Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 39 (Exploring Step 1 of the Twelve Steps of Adult Children of Alcoholics)

In today's episode, I kick off a review of the Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization's 12 Steps.

Step 1: "We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable."

I break down the step, talk about what it means to me, and share several questions so that you can reflect on what this step means to you:

  • Why would we want to do this?

  • What does this even mean?

  • Do you struggle with admitting that you were powerless?

  • How does this make us feel?

Remember, just because I choose to follow the 12 Steps, doesn't mean that the steps will work for you. Your mileage will vary depending on your own personal beliefs. However, I do believe there are some key concepts worth reflecting on that will help you on your journey.

More Information about Let Go and Be Free:

Want to learn more about Let Go and Be Free? Check out the Let Go and Be Free book series.

I’m not a medical expert. If you need help, please reach out to a medical professional.

Listen to the podcast on:

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. If you'd like to learn more, feel free to visit, letgoandbefree.com. And with that, let's get on with the show.

And welcome to this week's episode, wanted to start off a new series. Now I had sent a poll out to listeners, asking if people would like to learn more about the 12 steps. It was one of the questions of adult children of alcoholics. And I've decided that I am going to move forward.

And for the next foreseeable future, I'm going to break down each of the 12 steps with this episode. Being step one of the 12 steps of adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families, the worldwide organization. I know that there are a lot of other podcasts out there that have gone through this. But what I think is so special and important about the 12 steps is that they can be interpreted like by each person, like everyone has their own individual personalized experience of how you grew up in your family, what the trauma was, what the problems were within the family, what the dysfunctions were, though, there is a underlying similarity of how we may have responded, you know, to those difficulties and our upbringing.

So if you are familiar with the 12 steps, this will help you kind of brush up, you know, I had looked at the calendar and thought as we're, you know, moving forward, you know, toward the new year, starting this, recording this right before December. And so this will come out, I think it's going to come out like two weeks before Christmas weekend, I thought this would be a really good time to kind of reflect at the end of the year of where we are, and then move us forward into the future for 2023. And the good news is that no matter when you listen to this, years from now, in the future months from now, it doesn't really matter. In the sense, I'm just using this as an opportunity, you know, for me, in my own life to kind of take stock where I am, you know, reflect on this past year, everything that's happened to me personally and in the world, and use that as a lens to look at the first step.

And if you've never heard of the first steps, you know, the first step or the 12 steps, and you're like I've heard of them, but I don't quite know what they are, you're in the right place, I'm going to read the first step. And then kind of break it apart, talking about, you know, how I interpret it, what I see the value in it, and then ask some hard questions.

And I'm hoping that you will do the same as you decide on whether this is something that you want to follow. You know, or if it's just not for you. And I and I want to say this, you know, outright at the beginning of this, you know, as I'm moving forward with this podcast and other podcasts, again, my intention is to move forward, and then go through each of the 12 steps, I haven't decided yet.

If I'm going to make each episode, you know, the next step and go for the next 12 weeks, it's possible that I might decide to take a break, in the sense that maybe there's a really important topic that has come up. I'm gonna pause that and then focus on the new topic, and then get back into the 12 steps. I'm going to be a little bit, you know, open in the flow of how the episodes go. I think that's, I think that's also a little bit more realistic of how life goes.

And that, you know, when you're working the 12 steps. I always think it's funny when I see someone and I saw this, I saw this yesterday, actually, and maybe this is why this has been on my mind. Someone was saying well, I'm now past 12 Step 12. And, you know, I feel a little weird, like where do I go from here? And you know, I always always kind of scratch my head at that because the 12 steps at least, how they were introduced to me.

They're not a let's go through one through 12 We checked off 12 And how everything's done and over with and we're good to go. Problem solved. It It's more like a guideline, you know, I don't want to equate them to, you know, the religious 10 commandments. But, you know, I think it's a good analogy. There are 10 commandments, you don't get through the 10 commandments and be like, well, I said these and I know them in my head, I never have to deal with them again. No, it's we are people and we are tempted, and we make mistakes, and we fall down.

And we kind of reflect on, you know, how we go through the process of our lives and the 10 commandments, or those guidelines that that many follow. With the 12 steps, I look at them from a similar perspective, in that, you know, I go through the 12 steps, I might say them in my head now, and then reflect on a particular one, I might reflect on step 11. And not one first, you know, in my own personal life, here, I'm going to kind of going through step one through 12, in a very linear linear process, because I think that will be helpful, you know, for listeners, especially listeners who have May, who may not have heard of the 12 steps before. But that does not mean when I get to the end of the 12 step, that suddenly you're cured of all your problems, and everything's over with and you know, you're done and you move on to something else, I see the 12 steps as a guide, that you will live your life through similar again, to the 10 commandments, they are a guy that I reflect to in good times, and in different times.

And in difficult times. And there are some moments when a particular step is called out to me that when I look at it, and I say, Hmm, maybe I need to focus on that one, a little bit more. And I see it as a, like a, almost like a tune up of how I need to kind of focus and keep my mental state healthy, ongoing, like through a process, not a, you know, check a box kind of thing. So with that said, I'm going to read step one, again, this is the 12 steps that you can find at adult children.org under their literature menu, and I believe it's listed as steps in the menu, at least when I looked them up earlier this week, that's what I where I was able to find them. But if you Google 12 steps of adult children of alcoholics, you will find them.

And that is what I'm working off of know that the 12 steps are slightly different for those who are in Alcoholics Anonymous, and those who are in a COA, adult children of alcoholics in dysfunctional family. So this is step one, we admitted, we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism, or other family dysfunction, and that our lives had become unmanageable. So let's let that sink in. For a moment there, I'm going to repeat it.

We admitted we were powerless, over the effects of alcoholism, or other family dysfunction, and that our lives had become unmanageable. So that's a pretty powerful first step. I remember having lots of conflicting thoughts about this step when I first came across it. And at this point, it's been decades, it was in the early 90s, when I first came across this step. And I remember being at my first meeting, sitting around a table with a bunch of other people would come to the meeting, there was a book that was being used, people were reading from the book, they read this step. And then there were some paragraphs that talked about it.

And then people reflected a bit on it by sharing around the table. It was a very powerful moment. For me, you know, I was in my early 20s and felt very lost and adrift in life. I felt like I just felt like I had missed some important classes at school. And you know, some of the most basic things that I should have known about life I was missing and I just didn't understand and became aware of when you know, you grow up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family. You're the family is warped in the sense that there are missing pieces that are taking place in the sense that often there his emotional immaturity focus on dysfunction, lots of arguing lots of problems.

Things just kind of escalate and then never get resolved. And you see the same arguments over and over and over again. And you're living in a very topsy turvy environment in which you don't know when what might set someone off, what the next crisis is going to be, how that crisis is going to be solved, you just know that you need to be on your toes, 24/7, because you don't know, when the next problem is going to, you know, arise, it could be late at night, when you're sleeping, it could be during the day when you're away, and you come back and looks like, you know, your world is falling apart, you just don't know. That's the kind of life you know, early life that I kind of grew up in. So reading this and saying, I needed to admit that we were powerless, that used to hit me in a way that I felt uncomfortable about.

And the reason for that is I used to look back and be like, No, I am powerful. I have agency, I have the ability to help myself. You know, I obviously I believe that. In this particular circumstance, I was focusing so much on, I don't want to admit that I'm powerless, because I felt that I was powerless. So many times in my life, I want to admit that I am powerful, I am strong. You know, I'm a survivor, I'm able to move on. This step isn't necessarily saying that you're not powerful. It's saying you're powerless over the effects of alcoholism, or other family dysfunction.

That's a key difference there. And that's something that, you know, when I reflect on that, it really is stating our shame, I should say, in a very underhanded way that there's a boundary. And I've talked about boundaries a lot in this podcast. So let's, let's look at it from this particular lens. When you were younger, you were growing up in whatever type of alcoholism addiction or dysfunction that was happening within your family.

When you look at that, there's a boundary line in your head that you could set. And that line is you are powerless over any of those effects that happened in your family, others cause that it is not your fault, is not your refund responsibility to fix quote unquote, them. It just isn't. You were powerless over those effects. You were growing up as a kid, and you were thrown in the hurricane in the maelstrom. And you came out as you are, you are powerful, but you're powerless over those effects. That of what happened to you while growing up. It's not your fault.

And having that line in the sand, in that you're, you're powerless. It's a hard thing, because I do like to see that line in that those effects of how I grew up, I cannot go back in time and relive those early moments, those early years of my life, it's impossible for me to do I am powerless over that. I like to think of that, because it kind of cleans the slate in that the more that I per separate. And, you know, think and process over and over and over again.

Why couldn't I do this? Or why did this happen? Why did this person do X? Why did that person do why? The simple answer. And I know it may not be simple. I'm obviously boiling this down. The answer might simply be someone in your family or multiple people in your family may have been addicted, or they may have you know, abused alcohol. And there could have been other family dysfunction, sexual violence and emotional violence, physical violence, domestic abuse, could be all those things all kind of rummaged in troubled altogether within your family and the the effects of those things have made you you know who you are today. We are powerless over those effects.

As we were growing up, there's nothing we can do to go back in time. And fix those, we have these. Think of it as a, like a tape recorder, that there are certain moments that trigger us when we're in certain experiences, and we feel that horrible, uncomfortableness of something's not right. And then we have that flight, or fight mentality, that risk in our brain, you know that, that kind of brings us to life, and we get into that survival mode. And I happened by pure chance to be on a webinar last night, our local school had provided a webinar on brain based ways of handling, stress, you know, and anxiety, there was a family counselor, he gave a great talk.

And he started off by talking about the scientific aspects of our brain, you know, and how the brain there's the brainstem, there's the cortex, the limbic system, there's all these different parts, you know, the brain, and that the base, the brainstem, it's the earliest, you know, evolution part of our brain, which again, is the most like animalistic in the sense that when we're fearful, not only do we fight or flight, you know, like, his example was, if a bear breaks through the door, you're not going to ask, Is it okay to leave, you're just going to go into reaction mode, and you're going to run or you're going to fight, you know, that that's how your brain is going to try to keep you alive.

But what I found interesting is that he also broke down, that in these particular moments, when you're in that base level, not only does your IQ drop, during those times, he showed examples of people who grew up in trauma, and showed when they go through stressful experiences, what parts of their brain lights up, and it's the brainstem, it's that, that early, you know, animalistic fight or fight survival, the cortex, the thinking intellectual part of the brain, you know, when we're going through, he gave the example of like, if, if you're thinking through a math math problem, someone who's lived through trauma, the cortex, part of the brain doesn't fire off as much as the brainstem.

And so like our brains, could potentially, you know, I don't know if this is for everyone. But if you've been through trauma, your brain may be wired a bit differently. And there could be a circumstance and I'm going to use a personal example here is that if there are money problems in my life, my first thought is to remember some of the traumatic things that happened have around money and not having enough money when I was kid, and fearing, like, where are we going to live?

Are we gonna have enough food, like, again, going right into that basic fight or fight, you know, flight or fight survival mode. And I do get a sense when I get into that tunnel vision, it is difficult for me to get out of that.

And so he was explaining the ways to overcome that, and how those times it's really important to know that you're safe, your physical and emotional environment and where you are, get yourself into a safe space. So with the first step, getting back to that, and saying, you know, we admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, and that our lives had become unmanageable. It, it really is important it to focus on that powerless aspect. We cannot go back we were, we're past tense, powerless, over the effects of alcoholism, or other family dysfunction, and that our lives had become unmanageable.

When we look back and reflect on that, it isn't that we're trying to let others off the hook. It's that we're trying to let ourselves have the space to grow, to set that boundary in our brain on the past and the present. This is how I look at this. The past, we were powerless. We can't go back in time, the effects of what we live through. They shaped us to who we are today. And we might carry those scars for the rest of our lives.

The challenge is, what are we going to do from there? So, when we think about, are we struggling with admitting we're powerless in the sense of being powerless, and saying we were, I see that as our being powerful. And I know that sounds like an oxymoron, how can we power be powerful, if we admit, we are powerless, I break it down this way. In the past, when I was a kid, I was powerless, over the effects of alcoholism and the dysfunction.

But as an adult, I have power, I have agency, I have a choice to not let the past rule my present, or my future. And I want to, I want to focus on that. There is a, again, boundary line, the past is the past.

And we were powerless in the present. When we admit we were powerless, about the past, we can now say, we have power in the present, because we could choose to live a healthy life. And that's why I focused in on the last couple of weeks of like, what does living a healthy life mean?

To me, it doesn't necessarily mean those steps that I went through, are the same that you will go through. Same thing as with these 12 steps, you might say, I, this doesn't do anything for me, and other people are gonna say, Wow, I never heard these before, or these are important, these are a good guide, you know, and the guidance will help me on my daily life. So when I think of this step, I like to reflect, you know, why would I want to do this.

And for me, it's self reflection, to separate the past, from the present, and the future. I want to focus, you know, emotionally, and get back to that little kid that I was, and I felt trapped, I was hurt, I was confused. And I just didn't feel like anybody was was helping me, that may or may not necessarily be true, but the memories that I have, that's what I live with. There the past, I was powerless over the effects of the dysfunction, and alcoholism that was happening within the family. Now, in the present, I do have power.

And why I would want to do this is, in order for me to heal, I need to process I need to overcome those past memories, separate them, embrace them, and realize the past is the past. It's not weak of me to say that I was powerless at that time when I was a kid. In fact, showing that vulnerability allows me to be powerful in the present. And then for, you know, what does this all mean? It's taking a step and moving forward, rather than living in the past. And then, you know, how does this make me feel like how does this make you feel when you hear this step. And the first time I felt confused, and conflicted. To be honest, I didn't want to admit that I was powerless. But now I look at it. And I take strength from reading this, and understanding of where I was.

And there are times in the present. Where if you still have someone, I'll just use a generic example. This is not to, you know, it's just a generic example. Let's say your mother drinks, abuses alcohol, and continues to do so. Anytime you have an interaction with your mother, if she has been drinking too much, or if there's the holidays coming up, and she's going to come over and drink too much.

You're going to be stuck into that past of your brain, kind of like does a time warp. And you revert back to when you were a kid when you were powerless over the effects of alcoholism, you know, or whatever the other family dysfunctions were at that time. And when you realize that you cannot change your mother. That's where the healing begins. Because you set a boundary line and then you have to ask hard questions.

Do you have to cut ties with your Your mother, if she's continuing to drink, I've seen so many people have to do that they've had to say to their father or their mother, look, you've chosen something, you're choosing to drink all the time, I'm choosing not to do that. And with my family, we're moving forward.

When you decide to, you know, change, I love you no matter what, but I can't have you over for the holidays, or I can't this or I can't that setting a hard boundary, that is not an easy thing to do. It really isn't. And I know, and I've seen so many people, you know, write about, and talk about how conflicted they feel in those moments.

But when you look at this first step, we are powerless over those effects of alcohol is, you know, another family dysfunction. And our lives had become unmanageable to allow ourselves to live that way in the present, and not set a strong boundary is going to create the same environment that we will be powerless over.

And now as an as an adult, we have a choice. I'm not saying the choice is easy. But the choice is, if someone is struggling with addiction, and they're choosing not to get help, we have the choice of remaining close to them, and then getting pulled into their problems. And that's the path of codependency and enmeshment.

Or we can set a strong boundary and protect ourselves. And let's say our own family, if you have children, if you have a spouse, there's, you know, I don't know how to put it, except that's, you know, that's, that's where we're at. for better, for worse, that's where we're at Sure, there may be some kind of third path, where you kind of balance on the line, and you keep contact as best you can. And then you pull away when, let's say, your parent, you know, drinks too much, and you then pull away, it could be a cat and mouse kind of game.

Again, this is all up to you, I cannot tell you what's right for you, I cannot tell you, what is the right decision to make in anything that you do, only you can do that. And the I think the beautiful thing here is that as an adult, we have the freedom and the independence to make those choices.

Whereas when we were children, decisions were imposed upon us. And again, we were powerless over those, the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction. But in the present, we have power and we can say, I do not wish to be part of this anymore. I wish to leave, I wish to set a boundary, I am breaking off contact, we have the ability to be able to do that. So looking at that unmanageable aspect.

You know, again, I look back at the past, and it was just a manageable, like, I just Just remember sometimes coming home and just not knowing what the heck was going on, or what set anybody off or what the problem was, like, there were some things that happened that I didn't learn until I was an adult.

And I had no clue that this was happening, you know, within the, in the family, and it shocked me It surprised me. And, you know, as a kid, I wasn't responsible for any of that I was collateral damage, you know, in a messed up situation. And so many of us, that's the life that we lived. But we're in the present now. And so with this first step, we have a choice to make. And I think reflecting on those choices, and thinking about it, writing about it, talking in therapy about it going to adult children of alcoholics, and dysfunctional family support group meetings about it. I think there's a lot to be gained there.

So again, this is a heavy first step. It's a lot to think through. It's a lot to process. And I'm going to end there because again, I I think it's it's a lot and I wanted to pace this out in a way that you have some time, you know, between now and when I do the next episode, to kind of reflect and be easy on yourself.

You know, take some time off and Get back to this. Think about it.

What do you want to do? What do you think about this step? What do you think about the 12 steps?

So I, again, I, I share this with you. Because I have learned over time, and often the hard way that there is a better way to live. By getting the skills and the tools. And working them all together, I've been able to move onward and have a healthier and happier life. And the first step and the other 11 steps for me, not saying for you. But for me, I find them to be a good guide in my daily living.

So with that, again, I want to thank you for taking time to listen to this podcast. If you like to help support me, wherever you're listening, iTunes, Spotify, Google, wherever, if you could like it, leave a positive review, I'd appreciate that. That'd be really helpful. And if this is the first time you listening, you're listening to this podcast. You can visit the let go and be free.com website. Do you find all the back episodes of the podcast there as well as the four books that let go and be free books that I've written. So thank you again so much for your time. I know we're all of us are so busy these days. There's a lot going on in the world. I appreciate you appreciate you taking the time to listen. And with that, as always be well.

Support the podcast:

Please note that there are affiliate hyperlinks used on this page and that I receive a small percentage of sales if you choose to purchase. I only recommend items that I have found helpful and useful, and am passing them on to you to help. Thank you.