Being Okay...
By: Alisa Schneidman
Yesterday, I was thinking this is Children of Alcoholics Week, and I needed to write something. I was drawing a blank, and all I could notice was this feeling of anxiety that will creep up on me. It has lived in a part of me forever. The part of me that says I am forgetting something. The one that lives in the pit of my stomach and doesn’t ever let me focus, looking for something I messed up, but cannot figure it out, needs constant reassurance, but never believes the reassurance I get. It’s an ever-present watchdog who isn’t sure what it is watching for-it just knows that it will know it when it sees it.
Like I said, the hypervigilance isn’t new- what happened next was different. Somewhere in all this I paused for thirty seconds--paused trying to force myself to be somewhere I wasn’t, paused trying to write a blog, and acknowledged the anxiety-that parts of me were trying speed by as quickly as possible.
None of those other thoughts or feelings went away-I just listened to the part of me that clearly wanted the most attention-the one racked with anxiety. And I was floored by what I heard.
I realized at that moment that part of me didn’t realize that everything was okay-it was like being trapped in that same situation whenever I felt the same type of energy or activation, I was both appreciative and compassionate for this child in me who never knew that a child never was supposed to be in that role. No child is supposed to be. It was when I connected to that message and acknowledged it the anxiety relaxed.
That anxiety was coming from the child who had grown up with addiction. That anxious hypervigilance I learned was so vital to my safety, my survival, because I had nobody to assure me that I was safe. Forgetting something in a home with addiction is like not checking a mine field for bombs. You have to anticipate what someone may want, need or say, reading the unreadable, predict the unpredictable-not doing it could mean you didn’t get your basic needs met or being blamed for something you didn’t do, staying one step ahead, not offending someone for something that was not intended, or worse something they imagined. Hence the pre-emptive apologies people tell you to stop giving.
Every child needs to know they are okay, and everything is going to be okay. It’s a terrifying feeling for a child to realize the person they rely on for this reassurance is looking to them to give it. It’s an impossible dilemma.
My story isn’t that unique- This is the reality for a lot of kids living with addiction. They can’t always say something is off and even if they do, they don’t typically have tons of power to fix it. They may express differently. Perhaps they are irritable or assume you are going to blame them-perhaps they have just numbed out. It could be a thousand different things; we all are different.
Everyone, including kids, has that energy inside them that hears them and heals them-they need to be heard because rarely in a home with addiction is anyone listening. They can create a different reality because they have their own inner wisdom, they need heard so they can listen to themselves and acknowledge what has been with them the whole time and believe it when they hear they are okay.
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 12TH 6:00 PM, NORTH WILMINGTON, 525 PHILADELPHIA PIKE, WILMINGTON, DE 19809
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 20TH 6:40 PM, FLOORPLAY DANCE STUDIO, 1127 VALLEY RD, UNIT 2, HOCKESSIN, DE 19707
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 22TH 2:00 PM, FLOORPLAY DANCE STUDIO, 1127 VALLEY RD, UNIT 2, HOCKESSIN, DE 19707
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 23RD 9:00 AM, FLOORPLAY DANCE STUDIO, 1127 VALLEY RD, UNIT 2, HOCKESSIN, DE 19707
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 27TH 6:00 PM, NORTH WILMINGTON, 525 PHILADELPHIA PIKE, WILMINGTON, DE 19809
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