Let Go and Be Free Podcast: Episode 58 (Let's Review the Laundry List: Items 4-5)

When I first reviewed the Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families Service Organization’s Laundry List, I felt overwhelmed.

In this week's episode, we go over items 4 and 5 of the Laundry List. There's a lot to take in, but there is hope. Instead of berating yourself and putting yourself down, I invite you to take a step back, listen, and learn with me as we go this journey together.

You are not alone.

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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.

Hello. And for this week's episode, I wanted to focus on two additional items from the laundry list. So we're going to go through and read them. This is a bit of a heavy episode, these, these two particular items will give you a lot to think about, you know, basically what I'm going to do is I will read these twice, so that way you'll have them in your mind and think them through I'm going to talk through share personal experiences of you know, how I felt that I either identified or didn't identify with these two items and a laundry list.

And, you know, then kind of move on and ask you to think from your perspective as to whether, you know, you see yourself in that same type of situations over and over again in your own life and what you can do to kind of move forward help go beyond that. Again, if you're new to the show, when I'm referring to the laundry list, this is from the adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional families, World Service Organizations, literature.

If you go to their site, adult children.org, under the literature section, you will see that there is an item called a laundry list. And there's a whole bunch of items there of different characteristics that people who grew up in either an alcoholic, or dysfunctional family typically struggle with, we've gone through the 12 steps in previous episodes of this podcast. And now I'm going through and discussing the various laundry list items. So that will give you a little bit of context. And previous episode, it was like two episodes ago, I went through items one through three of the laundry list. This is now items four and five. So with that said, let me read the fourth item, it says, we either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.

So it's number four, item number five, we live life from the viewpoint of victims. And we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships. So again, heavy items to kind of think through. Let me read number four again, and then again, I'll read number five, kind of break this all apart, and talk it through item number four, we either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.

And number five, we live life from the viewpoint of victims. And we are attracted by that weakness in our love, and friendship relationships. So as I've said, these, you know, when you read through these laundry items, I would expect that if you grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional family, your heartstrings are going to pull as you read through the different items, because you're going to start to identify like, oh, yeah, I've seen that I've done this where I felt this way. And just to take a pause for a moment, it can feel and seem overwhelming when you go through all these items.

Because it might be as though someone is shining a light on you. And you're like, Well, yeah, I've done that. Or I do that. And you know, you just might go check, check, check, check, check and be like, Oh, wow, this is overwhelming. I feel lost. Where the heck am I gonna go from here? So again, let's let's kind of put this in context. The good news is when you go through and identify a problem, or you identify a feeling you go through that process. That's the first step in overcoming something. So if you deny, if you ignore if you pretend put your head in the sand look the other way. You know you might live life blissfully, but then you're going to keep finding yourself in the same situations. Again, and again, these repeatable patterns that you're finding in your relationships.

And the choice is yours, you can either continue to move forward, you know, in life and pretend that everything is fine, or make a decision to actively find a way to overcome what you're struggling with. You know, my whole purpose of doing this podcast, you know, now more than a year in is, I have struggled, you know, with the same issues for decades. And when I was younger, I made a decision that No, I don't want this to keep happening again. I believe that there is a way to find help to overcome these challenges from what we grew up in our past. And we can live happy, healthy, and wonderful lives. And that's my message.

Now, is there an easy way to do this? It depends on each person, I don't know what you've gone through, I can only share what I've gone through. But I am, you know, sending out the message. And I get I see that I've got listeners from all around the world, there is hope. Yes, it it can be hard. And in my own personal experience, and I can only speak from my own personal experience is that in the beginning, when I first started, you know, going through and making the decision that I wanted to learn, and I wanted to find ways of becoming a better person, because I wanted to, I wanted to find a way to overcome what happened to me in the past, and the behavior, unhealthy behavior patterns, that were these coping mechanisms that I enacted in order to kind of survive, how can I find a way to grow beyond them, and, you know, learn ways to thrive, be happy, be joyful. The truth is, is that my life is not perfect.

There are times where I feel like I'll slip back into old, you know, coping mechanisms, and I have to catch myself. And that's why I use the 12 steps and be like, hey, you know, I got to take stock here. I just did something that was not right, you know, I hurt somebody's feelings, or I didn't have a strong boundary, and hurt myself, you know, by whatever, taking on more work or allowing somebody to say something bad about me, and I didn't stand up for myself, whatever the situation is. And what I found is that by having the 12 steps using the Serenity Prayer, they're my guide to be able to move forward and say, Okay, how do I course correct, and get myself back on that path of thriving and being happy and being joyful and peaceful? Like, how do I do that? With the laundry list?

I find it's helpful to go back, not obsessively go through the list every day. But I find, you know, a couple times a year, I basically go through read it and say, oh, yeah, I still feel that way. Or I used to feel that way. And I've grown, you know, find that there's ways of overcoming, and looking back and saying why there has been progress. The challenge is if you're new to this, the 12 steps, serenity prayer, you know, the whole, you know, process of learning about yourself and healing. I remember those early days, and it it was overwhelming for me. So when I excuse me, when I look back, what helped me is I did, you know, start the process by once a therapy first talked with my therapist, and my therapist, he introduced me to the adult children of alcoholics meetings, I started going to those meetings. You know, over the course of the decades, I've been on this journey. I've seen several therapists over the course of like, when I felt it was necessary. When I was struggling with really big problems in my life. It's not that I go to a therapist all the time.

But there were times where I was like, Yeah, I think this will be helpful for me, for the 12 steps. I use them daily. That's something that, you know, when I wake up in the morning, I run through them in my head, and I kind of focus on, you know, what do I feel is like a step that I feel like I'm weak on or I feel that I really need to focus on and then with the Serenity Prayer is my way of focusing on boundaries, you know, using that, is this true? Is this healthy for me? What am I responsible for? In life? What am I not responsible for? So in that context, if you're new to this, or even if you've only been on the journey, you know, trying to overcome your past trauma past problems for just short amount of time. I'm hoping that with this laundry list, it's not to shine a light on you to make me or you feel bad.

It is To focus on objectively looking at your life and saying, Yeah, you know what, I have done that, or I have been in that situation, and how can I grow above and beyond those things. The laundry list is the, I guess, litmus test, to say, Yes, this is where I struggle. And then by using those items, that's how I can then focus on this particular step will help me with these issues, or I need to focus on therapy on these particular things, etc.

So I know this might sound very vague. So let me give a little bit more context with the the fourth item when it says we either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick abandonment needs. So again, I'm going to talk personally about my own experience, you know, I grew up in a family in which there was alcohol, it was drugs, there was violence, there was a lot going on in my early life, you know, with in the family, the nuclear family environment, after my mother and father divorced, you know, I had this, I guess, memories and trauma of what I experienced, from the arguments, the fighting everything that happened between my mother and my father, and I found, you know, these coping mechanisms as I grew older, to survive, and I've talked about them, you know, in the past, part of my use of creativity of writing, creating new environments is my way of escaping the current situation that I can close my eyes, I can dream up of a story and write it and then I can transmit, transform, and travel to some other distant land or create a brand new thing and kind of protect myself. So as a writer, as an author, that was a, I see that as a healthy way of being able to use creativity, to overcome past challenges.

Now, I'm not saying that I live in these fantasy worlds all the time, that would be an unhealthy, you know, coping mechanism. But I write books, I write short stories, I, you know, I've done series and written 17 novels. So that's my creative way of overcoming the past. But when I'm honest, and I shine a light on things, and I look at, okay, when I was growing up, I did feel abandoned by my father, I've felt lots of hurt, and anger and hatred, and fear of the person that I thought was supposed to be the one to help me to teach me to guide me through early life, and especially through, you know, my younger years of early teenage years was not there, like literally was not there.

And so I didn't have any, you know, my strong male role model that would teach me about, you know, here's what I went through, and I started dating and, you know, here's about, you know, the birds and bees from a male perspective, or, you know, I just didn't have any that in my life, there's like this gaping hole from when I was young. And there was this abandonment, it was just like, wait a minute, you, you are my father, and you just weren't there. And so, I had that struggle, of how am I going to find out, you know, a mature and grow into, you know, an adult, if I don't understand, and had no one to help guide me, from, you know, half of my upbringing. I mean, my mother did the best that she could, but she didn't have the experience of growing up, you know, as a male in, you know, in the 80s, that she could, you know, share with me as I was growing up, I did have a, you know, grandfather in my life. But it just, it was different, you know, by not having, you know, a father there that created challenges, and I felt very hurt and abandoned by that. And what I realized is when I started dating, almost like unconsciously, I started finding myself attracted to, like, in a sick, unhealthy way, two personality types of people who struggled with their own issues. Now, I'm not blaming them. I'm not saying that they tried to hurt me or it was their fault. It was. I didn't understand at the time when I My early phases of dating, that I was trying to replicate the early period of time in my life in which someone abandoned me.

And I was trying to complete that by saying, Oh, look, see, here's a similar type situation. And I can attach myself and throw myself into this relationship and fix what happened to me in the past. Now, when I say that, with the years and decades of experience that I have now, sure I can I can look at that and say, How the heck did I think that was ever going to work? Like, why didn't I understand that? But I didn't, I just didn't know. So I would get into a relationship. It would fall apart, tragically, in the worst possible breakup, ever, and then I'd feel abandoned again.

And then I would look at it and be like, I don't understand, you know, why did that happen? I love this person, I love them more than Baba Baba, blah, and go through the whole sob story. And there would be this cycle that would happen. Whereas I'd feel broken, I kind of scrape my heart up off the ground, and would take a while to go through the grieving process. And then I'd find another person. And again, that other person similar would have some type of issues that they were struggling with. And I get together with them. And the pattern would repeat, repeat. Now, I didn't have tons of dating experience, but it happened enough that I was like, hey, there's a pattern here. There's something that I keep doing, why am I doing that. And that's when I discovered, you know, by going to therapy, learning about the 12 steps of adult children of alcoholics and dysfunctional family. That's where the piece of the puzzle started to come together.

And I started to realize that either I was getting into those relationships, to try to quote unquote, save that person. Because by doing that, you know, that sick fulfillment thing in my head was like, Well, I couldn't save my father and make him stay in the past. But I can save this person and make, make them stay now. And that will, you know, fulfill that abandonment need, you know, me being abandoned as a kid, I can fill that hole by solving the problem today, again, by saying that out loud, I do cringe a little bit, because I'm like, wow, did I think that was going to work? Like, it just wouldn't. But I didn't know that then. And this is where, for me the laundry list, you know, I got to put the pause button. And if I read these laundry list items, and if I look at it from the perspective of berating myself, or putting myself down, it's not going to be helpful. To me, the laundry list items, there are a way for me to be able to say honestly, objectively, yes, I have done that.

Or in the present. Yes, I see that I'm struggling with some of those things. Now. What can I do to change that behavior? What is it that I'm looking to solve, that I'm doing it in an unhealthy way? And the answer for me for this fourth item was, I needed to become comfortable with myself, and realize that I would never be able to go back in time and have my father come back and be, you know, even a half decent father, like it just, it just, he wasn't there. And there's no way to go back in time and fix that. So I had to become comfortable with the fact of let it go. As painful as that was, I had to say, it's just never gonna happen. And then two, what can I do now in the present? And in the future, to change that feeling of that abandonment, that gaping hole? And the answer was learn this through therapy through self help books through adult children of alcoholics meetings, self parenting, taking care of myself, not trying to fix, solve, save somebody else. But to take care of myself, again, the Serenity Prayer, what am I able to control? And what am I not able to control? I can't fix your problems. You can't fix my problems. Only you can fix your own problems.

Only I can deal and solve and fix my own those boundaries. So by learning that, by self parenting, learning to realize that I am worthy. I am lovable. I love myself and discovering what do I love about myself? What do I like? About me, how do I find ways of nurturing that? So that way, the nurturing the love and the care that I wanted when I was a little kid, and didn't get all the way up through my teenage years until I became an adult, I had to spend time to go through that process as a young adult in my early 20s. And now, as I'm older, I have to realize when I have bad days, that often it's because I'm falling back into an old unhealthy pattern. And I need to be aware of that. Use the skills that I've learned in therapy, use the skills I've learned through self help books, use the things that I've learned from the 12 steps. Again, that simple thing I know, I say it again and again and again. But it is a powerful tool to use.

The question is, is this healthy for me? Or is this true? So in item number four, you know, when you're, when I'm seeing like, oh, did I try to get together with someone who's struggling with alcohol? Or with other compulsive behavior issues? I have done that, yes, I did find people in my life, that, you know, I fell in relationships with and realize that these patterns were happening. Well, those relationships broke apart. And I had to find ways to take care of myself, heal myself, and realize, am I becoming an alcoholic? I No, I didn't have to struggle with that. But I did had to come to terms with some of the behaviors of people who are alcoholics, I did struggle with, you know, anger and hatred, lashing out things of those natures, I had to become, you know, aware of these personality aspects, which were not necessarily something that I wanted the world to see that I felt a lot of shame. And then I would blame, you know, like, Well, it all happened from the past, and I can't fix this.

So it took time, to be able to bring to light ways of overcoming, you know, the shame and fear of abandonment, it takes time. But it is possible. So that's item number four. For item number five, again, we live life from the viewpoint of victims, and we are attracted by that weakness in our love, and friendship, relationships. So, you know, this one, from time to time, I felt like in you know, my life, I struggled with this, but I don't, I felt much more akin to the fourth item, then this particular item. You know, when I look back, I can see that I was angry, like in blaming, you know, oh, well, if my father would only have been here and this and that I, you know, I, I can understand that. Yes, I did play when I was younger, like a victim role. But some people view their whole life as like, oh, well at work, they did this to me, and this happened to me, and there's like no, agency, you know, there's no sense of free will. It's more, this is all been done to me.

This is why I have these problems, because they did this to me. You know, they could be work, parents, other family members, friends, etc. And I and I have seen that behavior played out often in adult children of alcoholic meetings. You know, you'll listen to people share, and you'll hear people tell stories. And you notice the pattern of week after week after week, if the person is always blaming somebody else, not taking responsibility for their own behavior, you know, that they're they're kind of struggling with this particular item. It's something that there's a block, and it's again, you know, being a victim instead of flipping it and choosing agency, choosing to be proactive to say, no, wait, I'm a survivor, and not a victim. I am in charge of what I'm going to do today. I can't control what happened to me in the past, but I can make decisions today. And here are the things that I can do, you know, to move forward so that I can thrive, that I can have a happy life and be joyful and find peace. That can be a difficult thing, because being a victim often allows someone to get at least temporarily, love, pity, attention. And there are some people that realize that, you know, the aching abandonment that they felt when they were young can be somewhat fulfilled by playing this role of the victim.

Be because they know that they can then either consciously or unconsciously manipulate people to send energy like love or concern, you know, to them. What I'm saying is, if that is you, could you take the time to focus and flip being a victim? To say, Well, what would it mean? If I were not to blame everybody else? What if I were to say these things happened to me and I am a survivor, and tomorrow, and today, I'm going to do these productive things, to own my story to move forward. Like, what would that mean for you? Sure, it's easy to say, you know, I, all this stuff happened to me. And that, and that all could be 100%. True. Yet, at some point, there needs to be the let go of that and say, Well, I'm choosing to whatever the item is, continue to work in an environment where my boss is treating me bad, and I'm the victim, you know, continue to allow, you know, an adult, you know, your parent, who is still struggling with alcohol, to treat you badly, and call you names, and then you still put up with it. Like, there are boundaries that can be built, where you can say, you know, I'm not gonna allow that to happen to me anymore. I am going to find a new job, I'm going to tell my boss, don't please don't speak to me that way. You know, whatever. It, it's not easy to do.

And it might seem almost antithetical, like, I don't understand why would I do that the the I am having these things happen to me, you know, I am being put upon by whatever the person the job the situation. But what I'm saying is, if you flip it, and you realize that you have power, rather than people have power over you, your story changes, there's different doors that will open for you, you realize that your your world view will change. And you'll also find that people will want to gravitate more toward you, rather than the message that you're sending out when you're the victim all the time, is, I want you to take care of me, I'm needy, I want you to listen to me and feel bad for me, I don't want to listen to your story, I want you to listen to mine. And these are very difficult things to come to light. And just to admit and say I do that, or I have felt that way. And realize that that may not be the healthiest way to move forward and overcome past trauma. how to overcome that.

You might need to talk to a therapist, you go to the adult children of alcoholic meetings, and you listen to other people's stories, one of the things that I have found in my life to be such a wonderful resource. And often it's free, is read about people who have gone through these journeys. There's so many books out there, go to an adult children of alcoholics meeting, and you just listen to what the other people share people who have been, you know, to meetings for years, when they share, oftentimes, you'll hear how they grew beyond some of the challenges and problems that they had to deal with when they were younger. And they show by example, in their behavior.

They'll talk about experiences that they have in the present, and how they were able to overcome that whereas in the past, they would have fallen into an unhealthy coping mechanism. And that that, to me is like it's so helpful because you can say, Whoa, this person is sharing this really important thing that I can learn from. And again, so many books out there that you can read about people's journeys of how they have overcome, you know, their life, their their past life of the trauma and the difficulties that they they were raised with. So I say that because there there is hope. There is lots that can be learned. It can feel extremely overwhelming if you try to take everything in all at once. You can't do all the 12 steps in one day. You might be able to read all the laundry list items in a day. But you might get to the end of it and be like I got to take a break You know, and I'm not saying put your head in the sand and pretend you know that everything's okay. But space out what you're learning, give yourself time to process.

Again, write in a journal, or, you know, some people like to dictate and talk and recorded or, you know, just thinking your thoughts as you go for a walk, talk to a therapist, talk to a trusted friend, you know, focus on ways and behaviors that can help you rather than repeating coping mechanisms and unhealthy unhealthy behaviors, which will keep you trapped. So I do hope that these two items will have given you something to think about. Now, one word of caution, when you look at it, you might especially read the fourth one. And you might have said, you identify that maybe you've been in a decade's long relationship been married to someone who struggles with alcoholism, or some other compulsive personality disorder. And you're looking at that and saying, Yeah, that's me. Yeah, now what? Like, that's, I feel the weight of that I understand where you're coming from. What I'm saying is, this is where you don't have to beat yourself up and say, I'm, I'm, you know, whatever, berate yourself with whatever adjective you want, that's not going to help, what you can do is, talk to someone, write down how you feel, and then paths will open for you, that you may not be able to see now, it doesn't mean that you're going to, you know, need to get a divorce or breakup with someone, what it might turn into is maybe good could come out of this person might decide to get help, you know, and then they're on their own journey.

And then you need to be on yours, but you still might be married together, it, it's a lot to take in. What I'm saying is, please, there is hope, take some time process, think through what your next steps are on this journey, and think what is going to help you how can you then take responsibility for your own life, to work on yourself, you can't stop someone from being an alcoholic and drinking too much or doing drugs, you you can't stop the boss at work by treating people crappy, and yelling or whatever. But you can choose to work in a new place, you can choose to set a boundary between you and someone and say, You're not allowed to treat me that way anymore. You know, you can say these are the healthy mechanisms that I'm going to start incorporating in my life, you might decide to go see a therapist, go to an ACOA meetings, there's a lot that can be done, which is positive. And for the good news, many of those things, you know, don't cost me money. Going to an ACOA a meeting, picking up a book at the library and reading about, you know, an ACOA, or someone who's gone through a journey, you know, such as that, that's all available, you know, for you to be able to help and to be able to get that help. So I do hope that this has been helpful for you. And again, thank you for taking the time, you know, to listen, you know, listen to my voice that I'm recording this, I started before seven o'clock in the morning before I can get my day started. And by the time this gets recorded, you know and saved and put up on the podcast, it will probably be weeks later. You know, I do like to have a couple recorded in time.

But it's my way of having this like time capsule that I can take these thoughts, I can take the experiences that I went through, I can record them and I can cast them out into the world to you to you right now in your yours. Are you listening in the car? Do you have headphones on wherever you are, I just want to say to you that there is hope. And I I mean that so sincerely that I remember how horrible I felt when I was younger and lost. And I started making small positive actions to get me on a path of healing and self acceptance. And it took some time, but in the grand scheme of my life, it was so worth the effort to be able to do that. So again, I hope this helps you and hope that You were easy on yourself. So with that, thank you again for listening. If you want to learn more you can visit let go and be free.com. There's the four books from the let go and be free series. You can find them available at any of the online bookstores, Amazon, Barnes and Noble Google Play excetera. For basically the cost of maybe like a cappuccino, you can get, you know, the digital version, the ebook and get that onto your phone or get it onto a Kindle or Nook or whatever. And then you can have 100 days per volume. That's like 400 days of different self reflections. So that will give you something to be able to think through as you're going through that process of thinking and making decisions to better your life to move forward in a healthier way instead of dealing with unhealthy coping mechanisms. Thank you again for taking the time to listen. If you're not able to contribute to the podcast in a financial way, please visit wherever you're listening, like it like it on Spotify, like it, leave a positive review in iTunes, you know, that would also help the podcast move forward because more listeners will find it that way. Thank you again. And as always, be well.

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