to take a really hard look at myself and say, What can I change? What can I change? And then what's the difference between the two over time by saying that serenity prayer, and running the faults of a problem through that phrase, I was able to basically, I guess, I don't know how other way to say it, essentially, reprogram my brain. So that way, the old dysfunctional behavior patterns, I realized what they were recognition, I learned different skills to stop repeating those dysfunctional behaviors. And then I found ways of applying to healthier behavior patterns, and then sort of moving forward. So the process took time, it took work. But I did get to a better point. And, you know, that's what I'm trying to say here is that with the Serenity Prayer, call, whatever you want, just take the nuggets, if you you know, if you don't want to get into the god part or religious part, just take the nuggets of what is in that.
And think that through the next time you're in a situation, maybe you're having a problem, you know, with someone at work, what can you change? What can't you change? And what's the difference between those things, so that you can understand, wait a minute, I have been playing the same role, you know, doing the same in effectual process that is getting me to the same point of feeling lousy, and upset, and tired and worn out? What if I tried a different way? And so that's where the brain, you know, starts to look at it from a different perspective. And you're literally building different neural pathways to say, oh, I want to focus on this other type of behavior. I remember some of my first, you know, therapy sessions, when I was talking with my counselor, he used and this will date me.
He used the, essentially the cassette tape, basically saying, you know, your brain is stuck on a tape that keeps playing the same thing over and over again, you know, maybe another analogy is a vinyl record. There's grooves on the record that the needle falls into, and it plays around that around and plays the music. Well, if our brain is stuck in that dysfunctional groove, and we're keep going back to the same way of solving problems, that's not working. The only way to get out Out of that is one to realize that you're doing that, and then learn other skills, such as, you know, something where you're calling yourself out in your brain and you're thinking, in this particular problem, what can I control? What can I control? And what's the difference between the two, and shine the light on this, at the end of it, when you think about this, the codependency, the enmeshment, everything that you know, many of us who grew up in alcoholic and dysfunctional families, you know, have struggled with, essentially, it essentially all goes back to control.
We want to control to make us feel safe, and feel loved, and feel cared for. We do anything to make sure that we stay in a comfortable situation. And I think, you know, when we are honest with ourselves about that, that's when we can grow. So I want to end on that. I do hope that some of this has been helpful to you. I asked that if it is helpful. Share it with someone else, share the podcast with someone else that you know, you expect is going through a rough time. And you think that this might be helpful. I hope you come back again for future episodes. And again, if you want to check out the website, you can just visit let go and be free.com. You'll see all the information there about you know, the books and various blog posts that I've written over the last couple years. All the information is there. So again, thank you so much for listening. I sincerely appreciate it and be well. Take care. Bye bye.