ACOD Fear


My story has nothing to do with being an adult child of divorce .  It has everything to do with real fear.   Riding a roller coaster in the dark in one of the front seats pushed me over the edge.  Not literally,  but figuratively.  Although I was in my early twenties, I came off the "fun ride" and sat on a bench where a few elderly people were sitting.  They were probably experiencing physical reactions to being flung through the air wildly and quickly.  But I was experiencing psychological fear.
And I was crying.  As embarrassing as it was, I could not control my reaction .  I was truly afraid.

What is fun for one person in an amusement park may not be fun for another person.
And as an ACOD, I don't mean to imply that any of it is fun for any of us.  But we all experience varying reactions that are common to all and some that are as different as we and our stories are!

Fear shows up in different arenas for the adult child of divorce.

Sometimes we fear the past.  Or what we do not know of the past. What we may learn of the past that will further affect our trust, our memories and our reality in the here and now.
Were there more affairs?  Are there other half siblings we don't know?  If the problems I know about now were there, what other problems existed that I still don't know about?   Do I want to know?  What do others know from my family's past that I don't know?

Fear can cripple us in the present.  What will happen if I set boundaries with either one parent or both? Or with siblings?   What words of anger and rejections will be directed at me when I express my feelings?  What is the true state of my and my parent's physical safety, given the fact that what has happened in my family was unthinkable in the past....  what is a parent or both parents capable of doing to themselves or each other ? 

Future fear makes us feel uncertain.   We fear what our holidays will look like now?  We wonder what will happen when mom and dad are in the same room at some future gathering? What if my parent or parents withdraw from me or reject my efforts to talk about the true issues?  What if my desire to see a counselor together is turned down? Can I handle any more abandonment or rejection?   How will this affect MY children?  What are they going to learn from this breakdown in our family?   And if we are not married yet,  the question looms of "are my relationships doomed?" because true love and commitment just are not possible?
And if we are married,  we wonder if betrayal, or loss of commitment could happen to us?

As adult children of divorce, we experience true fear.   We know we are on a roller coaster, not by our doing, but by others choices.   We may be adults, but as we experience the twists and turns ,  darkness and unknown path that now lies before us,  we sometimes just want to get off.  We want to sit and cry and realize it is just a "ride".    Fear is real to us ACODs.

I can't take away your fear. It may be legitimate and may need to be dealt with by the help of others such as counselors, police, people of the faith community or decisions that help eliminate the causes of the fear.

For me, a certain amount of peace and absence of fear comes from my faith in God.  I believe He will bring me to the end of the "ride"  , through the dark tunnels and the fast, crazy loops and the unknown path I am on.   I believe He is guiding,  directing, and holding me in, so even if I am crying and exhausted when I experience fear,  I can also have peace, and clear thoughts that don't immobilize me.

If you are an ACOD who is experiencing true fear today, I pray you will seek the help you need to gain new trust and rest.

Philippians 4:6

New International Version (NIV)
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God.

2 Timothy 1:7

New King James Version (NKJV)
7 For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Adult Children of Divorce Sometimes Choose Estrangement

Image
I have been avoiding writing this post in my blog because I realize that many acods maintain a relationship with their parents or even the “offending” parent after a late life divorce occurs.   I want to encourage that and hope and pray that many grey divorces do not end with estrangement of parent and child.   But in my own experience and in the lives of other acods who have written to me, or whom I have met, that is not always the case. Often the adult child or the parent chooses estrangement for many reasons. “Offense”, “sin”, “hurt” …call it what you will, but when an adult child has one parent who has made a conscious decision for months or years to betray the other parent,   the adult child learning of the situation is often in disbelief.    Hoping to understand, they talk to the “offending” parent, only to receive defensive language and behavior and the acknowledgment of hurt and pain caused is denied.   Often a lack of personal responsibility and lack of feeling fami
Read more

Adult Children Of Divorce and Grief

Image
When I first became aware of the stages of grief, I assumed that I would experience it firsthand when someone close to me died,  not when my parents divorced in my adulthood.  As I cried my way through the first days and months of the shock of what was about to happen to my family of orgin, the pain was deep and unbearable at times.  Before the tears came readily and daily I seemed to walk around from task to task while hours ticked away in my day, as I functioned on auto-pilot, but my thoughts were consumed with the surprise and disbelief that my father had another love and would leave my mother and what we knew and loved of family to be with her. I reasoned that he would reconsider, that the affair wasn't as serious as it seemed, and that all would eventually be OK.  Little did I realize that I was experiencing the Stages of Grief due to the great pain and loss that I was experiencing.  The Stages of Grief are expressed by various words in different grief literature.  I wil
Read more

ACODs and Affairs

Many of us ACODs have witnessed the burning down of our families due to the fuel of an affair on the part of one or both of our parents. Affairs can sometimes be "explained away" to a child.  Reasons of friendship, having grown apart, or a new chance at love may seem reasonable to a child, although hurtful. As adults, we are familiar with the concept of affairs and we often observe it from afar in the lives of others, but when the many levels of deception, betrayal and destruction are experienced first or second-hand, there is a deeper clarity and pain. Since the discovery of my father's affair, and subsequent choices of his ended family as we all knew it, I have heard many people refer to affairs in common terms. They may call it a "mistake" or "just an affair".  Some say things like "all sin is the same in God's eyes" or they minimize the personal responsibility by claiming that sometimes people can't "help it". 
Read more