Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 5 (Learn Self-parenting)
Welcome to the fifth episode.
In episode 5, learn about the importance of taking care of ourselves and how to overcome unhealthy dysfunctional relationship behaviors. I share how I learned about the "parent, child, and adult" voices and how we need to develop our adult voice within ourselves.
As we develop that voice, we can act rather than react in any circumstance by asking: "Is it true? Is this healthy for me?"
By focusing on the basics, no matter our age, we can move forward and live a healthier life.
Eat when hungry, sleep when tired, rest, exercise, and be good to ourselves.
Want to learn more? 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.
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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 series for adult children of alcoholics. On this podcast, we'll talk about everything from dealing with ruminating thoughts, to stopping dysfunctional behaviors that you learned as a child. Together, we'll shine a light to dispel any shame you might feel about your upbringing, and learn practical tips that will help you 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 Episode Five, learning self parenting a lot to talk about this week. I guess I did want to start going back when I first started the let go and be free series. For those who are new to the show. In late November 2019, I had this idea of starting to let go and be free series, I wanted to write a blog post today of my thoughts about growing up in an alcoholic and dysfunctional family. I have followed the ACOA 12 step tradition for decades now.
And I wanted to just kind of put in perspective, my thoughts of you know, what I was thinking on a day to day basis of how I live my life, things I've learned along the way that have helped me, then the pandemic started in March 2020. And I was in the middle of writing, you know, all these blog posts, and I decided why not just keep going move forward, write a post a day. And at the end of every 100 days, I would take all the blog posts, create a book, and then release them and all the major book platforms. So I did that for a total of 400 days.
So there are four volumes. And they're meant to be read from a daily, you know, reflective meditative process of you get up in the morning. And before you go to bed at night you read, you know, whatever day one is, or day two, and you learn a little bit about you know how to deal with anxiety or loving kindness meditation, or maybe one of the 12 steps like I go through a whole range of topics over the course of 400 days. And in that process of forcing myself forcing a use that it will mean forcing is like it was difficult to do. But I wanted to give myself a realistic goal that I could accomplish, that if I were to look at it from a perspective of like, wow, that's a lot to do, you know, 400 different, you know, posts for different volumes of books. I know. You know, if I look at it just from that perspective, it would be really difficult for me to say yes, I want to go ahead and do that. Whereas I decide it is literally one day at a time, I'm going to do this one thing today.
And you know that that's my perspective on many of the goals that I have, you know, achieved in my time, you could be as something as you know, running a marathon where when I was younger, I thought it was impossible to do never, ever thought I could do something like that. Friends of my wife and I got us into running. And we did our first 5k And I remember it was on New Year's Day. And I remember collapsing on the sofa, like I had just run, you know, an Olympic, you know, marathon, and it was only a 5k. And when I say only it just, it's just funny because your your mind gets into this, you know, into this thought process of, I can only do x, because, you know, we're limited by our experiences.
But when I applied myself and said, You know what I want to go further I want to try, you know, a 10k a 15k. And, you know, that's translated to eventually a half marathon and then eventually, years later, a marathon. None of these were speed records where I was the fastest, you know, typically fall into the middle of the pack. And that's fine with me. But they weren't goals that I thought were impossible for me to be able to ever accomplish. But by making time over, you know, weeks, sometimes years, I was able to achieve these goals.
And one of the topics that has been really big, in my mind is the importance of self parenting. And I know you know, some might hear that go Oh, that's so woo-woo that's so New Agey, you know, the self parenting thing, you know, that's a bunch of crap. Why do you want to talk about that? For me, it's, it's extremely important. Because when I look back, you know, at my childhood, and I think about what I grew up with, and a lot of the anxiety and the stress, you know, of after my parents divorced, and that was a really difficult time.
And I remember, you know, the yelling and the screaming, and, you know, some of the arguments that that took place, and not knowing, you know, like, the custody battle that took, you know, the court case after that, if, like, would I would my father come and pick us up? Did I want him? To see me on the weekends? How did I feel, you know, as a kid, and what if he didn't show up? How did I feel, and just lots of angst, and then, you know, over the course of, you know, my life of, you know, struggles with financial difficulties, you know, within my family, there's a lot of insecurity burned into my brain of, you know, we have to hoard things away of like, money or resources, because I'm afraid that tomorrow, I may not have it. So when I look at all those things, and when I, you don't encounter problems, I can understand how my normal reactive mind, a child mind goes into effect where, you know, my natural instinct is to get into whatever defensive mode or offensive mode or, you know, protective mode, or whatever, and the circumstance may not warrant any of that.
And then, you know, as I've talked about in the past on this podcast, you know, as I got older, falling into relationships, and falling into love, you know, and kind of trying to, in a, in a very unhealthy way, obtain the acceptance and love and care that had always wanted, you know, as a child through these proxy future, you know, relationships that I had, and they would always fall apart. And then we'd always, you know, be searching for something that was, quote, unquote, missing within myself, in someone else, like, Oh, I think they're exciting, and we have some things in common.
So, yes, I fall madly in love with that person, and we're gonna get married and live happily ever after, and all my problems will be solved. without me realizing that I needed to do the work, to take care of myself. Looking at that, now that I am older, and, you know, kind of looking back at the younger me, I can understand that I had a lot to learn, can also forgive myself that I didn't know, a lot back then I just was trying to stumble through and do the best that I could. So fast forward to, you know, 2020.
And when the pandemic started, you know, there was a lot of those insecurities that were, you know, kicked off at the beginning of the pandemic, you know, there were shortages on, you know, foods, you know, different foodstuffs at the stores, and what was safe to do, could you go into a store, you had to wear a mask? And, you know, what kind of interaction could you have that would be safe, could you touch, you know, things at a store, and then came back, and you would make sure that you'd wash your hands? You know, there was just so many things we didn't know.
And that created a lot of fear, and anxiety in me. And, you know, to the point where I did have memories of, you know, when I was a child and just worried like, was there going to be enough, you know, money to be able to do the things of, you know, clothing and shoes and things of that nature, and a lot of those insecurities did come back, you know, in the in the present time, especially since, you know, I have two children and wanting to make certain that they would be taken care of and protected in this new world that we were entering into.
And I guess, in a lucky way, since I had already decided that I was going to be working on writing those blog posts, which turned into the volumes volumes for the let go and be free series, I realized I might as well take the opportunity to focus on the skills and learn the things that would be helpful for me. So I started listening to things like the you know, Brené Browns podcast, and if there was a book that was recommended, I would pick it up.
And if I liked the book, I'd write a review about it and post on my website. Like, I tried to focus on positive things that would help me and one of the things that I wanted to share with you today, you know, as we're going through this process, and this journey together, is the adult parent child voices within your head. And this would take me way back to again, I guess I was 21 or 22, at the time, the first therapist that I was seeing, and I remember speaking to him and go to my session, and I would tell him what was going wrong with, you know, the relationship that it was in at the time and my upbringing, and that's when he suggested that I might want to go to adult children of alcoholics meeting, I didn't know what that was, and you know, all this stuff that I started learning, all goes back, because I took that risk of deciding to go to a therapist and start talking with him.
And I learned a lot about myself about my background, my past, how I wasn't alone, that there were other people that were struggling with the same challenges that, you know, I was struggling with, but also helpful tips that allowed me to look at things from a different perspective. The that first therapist that I had, I really enjoyed him because he made recommendations. Whereas I've had therapists over the years that would just listen and really not say much.
And I would get frustrated at that. Not that I was looking for them to judge me. But I do appreciate if someone would offer resources that works for me, that that's what I like. So I was in this one session with my therapist, and I can't even remember what I was talking about. And he said, you know, do you know about, you know, the parent, child and adult voice? And I'm like, nod, I don't know what you're referring to. And he said, well think of this, think of the child that sees a piece of candy, and automatically impulsively wants to grab it and wants to eat the candy, you know, and says, I want to have this candy now, like right this second.
And then think of a parent that might look at that piece of candy and the child and say, you know, you can't have that piece of candy now, because dinner is going to be soon, you know, and he said, Do you see that that how that works? I said, Yeah, I said, I can see that, you know, the parent is thinking of the longer term for the child, you know, it's not good to have the candy now. And then he said, often, you know, in our brains, as we're going through our daily lives, we have that parent voice, like you shouldn't do X, you shouldn't do y.
And then you have the child voice, the more impulsive voice within you that says, I want to do this now, you know, hell or high water, I want it because I want it. And there's that struggle that goes in our personalities of either do we want to listen to rules as a parental voice within ourselves. And then there's the child voice, which is like, I want something now, you know, black or white. And, you know, good or bad, you know those dichotomies of both sides of that coin.
He said, what he was recommending for me to do is to focus more on an adult voice. And I looked down and I was like, Well, what does that mean? Understand? And he said, the adult voice asks, Is this healthy for me? And he said, Take the example of the candy. If you see a piece of candy, the child says, I want the candy. Now, the parent says you can't have the candy now, because whatever dinner is going to be in a few minutes. The adult voice says, Is it true? Like, is it healthy for me? Is it true that if I have this piece of candy now will ruin my dinner? And then you're going to get a yes or no, you know, response in there, or you'll need to figure out and start making decisions, whether whatever you're going to do, let's say the candy if you eat the piece of candy before dinner, will it ruin your dinner? Yes or no? And he encouraged me to develop that adult voice by asking questions in my head when decisions came up. You know, it could be something simple, like, I don't know, I want to stay up late.
And I don't know. Watch a movie with my friends till two in the morning. And the child could say, Yes, I want to do that. I want to do it. And the parent says, but you got to get up early in the morning, you know, on the adult voices. Is it healthy for me? You know, and that could be a much more complicated answer, because it might be No, it's not healthy for me, because I'm really tired. And I do have to get up for work early in the morning. Or it could be No, it's okay. I don't feel too bad. I think I can make this for this one time I can. I can, you know, bend the rules and stay up later.
And that gives a little bit of A range rather than a, you know, the on or off a yes or no black or white, a good or a bad, it gives a range of decisions that allows, you know us to look at things from a different perspective and develop that adult voice within us rather than a reactive voice. You know, many of us who grew up in a, you know, alcoholic upbringing or dysfunctional family upbringing, there's a lot of triggers, in our eyes, a lot of reactive behaviors, you know, you, you hear an argument, and the first thing might go through your brain is fight back, you know, you might get aggressive, or you might do the opposite, and just be go into a shell, and withdraw, you know, like, again, a yes, or no black or white and honor and off those reactive decisions. Instead of asking yourself, like, wow, I'm in this argument right now, is this healthy for me?
You know, do I want to continue this argument? Or do I not want to continue this argument? How can I respond in a way that's going to be healthy behavior could be, I hear you, I hear that you're angry at me, I need some time to think because I'm really angry right now, let's regroup in 30 minutes. That's really hard to to, in the middle of an argument. But it's also a healthy adult, you know, voice decision making process that goes through one's brain.
And I can tell you, I've been in different arguments. And that's that, that's not something I can always do. Even though I've been practicing, practicing, you know, that adult voice, and developing that within me for decades, if I'm tired, or if I'm hungry, I'm cranky, it's harder for me to do. But I put this out there as, as a way of allowing us to look at things from a different perspective. You know, as people, we have all kinds of skills, and just, it doesn't matter.
Doesn't matter, if, you know, looking back at me, the 21 year old, and going into therapy and learning this for the first time and saying, Oh, well, that's great. He's got decades to learn this. I'm in my whatever. 50s? Or I'm in my 60s, it's too late for me. No, it's never too late. It's, do each of us want to take the responsibility and the accountability to say, You know what, this is going to be difficult had never thought about this. I want to learn something new.
You know, I'm, I'm not too old to learn this, I want to try, you know, could be the same thing in many different things, you know, of our lives, we want a new job, do we want to run a marathon? Do we want to write a book? Do you want to start a podcast? Do you want to, you know, draw something? Do you want to meet new friends? Do you want to travel somewhere differently? Do you want to leave a marriage? Do you want to save a marriage? There's so many different things that we go through in the course of our lives. And when we make these decisions, or the decisions that we making, or that we are making done, because there are these reactive responses to what we grew up with? Or are we taking the opportunity to think and filter through our adult voice? Is this healthy for me? You know, or is it true?
You know, that could be another thing in the sense of that all or nothing kind of thinking, you know, like, we're in a in an argument, you know, and right away, we might go back and think about, you know, some of the bad things that happen when we were kids. And there could be yelling, screaming, hitting all kinds of stuff. And we're right back in that moment. It's like, the light disappears, the anger rushes through you, and you're withdrawing into yourself kind of remembering what happened in in that past. And yet, you're in the current moment, the present, but your brain has almost like time traveled into the past. And those feelings are welling up, and you have a decision to make. And it's really difficult because you got adrenaline, you got fear, you got all this stuff going through you. Are you going to be reactive?
And do the normal things that maybe you have done in the past which are unhealthy? You just like, repress everything and, and withdrawal? Or do you lash out or whatever your typical coping mechanism is in the source of stress or anxiety, like in an argument, or do you stand up for yourself set a boundary and say, I hear you, I understand you're angry, I'm angry too. I need I need a moment. I need some time. And then we can talk about this, you know, 30 minutes or 15 minutes or whatever that is, or, you know, to say, I hear you, I feel X or I need y really difficult to kind of put these things in perspective whereas if we grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, I do not remember many arguments that ever ended in a way where anyone was really ever happy. It was always one person blew up at somebody other somebody else.
There's lots of screaming, lots of yelling, and then both parties would go away unhappy, nothing was ever resolved. And then things would kind of calmed down a bit. And then later in the day, when everybody kind of regrouped, it was as though nothing ever happened. But there was always that fear underneath, like, what would set the Kraken out again? Like, what would what would set one person off? And I mean, I've remember arguments happening over the stupidest things, you know, in growing up, and looking at those and being like, I don't understand what the big deal is, you know, like one person saying one thing and another person saying another about the same circumstance, but they, they, they experienced it from a different perspective, and their remembrance of that was different. But instead of agreeing and saying, Well, I remember one way I can understand you're remembering in a different way, we're just not on the same page.
Okay, that's fine. Let's move on. Big shouting matches, and screaming and fighting and mean, just really horrible. And then nothing ever got resolved. And it was often about something that really didn't matter. In the long run, it never changed anything, it just created a lot of ill will. So unfortunately, a lot of those patterns that we grew up with, you know, on that alcoholic and dysfunctional family home, we learn. And then often we repeated those, or we might have tried to do the opposite. You know, if, if we learned a certain behavior, let's say lashing out, yelling in arguments, pointing fingers and saying, You are this, you are that, you know, if that's what we grew up with, and we didn't want to be that some people decided to do the opposite withdrawal, not engaging, anyway, totally shut down. So anytime a argument comes up, they shut down, communication is zero, there's, there's no way to get past that, you know, Defensive Shield.
And the other partner is trying to figure out like, wait a minute, this is just conflict, how do we need to talk about this, but if the other person has withdrawn and can't get out of the, their, their mindset of I need to go protect myself now, and never comes back to discuss that can be really difficult interpersonal situation to overcome, because every time there's conflict, if one person withdraws, you just can't solve problems. And that just creates resentment and anger on the other side, which increases over time, and the other person, it pushes them away.
So as you can see, these systems that we've created, each of us respond to conflict, and problems in different ways, with the parent, child and adult voice skill set, that allows us to look at things from a different perspective. Whereas if even if the simplest things, you know, like, I don't know, it's late at night, you're watching a movie. And your brain says, I really want that ice cream right now. And the parent says, You really shouldn't have that ice cream, you know, whatever. Your doctor says, your cholesterol is high or something, I'm just making something up. And you're like, the child voice says, I really want to have this, but then the adult voice if you say, Is it healthy for me.
And then you could say, you might make a decision and say, You know what, I am going to have one scoop of ice cream tonight. But then I'm going to not do that until whatever the weekend or something or I've given myself, you know, I'm going to have dessert two times a week or something, all of that is really difficult to do. But if we don't start working on those kind of thought processes within our head, we tend to fall into the grooves of past unhealthy behaviors. So again, it doesn't matter if you're 21, 31, 41, or 91 - doesn't matter your age, I think all of us have the opportunity to learn a different perspective, and to work on this inner voice within ourselves, that we can say, you know, is this true? Is this healthy for me? You know, if you make a decision, you know, oh, we're in an argument. It's the end of the world, you know, that might go through your brain, the relationships over the marriage is over, we fought, it's the end.
I have spoken with others over the years who have grown up in similar you know, families that that as I have grown up with, and that's often a fear, you know, if there's a big conflict is everything over, you know, are people getting divorced? Is it mean love doesn't exist? You know, then if you ask yourself is it true, it gives you a better perspective on kind of weighing that in your brain of like, you know, no, I did say some stupid things that I need to amend, I need to apologize. And I need to work on getting that person to trust me again. And by doing XYZ, like that adult voice gives us different options.
Whereas if we're just looking at it from that child, or parent perspective, those voices within our heads, it really limits the way we can go through our lives. So when I focus on this self parenting thing, and focus on that, I think it's important that we look at every day, you know, as we go through, are we taking care of ourselves? When we're hungry? Are we eating when we're tired? Are we sleeping? You know, are we exercising? Are we making time for relaxation, and socializing with friends and doing things that are healthy for us? Is it true that we're doing those things, yes, or no, the parent voice in your head could also be like, a scolding voice, you shouldn't eat all that ice cream, you know, you're too this, you're too that you're never going to fill in the blank, whatever. Whereas the the child voice, more rebellious voice might fight back.
When you focus on that self parenting aspect, as an adult, the importance of self parenting is, you realize that you don't have to repeat the unhealthy behavior patterns. If you had parents that always accused you and yelled at you or treated you badly or abandoned you or ignored you. Now, as an adult, you do not have to treat yourself the way you were treated. You can focus starting today on things that are healthy for you, things that you want to do, and then develop that inner voice that is going to make not only your life better, but when you interact with your co workers, with your family members.
And if you're married, or you're in a relationship with your partner, you will have a better sense of building that trust and love with people over time, where instead of focusing on that negativity, that, you know, we grew up with the conflict, the fighting those repeatable patterns that happen again, again, it could have been the drinking or drugs or hitting or whatever it was that we grew up with a lot of that is kind of burned into us, you know, in the sense that it's in our memories. And as hard as we might try to excise get rid of exercise those things from ourselves, we can't, we grew up with them. I think it's much more important to embrace our past, not to be ashamed of it.
And then to shine a light on it. And to say, You know what, yeah, I did go through some really difficult things. And it's not stuff that I'm proud of. What I'm going to do moving forward is this, I'm going to focus on this adult voice, I'm going to focus on these other healthy decisions that are going to get me to where I want to be, you know, when I started this podcast, with talking about, you know, wanting to write novels and books and wanting to, you know, run a marathon and these big decisions that were going to take me lots of time and energy to do. They're all possible, our dreams, we just need to make a decision to do them just a chunk at a time, break it down.
You know, and it doesn't have to be perfect. It doesn't have to be, you know, oh, everything is said correctly or written correctly, we just do the best we can each day, and make a commitment to ourselves that if we fall down, we allow ourselves to rest, and then we pick ourselves up, and then move forward. Just keep moving forward, at our own pace, the best we can like the message of this podcast, and when I say this podcast, not just this episode, but all of this of why I'm doing this is just the show that if you grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, one, you're not alone. And two, there is help. There are lots of things that each of us can do to feel better, and live a healthier life.
And one of the things that I wanted to share this week was that development of the adult voice within us. I do hope that you found this to be helpful. I know that when I first learned this again decades ago, it was something that really resonated with me. And if it doesn't resonate with you, every podcast I tried to focus on something different than I have learned over the course of my time, you know, following the ACOA tradition, and I hope that maybe something else might be beneficial for you. So again, with that I'm going to sign off for this week. Thank you so much for listening. I do appreciate it again, you could subscribe, you can listen to the podcast, Spotify, you can go to my website, go to let be and free.com There's a podcast on the left hand tab there. You can subscribe on iTunes. There's a ton of different ways, Google podcasts, all kinds of stuff. So feel free to subscribe. And if you have any feedback, you can email me at me@ronvitale.com.
And again, thank you so much for listening, and be well.