Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 41 (Exploring Step 3 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 3: "Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God."

Many people, understandably, do not wish to work on this step because they don't believe in God. If you do believe in God, then this step might be easier for you. But in this episode, I want to look at this step from a different perspective.

What exactly is this step about?

It's about power.

There are many times in life when we don't have power.

How do we feel when someone (or something) has power over us?

Do we struggle against it? Do we overreact? Do we try to control everyone and everything around us?

I delve deep into this step and talk about power and how our parents abused it against us and then reflect on how to look at this step from a different perspective: It's really about power and boundaries. What do we have power and accountability over and what we don't.

And when we have power ourselves, do we abuse it and make the same mistakes our parents did?

I invite you to listen and come on the journey with me.

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

Welcome to this week's episode of the podcast. Going to focus this week on step three of the adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families, World Service Organizations 12 steps. If you have not listened to the previous two episodes with step two and step one, I would recommend that you do so if you're kind of just jumping in here and step three. For those who have been listening all along this step.

Once I read it, and if you're familiar with it, you can see where I'm gonna go with this. Last week, I did talk about the struggle that some people have with the step. With step three, it's even going to be more difficult to be perfectly honest. In my head, I had jumped to step four, which I was ready to talk to, and forgotten the exact wording for step three in my head. Maybe that was a subliminal message of some of the struggles I've had with this step as well over over time in my life. Step three is the I thought Step two is to deal breaker.

Step three is to deal breaker for many people that just refuse to consider it. And again, I can understand so I guess, without, you know, tiptoeing around it, let me just read it. And then I think it'd be very clear why some people were just like, No, I'm not doing this. This is not where other people embrace it. And we will have a good discussion about that. But I want to break down the underlying theme of what this step is about.

And I think that's where no matter if you decide to use this step, you know, you could skip it, you could use it, you can modify it. There's a lot that you could do with this. And I think that discussion will be useful for everyone. So here we go.

Step three, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand God, read it again, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God, as we understand God. Now, as I was saying, Those who do not believe in God will look at this step and say, Nope, done.

This is Hocus Pocus, magic, I'm not going to do it makes no sense. To me, the steps are knots and throw it out the window, I hear you when you say that, I would hope that you just give me a few minutes. So that I can kind of talk some ideas of what is actually behind this step, my interpretation, and why I think this is a powerful step.

Those of you who do believe in God, I don't think that this is going to be much of a struggle, in that, you know, when you read this, often, you know, you you realize that, you know, it's good to you know, you pray to God, you hope God will help you. And you can align with this.

So I am not going to focus too much on that aspect. I'm going to focus more on the negativity that people have expressed about this step. So when I look at this step, you know, again, make a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God. One of the things that I think about is power and authority.

And I bring that up, because in if you grew up in, you know, a family, dysfunctional family and where there was alcoholism and addiction, power in any family exist. Unfortunately, in you know, in a family where there was addiction, where there was dysfunctional attitudes, power was often used in a way that it was abused, and it was used against you, you know, power in the sense that it no matter what your parents say, you know you had dual or a particular parent.

And that could weigh heavy on you. In that, there may have been times where a parent physically abused you, or emotionally abused you or sexually abused you. There could be, you know, a lot of situations that when we talk about this, that might trigger some memory that you've had, and you just really don't want to go there, I understand that I do.

What I'm suggesting is that you think about that power and how it may have been abused. And to look at it from a different perspective. Now that you're an adult, and you might have more power over your life than you did before, though, there may be aspects of your life where you do not have power.

So for example, some people who grew up in an alcoholic or addictive environment, dysfunctional family, unknowingly replicate the situation that they were in when they were a child. Example, a person marries a partner that has similar tendencies than one of their parents, and in a weird way, is trying to replicate what they grew up when they were a kid, in their new relationship, trying to solve the problems of the past, you know, a very cliche example. A girl grows up in abusive family, she grows up, gets married, and her husband is an abuser.

And there's a cycle that repeats itself. That's, you know, unfortunately, that happens more often than not. With that being the case, when we look at power. The question is, what is our relationship to power, and authority? How do we feel when we think about that? There are circumstances in our lives where we do not have power, it could be something as simple as our own our own lives, you know, we may do everything possible to remain healthy, and eat right and exercise and do everything we possibly can. We still get sick, we still get diseases, our body does break down.

And there are accidents. You know, in my own circumstance, in this particular year, I was in the middle of a family vacation, having a wonderful time was on a bike, I hit a bump at a dip in the road, and the bike went one way I went flying the other and I got really hurt, broke my hand and was pretty banged up. And that basically ruined the vacation for me. And couple months after that, as I was, you know, physical therapy and trying to recover. I had no power over those particular circumstances, it was an accident, I could not have controlled the environment to avoid that problem.

I don't have, you know, the ability to read the future and see into it and go, Oh, you know what, I, I shouldn't go on that road, because I'm going to get hurt, there's going to be a biking accident, I just don't have that kind of power.

And I say that, because all of us, we're human, we make mistakes, there are accidents, our bodies get sick. We need time to recover. It's just the nature of who we are as flesh and blood, you know, human beings. And when it comes to power, how do we feel about things that we are powerless over? does it trigger a memory for us? And we revert back to how we acted when we were kids? Do we resist and overcompensate and things flip. And so instead of being powerless, we tried to take the reins and become powerful ourselves. And we try to control every aspect of our lives.

You know, we want to make certain that nothing bad is ever going to happen to us again. So we carefully plan everything out. Worse. We may even plan things out for everyone around us, our family members, our co workers, like we take any type of you know, unknown aspect and erase it so that way we can make certain that things are going to go stable and calm and be the way we want them to be. So So in one aspect, we might look at that and go, Oh, well, we're just trying to make sure everybody has a good time or that there are no problems in the road.

And when we do that, the question is, are we doing that because more of our fear of a problem coming up, that we can't foresee and the uncomfortableness of struggling against a problem? Or are we just overreacting, because we fear that someone will have power over us, over us, and we have sworn to ourselves, that will never happen again. So let's take a step back. And look at this. And again, the third step, made a decision to turn our will, and our lives over to the care of God. As we understand God.

This step is basically saying, we're going to turn to something outside ourselves, supreme being higher power, God, Jesus, Allah, whatever you want to call this, you know, higher power. And we're going to say, you know, we're going to turn our will and our lives because we just, we can't control everything. Now, again, I understand that's difficult to do. What I'm asking those who don't believe in God that consider is, are we essentially saying in this step, there are things beyond our control, and we need to be aware of that.

And again, as I said, In last week's episode, set that boundary, there are things that we can control. And there are things that are outside of our control. And knowing what that is, can be healthy, because it's a boundary of why are we spending energy on trying to control something that is impossible to control, I can't control, you know, when I'm going to die in the sense of, you know, maybe I'll get some sickness in the future, or I'll die of old age or, again, maybe I will be walking and I slipped on ice and hurt myself in an accident, like I can't, I can't control every aspect of my life, I can't control the aspect of others, I can't control the world around me.

And this step is basically saying, we have to turn our will and our lives over to something that is greater to us. And it could be us saying, I can't control everything, the will of whatever nature, life, you know, things that we really don't fully understand. I need to accept that there is something greater than me, there is something beyond me, and come to terms with that. And just be comfortable with that. That doesn't mean necessarily that in order for this stuff to work that you have to necessarily and again, in my attorney interpretation, say that you have to believe in God.

But you do need to believe that in life, you cannot control everything, you may think that you can, but it's not going to work well for you, you may think that you can control your children or your co workers or your manipulating those around you. Or you're worse, you're going to save others, you're going to help others because you know what's right for them. And in reality, what you're trying to do is construct a world around you and environment that will be safe. And you won't have to go through those uncomfortable feelings that you've had in the past when you were a kid, and you were powerless. But now that you're an adult, you're going to control everything around you and keep things smooth sailing.

So everything's gonna go the way you want them to go. No matter if someone if someone may disagree with you have a different point of opinion, or literally just does not want to be controlled. So look at flip this two ways. Let's take an example. In the work environment. You might have a boss and that boss may abuse, you know, his or her power. They might tell you, you have to do X, Y or Z. And maybe that goal is unrealistic.

Or you're set up to fail worse of how that happened to me. You must do X, and you're like, you say to them, but I can't do X and they don't answer you. And then they just like, well, you have to do X. And you know that, you know you are being set up to fail because there's other aspects of play. You know, there could be maybe budget costs that have to, you know, take place or someone's trying to promote someone else like you're you're you're part of a structure And, you know, there's some challenges going on there political strategies happening in the workplace happens all the time.

Now, how do you react to that?

You can't control the situation, how do you feel? What are you going to do?

Your options could be, you know, you confront your supervisor, and tell them that it's not fair, you're not going to do the work, maybe you might get fired, or maybe you might get written up, you could try to go to HR, my, you know, opinion, hrs, typically just there to protect corporation that, you know, you're probably not going to get much there. Or you might say, I, I'm just not going to do this, I'm going to do you know, my own thing.

And maybe when you push back, your supervisor realizes that you can't be played with, and they back down themselves, or you find a compromise. And the last choice would be, just grin and bear it, and do what they want. And I'm sorry, the last last choice, final choice is, you say, I don't want to be treated this way. And you find another job, and you leave them, and you move on. So how we deal with power and authority? It it kind of encroaches into every aspect of our lives. You know, it's how do we interact with our children, with our family members, with our friends, with our co workers, with our supervisors? How do we deal with that authority? And in this step, again, it's it's turning our will and our lives over to something beyond us. There are circumstances in life, where you have to say, I can't make this go any faster, I can't change this. This sucks. This is just the way it is. And what am I going to deal with what's given to me if any of you have had to struggle with, you know, a member of your family who has passed on, suffered from cancer, or another disease, as much as you want to fix salve? Help, aid cure, often we do not have that kind of power.

And that's, it's difficult, you know, to go through those circumstances in life where someone that you love is suffering, and you're powerless to help them. You can pray, you could hope you can bring them to the best doctors. And sometimes no matter what we do, it just, you know, life is life. And, you know, the person may die, you know, thinking of cancer, I've lost family members to cancer. And it's, it's not a fun thing. And I expect that each and every one of you have had struggles in your own life, dealing with a circumstance that you do not have power over.

You can't save someone. So there's that aspect of it. But there's also the negative aspect of power, you know, and authority in which again, we are trying to impose our will, what we want on others, to control the circumstance, the environment, because it's how we make ourselves feel feel safe. And I'm guilty of this. You know, I've looked back and, you know, I've been in circumstances where I try to do everything that's possible, think of every particular circumstance that could go wrong, and be prepared for anything. And it's just me overreacting to a situation in which, you know, when I was younger, I was put in circumstances that I had a chaotic family life, and I had no control over that.

And there are times when I feel under stress, that I want things to be stable and calm around me, and I overcompensate now that I'm older, you know, I can be in a situation and then it can ask me ask myself this question. Is it true? Meaning, whatever's happening? Is it true that I am losing control? Or if I, if I give up control of something, all is lost? You know, is it true that my life is going to be better if I spend so much energy and time trying to, you know, plan and control down to the smallest detail of everything that could happen? You know, the answer that normally comes back is no, that's not going to necessarily, you know, make my life better.

And it's probably going to create a situation in which those around me are going to be really stressed out. Because I'm pushing against their own autonomy. I'm forcing them to basically go along with the way I like things to go. And that can be unhealthy. It you know, it could be something that can create more problems, rather than solve them. And then, you know, there are those, I'm not saying this is you, but there are those that use power purposefully, to manipulate and control others, because that's how they, they get what they want in life.

Because let's say when they were younger, they had no power. And so they decided, well, once I get it, not going to give it up. And in fact, I'm going to use it as a means to be able to control and get the good things that I never had before. That, I think is the scariest thing, because that's where there is that replication, you know, of generational dysfunction. And that, that realization of that, and a person not choosing to get help, or to go on a path, to be able to live a healthy life, it just sets that person up for basically not being trusted, and being alone. Because no one wants to be in a situation where they're being, you know, controlled all the time. You know, they're there. It's just not a healthy environment.

So, when I look at this step, again, if you believe in God, you can, you can say, you know, I pray to God, I'm turning my will and my life over to God, please help me basically. And that act of surrender, and being vulnerable, opens up a door within us. And what I mean by that is, this step is the foundation for some of the future steps. Because when you are in a circumstance, that you say, I can't, I can't take that person's cancer away, I can't solve that other person's, you know, marital problems, I can't save the company, you know, that's going out of business, and all of us are going to lose our jobs, like there are circumstances in life that we just can't control.

And then when you open yourself up, to turning that over, and saying, I, you know, just powerless in this circumstance, I'm turning this over to something beyond me, the door that opens, allows you to then see that there could be a different path. And it allows you to have more stability, and common your life, because you're not wasting energy, burning your energy trying to make everything around you calm and safe and secure. down to the minute, you know, the smallest minute detail. When we live our lives that way. You know, trying to control everything, it's exhausting. And then when you come to terms with well, accidents happen, or bad decisions are made.

And then you say, Well, what am I going to do now, again, setting a strong boundary, what you decide to do, and let's say what your company decides to do, or spouse decides to do or child decides to do, you are not responsible for controlling or protecting everybody in your life. Let me say that, again, you are not responsible for controlling or protecting everyone in your life. People make mistakes, they need to accept the responsibility and the accountability for those mistakes, and hopefully learn from them. When we try to either protect, like over protect a child, or an adult, you know, child of making certain that, you know, they're not going to fail, we're not helping them. It's a codependent.

You know, circumstance, when we take a step back and say, well, that sucks that that happened. But now they have to deal with the consequences. You know, you can offer maybe some assistance depending on what the problem is. But, you know, I'm just trying to think of a exaggerated example. If let's say, you know, your child of yours who is in his 20s Gamble's all his money away, and then needs money. Are you going to give him more money? Like, I mean, sure, you could, but is that going to solve the problem? No. And often, you know, we have ways of making excuses for things that we will look the other way, you know, in circumstances, because we're trying to do the right thing and we're trying to help we're trying to protect And this, unfortunately, these behaviors, if we take the step back and look at our childhood stem, often from how we felt, and what we live through back then it's one of those things that it's not easy to admit these, like shortcomings that we have. But I believe with these 12 steps, it's, you know, it's a guide, it's not

it's not something that you have to do. You know, it's not saying like, you must do all these things all the time. It's when we feel uncomfortable, and we're dealing, let's say, in this particular step with power, how do we reflect on that? This step is basically saying, there are times that we need to, you know, throw our lives over to someone else, you know, like to say, I can't control everything, you know, and that could be just the life force of, of nature, I can't control that someone's going to die, it sucks, I have to let that go. And this, this step, if you boil it down, is basically asking us to let certain things go that we can't control. And, you know, other steps is then starting to find that line between what we can control in our lives and what we can't.

And then setting those healthy boundaries up. So that way, as we move forward in life, we're not constantly struggling against trying to control everything. So I see this step about authority, and power, and boundaries, and the importance of those things, and setting those things up. So that way, we ourselves can live healthy, happy lives, instead of always being on the defensive, always trying to be prepared for, you know, when that other shoes going to drop, or we're going to get the sucker punch, you know, trying to be 10 steps ahead.

And then when the 11th step comes, then saying, Ah, should have been prepared for 11 things, always trying to burn energy, it's exhausting to do this day after day after day after day. It's just not possible, you know, to always live that way. Trust me, I've tried, it just doesn't work. So with this step, either you believe in God, and you know, you're able to turn your life over to God and your understanding of God. Or, again, if you disbelieve in God, you can use this as a way of saying, How do I handle things where I don't have control over where I don't have power?

Where I don't have authority? Because I can't have that everywhere? How do I define that line? In each circumstance, each problem each day, you know, that comes up, so that I realize this person might be making a choice that I totally disagree with. And I see that it's, you know, it's going to cause them great harm.

Sometimes it's important to, you know, you hold your tongue, and you realize you're not, you know, you're not, it's not your responsibility to fix that person's problem. You know, if they ask you for advice, you can give your advice, but then you take a step back and you let go. That's, that's, I think, the beauty of learning how to live a healthy life, and to understand the importance that we are responsible for ourselves. Yes, if we have small children, I get that you obviously need to take care of your children. I'm not saying you don't.

But even at an early age, you can't necessarily control every single thing that your kid does, they're gonna fall down, because you might say to them, you know, be careful, don't run too fast. And they might run too fast and trip and fall, you know, that these things happen to kids. And I've seen them do all kinds of things, you know, in life, and you say, well be careful with XYZ, and then they don't, then you turn around, you're like, Oh, well, you know, you don't shame them. You you say to them, you know, are you okay? And you pick them up, and you tell them to dust themselves off and give him a hug, give him a kiss, and then let them go play again. And then they're gonna learn on their own that if they do whatever that thing is, again, they might get hurt, and they have to decide for themselves.

Do they want to deal with that or not deal with that. Like, that's, to me the beauty of becoming our own self parent now that we're older, we didn't have that when we were younger. And it's important that we don't impose our power and authority in a negative way over others, like think it's really critical that we under Stand, that we are accountable for ourselves. And our relationship with others needs to be developed over time, so that we have healthy boundaries. And then we know that we are worthy, no matter if we are alone, or with others, and worthiness isn't tied into controlling and having power over others, if we give that all up, and we focus on ourselves, we're still worthy.

We're still lovable. And I think that's the key thing is that, you know, deep down as kids, we were just like a home so powerless. How do I get out of this crazy situation? I just hate it. It's miserable. There's yelling, there's fighting. There's whatever was going on in your life. And now as an adult, when you get into these problems, part of your psyche, your mind goes back to when you were that kid, and you felt powerless. Well, now that you're an adult. Understanding those lines of power and authority and responsibility, accountability is critical.

So again, I hope that this has been helpful. I wanted to again, interpret this step in a different way, something that I thought would be helpful for you, no matter if maybe you've been following 12 steps for decades like me or you're new to it, and wanted to kind of look at it from a different light. So again, thank you for listening to the podcast. If you would like to learn more, visit let go and be free.com There are several books that I have out there for the let go and be free series. Currently, there are four volumes. If you liked this podcasts, please like it on whatever platform that you listen to it, leave a positive review. More people that see the positive reviews can get us more listeners. So again, thank you so much. I hope that this has been helpful for you. And as always, be well

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