Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Tune in to my interview with Ande Anderson on 6/29 for my “outside the box” thoughts about co-dependency:
I am honored to be a featured speaker during this 7-day immersion online event…Overcoming Codependency: The Journey to Self-Love & Healthy Relationships! Join me in this FREE online event from June 25th – July 1st. Register right here:
https://www.avaiya.com/overcomingcodependency/?ap_id=lswoititz
What is Codependency?
The are many definitions and it is often characterized by:
Can you or someone you know relate to any of these characteristics?
If so, I highly recommend you tune into this FREE online conference:
Overcoming Codependency: A Journey to Self-Love & Healthy Relationships.
https://www.avaiya.com/overcomingcodependency/?ap_id=lswoititz
Ande Anderson, MS, RD, Co-Founder of AVAIYA, is hosting this FREE, life-changing event from June 25th – July 1st and I am honored to be one of the featured speakers.
AVAIYA is the creator of transformational films, courses and online events such as Quantum Forgiveness, iTHINK: Change Your Perception, Change Your Life, The Truth About Prosperity and many more.
AVAIYA has brought together over 26 of the world’s most renowned experts in the area of Codependency recovery, to help you break free from the grip Codependency has on your life and/or the lives of those you love.
We will be sharing what Codependency is, what it’s not, how Codependency has evolved over time, and most importantly, how you can become Aware of your Codependent tendencies and behaviors to overcome them.
Because guess what? YOU ARE AMAZING! And chances are, you haven’t been telling yourself this enough!
The other leaders featured in this event and myself have collectively helped millions of people, like yourself, work on their codependent behaviors, and live a life of freedom, full self-expression, love, and connectedness.
And now, it’s your turn for us to help you. Are you in?
Mark your calendar and go get registered right here: https://www.avaiya.com/overcomingcodependency/?ap_id=lswoititz.
After you register, keep an eye out for Ande’s email for specific details on accessing the interviews.
To your recovery,
Lisa Sue Woititz
P.S. These interviews will be recorded and will be available at no charge after each show for a limited time so you won’t miss a thing. Sign up right now
https://www.avaiya.com/overcomingcodependency/?ap_id=lswoititz, while it’s fresh on your mind…
Dear Friends, Just found this beautiful interview clip of Dr. Jan w Changes Magazine: timeless as always!!! Love, Lisa
OCTOBER, 1987
CHANGES: Do you apply the disease concept of alcoholism to co-dependency?
DR. JAN: Absolutely not. And I can’t emphasize that strongly enough. You see, if it is a disease then you are sick. And if you are sick, you have to get well I don’t call children of alcoholics diseased, I call them remarkable. We see people living through situations which continue to overwhelm me even in the telling. What we see is that many of the behaviors that people now would call diseased or sick were adaptive. They were ways that people found to survive situations they could not have otherwise survived.
CHANGES: Suppose one of these behaviors it the development of alcoholism. Would you consider that adaptive?
DR. JAN: No. Alcoholism is a disease We can talk about alcohol abuse being adaptive to stress or people using substances in order to set up an emotional demilitarized zone. But that’s not alcoholism.”
More to come!!! Please visit us on
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Click here to register today! http://www.wilsonhouse.org/event/adult-children-alcoholics/
By Lisa Sue Woititz, Author of Unwelcome Inheritance: Break Your Family’s Cycle of Addictive Behaviors, Hazelden, 2015
Perhaps you too can recall times in your life when you felt betrayed by somebody that you loved very much. Their crime was so obvious that it seemed the only thing to do was to cut that person off and never speak to them again. Because we could see no way to fix the situation, forgiveness was not possible. Feeling justified in our anger distracted us from the hurt and helped us to detach from the relationship. It gave us the closure that we needed to move forward. So many years later, we have found that in many situations that involve active addiction, we cannot find closure. This is the nature of the insanity of growing up in an environment with active substance abuse. It is very hard to close one chapter and begin a new one. We drag one story into the next, like a big bag of rocks that we drag along from place to place.
Finding closure by cutting people off was a pattern of behavior that I established early in my life. In younger years it served me well as a way of disconnecting from toxic people and painful situations that I did not know how to handle. Little did I know that I had chosen most of these people to be in my life and I had a big part in creating many of these situations. Today I see that this behavior stood in the way of working through problems and accepting other people and their point of view. Not every problem can be solved, but we can still move forward if we want to. Perhaps in time we will have clarity about what went wrong and our willingness to express and sit with feelings will grow. We can live and learn. I hear you saying, “Easier said than done!” I agree. But this is where the growth is and it is worth a try when you are up to it.
Many years ago my best friend hurt me deeply. I blocked her from all means of communicating with me. I missed her deeply but I was very angry. Despite the passage of time, the incident that caused the hurt remained just as painful as ever. I was obsessed. I went over the story time and time again, memorizing the unforgiveable harsh words and actions. Every time I had a weak moment and I wanted to forget the whole thing and pick up the phone, every time that little voice inside of me said, “Let it go, let it go,” I forced myself to go back into the story and re-activate my anger. It did not occur to me that this person may have acted out of their own hurt and never intended to harm me. It didn’t occur to me to look at the problem or my solution in any other way.
A few months later, I went on a retreat and attended a meditation class. I felt compelled to approach the teacher afterwards and tell her of this painful experience that I could not move past and ask her how meditation might help me. Her suggestion was simple and profound and the relief was almost immediate. This is what she said:
“When you go back into the story to remind yourself of how this person hurt you, you are not helping yourself to detach. You are reinforcing the hurt and the anger. This is toxic. Instead of focusing in on the painful details of the story, try to focus in on your feelings and identify what they are. Then consider what you can do to improve the way that you feel.” I left her and found a quiet place to think. I felt so sad about what had happened and I missed my friend. I felt angry, hurt, betrayed. Fearful. Grief-stricken over the loss. I thought about what would make me feel better.
As I thought about my feelings instead of the story, I realized that if I stopped thinking about the hurtful story, then it became difficult to tap into the anger and all of those terrible feelings. And if I didn’t have all of those terrible feelings, then it didn’t make sense to sever the relationship. I realized that I no longer had to grieve on top of reliving a painful experience. I felt free and relieved trying on this new perspective. The next time my friend called, I answered.
Once we uncover the feelings that we are struggling with, an important question to ask ourselves is, “How long have I felt this way?” Or, “What is my earliest memory of feeling this way?” If you are the child of addicted parents, it is very likely that these feelings go all the way back to your childhood –feelings that are reactivated by one story after another as we go through life. (Picture yourself dragging that big bag of rocks from place to place.)
This is when my healing began. Eventually, the story about how my best friend betrayed me became a story about devoted best friends. I can’t say that I have forgiven her because I still struggle with some amount of hurt and anger. But this experience deepened my understanding of acceptance. Instead of going over the story again and again I think about my feelings and then I consider hers. I can accept the fact that she had a point of view and feelings and did not intend harm. This feels so much better inside my heart than holding tight to bitterness and hurt.
I find that children of alcoholics and so many people who identify with this journey continue to feel the pain of their childhood despite years of therapy and self-help. We are angry at our parents for hurting us or neglecting us or for depriving us of the childhood we feel we should have had. Perhaps our anger helps us to feel the emotional connection to them that we still crave. We can’t wrap our minds around the idea that we can let go of our hurt and still honor our experience and feel a connection to our loved ones. It doesn’t occur to us that our parents may have acted out of their own hurt that came from their own story. (Hurt people hurt people!)
Why else do hold onto our story? So that we do not become vulnerable and fall apart. We are protecting ourselves from feeling so much anger that we may want to kill somebody. Or feeling so much sadness that we may want to die. Or because we are afraid that if we start crying we will never be able to stop. We are guarding our hearts and protecting ourselves from our fear of loss of control. Like my meditation teacher suggested, we can think about our feelings instead of the story. And then we can consider the feelings of the other people in our story. And hopefully, in time, the story about the painful past will transform into a story of moving past hurt feelings and seeing our history from a new point of view. We can look at our story in with compassion and understanding for all.
For much of my life, I was attached to the traumatic version of my story and the painful past. Today, I don’t think about my life that way. Now I can share my experience in hopes that it may help someone. I have compassion for my mother who suffered as I did instead of feeling angry at her for not protecting me. I have compassion for my father’s painful experience that set the stage for him to become an alcoholic and hurt those he loved the most. I recognize that my parents have a story that they have carried with them, affecting them throughout their lives. They too, dragged a bag of rocks from place to place.
Acknowledging and sitting with our feelings is much like opening a wound to drain the poison away. We don’t have to be afraid of growing pains and we don’t have to go through them alone. We don’t have to “Let go of our story” in order to heal. We can look at our story in a new light that honors our experience and acknowledges how far we have come.
ABOUT LISA SUE WOITITZ
Lisa Sue Woititz, author of UNWELCOME IHERITANCE: BREAK YOUR FAMILY’S CYCLE OF ADDICTIVE BEHAVIOR, has been a counselor and educator in the field of substance abuse treatment for the past thirty years. Her passion for this work comes out of her personal experience and the fact that both of her parents were involved in the recovery movement from the time of her early youth. Lisa Sue has been called “The First ACoA” because her late mother, Dr. Janet Woititz, is known as the “Mother of the ACoA Recovery Movement” due to her seminal book ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS which gained international recognition in the 1980s. Lisa Sue is currently in private practice coaching ACoAs, many whom have been in therapy for many years without lasting results. She is an active public speaker and writer, and the mother of three amazingly special children.
Website: lisasuewoititz.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ACoARecoveryLisaSueandDr.Jan/
Twitter: ACOA Recovery @lisasuewoititz
By Lisa Woititz, author of Unwelcome Inheritance: Break Your Family’s Cycle of Addictive Behaviors
With the right support, looking back at our difficult past experiences can help us to understand where our ongoing pain and struggles come from. And sharing the feelings we’ve pushed down for a long time can be a relief. But making those connections and releasing our emotions doesn’t always heal those hurts. In fact, sometimes too much focus on the past can prevent us from moving forward, which is exactly what we need to do to feel whole and create positive change. It’s good to know that our future can be happy and bright even if we cannot change what happened in the past. Here are some things that we can all do to move forward in our recovery:
Have you ever looked at your family tree? It holds the key to understanding who and what has shaped our lives. Was it just your mother or father who had a drinking problem? What were your grandparents like? What sort of home environment were your parents raised in? Understanding what behaviors and physical predispositions have been passed down to us can give us a whole new and expanded perspective on our lives. It can also give us insight as to what traits we have passed along to our children and what we may want to do differently than our parents and grandparents.
Our personal recovery doesn’t just help us. It can help those that we love in their healing process as well. Many people minimize the impact they have on the lives of others. Everyone is someone’s child, spouse, parent, friend, loved one – we are all important to someone! When we take better care of ourselves, we relieve our loved ones of worry and fear about our well-being. When we smile, those around us can’t help but smile too. Happiness is contagious! If you don’t feel that you are worth taking good care of yourself, do it for those you love. Your happiness matters!
We may not be able to change the past, but we do have control over what happens next. If you miss someone with whom you have a broken relationship, consider reaching out to that person if only to say “hello.” If you have a dream, take a small step toward it. If you don’t like something the way it is, change it! And if you don’t know how to change it, ask for help. If you feel afraid to make a change, ask yourself, “Can this action harm me or someone else?” If the answer is “no” and it is just a case of the jitters that is in your way, remember that the opposite of fear is faith – have faith in yourself because you can do it!
There’s no better way to forget our troubles than to help others who are less fortunate. Opportunities to serve others present themselves all day long, in small ways and tall. Call someone that you know is going through a hard time and let them know you are thinking of them. Volunteer your time to a cause that is important to you. Do something nice for your neighbor. If you have a talent, share it. Service is a state of mind that reminds us that despite our troubles, we have something valuable to offer others.
Those of us who were raised in a stressful and depressing environment may see the glass as empty instead of half full. Even when we don’t have a reason to feel unhappy, we may find ourselves in a negative state of mind. This might be a habit that you have the power to change. Attitude is everything! When you wake up in the morning, write down five things that you are grateful for. This daily practice will put you in a positive state of mind that can carry you through the day. You will see that it is virtually impossible to be in a negative mood when you are focused on all you have to be grateful for.
By Lisa Sue Woititz, author of Unwelcome Inheritance: Break Your Family’s Cycle of Addictive Behaviors
Consider the possibility that your estranged parent is in recovery and that just like you, they are on a journey of self-reflection and personal growth. In this case continued resentment over the painful past serves no useful purpose, keeping apart a family that really longs to be together. This brokenness sets the stage for more of the same in future generations. With this in mind, please consider opening your heart to the possibility of reconciliation. It’s never too late to allow our relationships to heal and to create the family life we want. I hope it will help you to learn of these things that so many recovering parents want their children to know:
“Ironically enough, the terrible disease that has hit your family can be used against itself. You suffered as a family divided by alcoholism, and you can recover as a family united because of alcoholism. Because of alcoholism, you became aware of yourself and your need to be a fully functioning family. Take advantage of that. We grow from the challenges in our lives. We grow more from the hard times, not the easy ones. As a family, you can become more fulfilled than if you were never forced to face yourselves. With recovery, the spiral can go upward through our families and into every area of our lives. Slowly but surely, the pattern can reverse itself with you in the driver’s seat.” Dr. Janet Geringer Woititz, author of Adult Children of Alcoholics.
By Lisa Sue Woititz, author of Unwelcome Inheritance: Break Your Family’s Cycle of Addictive Behavior
Many of us who have alcoholism or other addictions in our families suffer from depression to some degree. We’ve gone to self-help groups and therapists for a number of years, hoping that if we can uncover hidden emotional issues that the feeling of hopelessness will disappear. Some of us judge ourselves for our inability to “get over it” and “pull ourselves together” but as much as we try, we just can’t shake the blues. Well, maybe it’s not all in our mind! Sometimes approaching an old problem from a new angle energizes us with a renewed feeling of hope. So let’s consider this common problem from a different perspective and ask ourselves: Are we taking good care of our bodies? In combination with reaching out to our support system, here are eight things that ACOAs can do to outwit depression:
I don’t remember hearing the word codependency back in the seventies, but the recovery group for children of alcoholics that I attended taught me what it was. For me, it meant that Mom needed a Twelve Step support group because she was so preoccupied with Dad’s drinking that she didn’t think about anything else. Or, as Melody Beattieexplains it in her book Codependent No More, “A codependent person is one who has let another person’s behavior affect him or her, and who is obsessed with controlling that person’s behavior.”
One example of codependency that made a lot of sense to me was given to me during my substance abuse counselor training. The instructor first drew two circles next to one another on the blackboard to represent two people who were not dependent on one another. The second set of circles that he drew partially overlapped one another, representing two people who were interdependent, or dependent on one another in a mutual and healthy way. The third set of circles showed one inside the other, denoting how one person’s life can be consumed by the other. This is the nature of codependency, where a person is so preoccupied with the other that they are distracted from their own life. As the joke in recovery circles explains it: You know you’re codependent if, when you’re dying, someone else’s life flashes before your eyes!
In my friend Dr. Twerski’s groundbreaking book Addictive Thinking, he tells a story about a codependent husband who came to him for help. This man’s wife was an alcoholic who had relapsed. Prior to this relapse, she had gone through detox at a hospital and attended several AA meetings when she was released. But then she quit going, saying those meetings were not for her. She told her husband she was different from the other people and believed she had nothing in common with them.
Dr. Twerski told the husband that his wife’s resistance to AA was not unusual. After all, in AA, he said, she would learn that she could not drink again. Obviously, as her relapse showed, this was something that she did not want to hear.
Then Dr. Twerski asked the man how his Al-Anon program was going, and the man said, “I went to two meetings, but that program is not for me. I have nothing in common with the people there.”
The good doctor pointed out to the man how he was parroting his wife’s exact words, offering the same excuses for avoiding a recovery program that she had used.
As Dr. Twerski concluded, the anxiety about change can be so intense that people like those in this example contradict themselves without even realizing it.
This story points out how sometimes codependent people align themselves with their alcoholic in denying the need for help. But Dr. Twerski also tells this story because it is an example of something that alcoholics, ACoAs, and codependents have in common: the self-deception that is characteristic of addictive thinking. He says that in the same way that the alcoholic is obsessed with drinking and cannot resist the compulsion to do so, the codependent person is obsessed with how to control the alcoholic and cannot resist the compulsion to try everything possible to gain that control. He also says that the three most common elements in addictive thinking are denial, rationalization, and projection.
Notice how the husband in the previous story has a distorted sense of reality. He knows his wife is an alcoholic but rationalizes that Al-Anon cannot help him. He denies that he has something in common with the others in the group, which is obviously not true, but it is what he would like to believe. So he bends reality to meet his needs.
Bending reality is a skill many codependents have mastered. One of my relatives unknowingly married a man who was an alcoholic. They were both from a community where most of the marriages are arranged, and very little contact is allowed between the couple before the wedding. From their first day of married life, her husband sat on the kitchen floor and cried all day. She assumed it was because she was a terrible cook; it never occurred to her that his drinking might be the cause of his bizarre behavior. Rather than face the reality that her husband had a drinking problem, she just worked harder to become a better cook.
When we ACoAs look at the tapestry that is our family history, we discover that there’s so much more than meets the eye. While we cannot change that history, the good news is that we can obtain skills and learn new ways of behaving and thinking that can change things for the better when it comes to ourselves and our children and their children. And the tools we gain for healthy living can be used in many areas. Dr. Jan explained it this way:
As a matter of fact, what we are learning is that many of the things that work for Adult Children are really a model for many other kinds of dysfunctional families: people who live with other compulsions, people who live with certain kinds of mental illness, chronic illness, army brats, kids who’ve been in foster care or adopted, many who live in profoundly religious families, and children of Holocaust survivors, who have very much the same profile as the adult children of alcoholics. —Dr.Jan
Many of her clients also shared with her that their children tended toward hyperactivity, needed larger amounts of medication, had dramatic allergic reactions to foods and environmental triggers, and often were addicted to sugar. Understanding all the elements that are woven into the tapestry of my family helps when I fall back to wondering why I sometimes feel like such a basket case. I am the adult child of an alcoholic with my own addiction issues and life-threatening food allergies.
My father’s family perished in the Holocaust. (We don’t know if alcoholism ran in his family or not.) My mother was codependent. On her side of the family, there are sugar and alcohol addictions and depression. Her father grew up in an orphanage, and several family members were Holocaust survivors. My first husband was from a profoundly religious family, and the impact of that on our children and me could be a whole other book. And, of course, there are all the issues surrounding my own parenting and the impact all of this has had on my children, plus the body chemistry they have inherited from both sides of their family. I hope that when you look at all that is woven into your own family history, you will gain new insight and hope for the future.
Mom talked about how ACoAs have no database for how to solve everyday problems or relate to others because of the way we grew up. It’s not that our parents didn’t love us, it’s that they couldn’t teach us what they didn’t know. That’s why it’s so important to interrupt this cycle of codependency and addictive thinking and pass on the healthy things we’ve learned to our own children.
When one parent in a family is an alcoholic and the other is codependent on that alcoholic, the primary focus is not where it should be—on the health and well-being of the children. Children should get to be children and adults should get to be adults. The job of the parents is to take care of the children so the children do not have to take care of the parents. —Dr.Janet Geringer Woititz, Ed.D., author of Adult Children of Alcoholics
Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoAs) Welcome Home 