Latest / The Trauma Therapist / Episode 779: Working With Adult Children of Alcoholics with Christie Pearl

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Episode 779: Working With Adult Children of Alcoholics with Christie Pearl · The Trauma Therapist

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Or welcome back to the Trauma Therapist Podcast. My name is Gamiferson. My
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mission is to help trauma therapist be their incredible selves, to be human,
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to be real, not just a clinician. I'm a big believer in who
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we are is more important than what we know, and this requires cultivating authenticity,
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genuinists, and vulnerability, and that requires intention. Can learn more about
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my courses and workshops by going to the Trauma Therapist project dot com. That's
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the Trauma Therapist Project dot com. Let's get started, all right. So
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five four, three, two and one, our folks, welcome back to
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the podcast. I am very excited to hap us back. Christy Pearl,
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Christy welcome, Thank you so much, so great to be back. You
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are welcome. So. Christy is a certified Into Your Therapist and consultant in
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private practice in Massachusetts and Virginia who specializes in providing MDR intensives for adult children
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of alcoholics, dysfunctional families, or acoas who are dealing with work stress,
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and performance anxiety to create a healthy relationship with their work so they can be
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who they want to be today instead of who they had to be as children.
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Christy, welcome back. Thank you so much. It's great to be
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back. So share with the listeners who maybe didn't listen or or don't remember.
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But where are you from originally and where are you currently? Yeah?
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So I am originally from Virginia and that is where I am currently, although
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I have spent most of my adult life was in Massachusetts. I am.
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I graduated from college in Virginia and then moved to Boston for grad school and
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built a life and a career up in Massachusetts, and then about two years
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ago now came back to Virginia to be closer to family here. And so
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I'm sort of I think of it like I have two homes. I you
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know, I can't leave Massachusetts out of my heart, so I just think
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about it like I have two homes now. All right. So, you
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know, as we were discussing before we started recording here last time, we
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talked a lot about your story, and I'm not surprised. I mean,
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that's what I love to do, and we're gonna do that too. But
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today we're gonna, as you said, evolved the conversation talk really more specifically
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about how you work with acos, as we'll call them, adult children of
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alcoholics but before we do that, just give our listeners the thumbnail of how
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this did start for you, how this interest started for you. Yeah,
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well, I like to say that, you know, like, like so
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many therapists, became a therapist out of my own wounding. I'm very much
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a wounded healer. I like to think I am pretty far along in my
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own recovery now, which allows me to be present with others on their journeys.
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But you know, I think that many times we therapists come into this
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field out of us, whether it's conscious or unconscious, search for our own
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healing and our own understanding and awareness. And we start out with all of
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those pretty reasons why we tell ourselves we're becoming therapists because I'm you know,
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I want to help people and I'm just so empathic. And then when we
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dig a little deeper and do a little bit more of our own work,
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we kind of see some of those I won't call them not pretty reasons,
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but they're more maybe more real about why we are going to this field.
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And that is very true for me. So yeah, I mean I I
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totally agree with that, and that was definitely my experience too. But so
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more specifically, you know, working with adult children of alcoholics. I'm assuming
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that was your experience you were or are. Yeah, I am an adult
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child of an alcoholic, and so you know, I've done a lot of
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healing around that on my own. And you know, eventually, as I
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progressed through my career as a therapist, it eventually, as I really allowed
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my authentic self to become more more visible, it allowed me to really allow
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those parts of myself to come more forward and be able to, you know,
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be a little bit open about my own lived experience. And not that
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I specifically speak to that or share that in sessions, but I think when
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I have opportunities like this with you, where I can share on a larger
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platform, you know, I can be open about that, and I think
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that that lived experience helps me help other people when you understand those issues.
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I mean, I think any therapist can be empathic about those issues, but
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you know, it's a little bit different when you actually have that lived experience
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yourself. So adult children of an alcoholic, I mean that can mean many
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things. Obviously, you know, alcoholism affects people in many different ways.
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Of course, as we all know, you know, it's very interesting as
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we're talking right now. My ex wife is an adult child of an alcoholic
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who never really dealt with it, you know, and just seeing how that
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how that has played out. But so so, so you work with this
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is your specialization, You work with these individuals? How do you work with
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them with the understanding that everyone's different. But let's let's get specific here.
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What is it? What does it look like someone comes to you? Yeah?
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Well, the first thing I want to say is that when I first
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started sort of marketing, you know, like, Okay, I'm kind of
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hanging out my shingle no longer as a sort of general trauma therapist. I'm
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really speaking and calling out this a c o A. I thought, you
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know, in my mind, any of my colleagues, any of my colleagues
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and friends who are trauma therapists, could help a c o as. And
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I still believe that, of course that's still that is true. But what
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I got back from people seeking me out was, oh my god, I've
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never seen this before. I've never I didn't know that there were therapists out
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there that specialized in this, and that was just really interesting to me because
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in my mind, like I said, any of my colleagues can can help
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you. Trauma therapy is trauma therapy, if you know, in a way
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in a sense. But there was something about that acronym ACOA, because if
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people identify as acoa, that's really meaningful. And there was something about that
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that spoke to them and meant something to them that apparently was rare. So
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that's a surprise to me. I wasn't expecting that when I first, you
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know, kind of advertised myself as an a therapist for acas. So that
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that that, you know, kind of made me get curious about people's journeys.
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And what I have found is there are people who really identify with I'm
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an aca. And there are probably people who have some level of exposure to
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an acoa twelve step meeting maybe, or they've heard of the book, they've
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they've got some level of they've seen that somewhere and that that has resonated for
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them. And then there are people who are acoas and don't know it.
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So depending on you know, that the stage of sort of awareness that someone
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has, you know, is in or the level of awareness that they have,
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it's sort of that's sort of our starting point when someone comes to me.
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You know, there there are people who come to me who know that
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they're acoas and they want that kind of support specifically from someone like me who
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you know, has that area of specialty. And then there are people who
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don't necessarily know that they're in acoa or they might suspect maybe that has something
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to do with them, and they're feeling curious about it. So for them,
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I probably back up a few steps and we we do some education about
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what does that mean and what has that meant for you? And you know,
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what pieces of this really resonate for you because we you know, of
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course there are common characteristics or traits, but we don't necessarily you know,
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they don't fit one hundred percent for everyone because we're individuals, we're unique.
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So it kind of depends, you know, our starting point kind of depends
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on where are they at with their their present level of awareness, understanding,
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and then acceptance, you know, because there then there are people who may
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cognitively understand that they grew up with an alcoholic parent, but on an emotional
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physical level, in their sort of emotional self physical self unconscious mind, there
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are protective parts around that, and there there's a need to say, well,
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okay, yeah, I had an alcoholic parent. But I'm good,
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like I that that has nothing to do with these problems I'm having, right
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right. It's so very interesting because as you're talking, there's so many layers
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to this, right, I mean, And obviously it's it's very complex and
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shows up in different ways, and we all know alcoholics can can have very
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vastly different behaviors and impact the family differently. It's very interesting because my ex
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wife, her father was an alcoholic who was a verbally and physically abusive to
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his wife, so her mother and her brother, but not physically abusive to
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her. But she lived, you know, soaked in that hypervigilance, which,
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as you're kind of describing to this day, hasn't really dealt with it
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and doesn't really acknowledge it to a certain degree, certainly hasn't really gotten any
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help at all. But it's so interesting because a lot of still a lot
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of people are like, well, that wasn't trauma. I wasn't traumatized,
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I wasn't an award, didn't get raped, you know, So if you
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can, can, can you take us to an example of maybe someone you've
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worked with. Obviously we don't need names and all that stuff, but give
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us a more refined glimpse of how you might work with an example of an
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ACA way. Yeah. Sure, So you know, in my case,
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I also practice a little differently than maybe the traditional therapy model. So I
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do I use em DR. I'm an EMDR therapist, and you know,
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for anyone listening that might not be familiar with that, EMDR is one of
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many what we would refer to as more bottom up approaches that really is more
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based in a somatic or body based approach to trauma, because what we know
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is you don't just think your memories, you feel them, and trauma doesn't
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live so much in our thinking brains as it does in our emotional and physical
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brain, in our more I'm using a word implicit brain, more unconscious is
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one way of thinking about it. So the way I work is that we
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let me contrast that with a top down approach, which people might be more
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familiar with. So talk therapy is a top down approach. You are using
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your thinking brain, your cognitive understanding, your intellectual understanding to think about and
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maybe process through the things that happen to you. And that's good and that
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can be very helpful and most of the time often at least talk therapy is
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helpful but insufficient at addressing some of the the symptoms that would be part of
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recovery from being an acoa. So a second ago, you mentioned hypervigilance.
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So this is a really classic example actually that you know, many people that
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I work with come into therapy with what I would call chronic hyper arousal.
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So when you grow up in a home where you've got to be ready,
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you've got to be ready for whatever is coming down the pipeline on a day
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to day basis, your nervous system has to adapt to that. And again,
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you're a child, You're just a child. This is not a decision
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that you make. It's something your body and mind, your nervous system does
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for you. And your nervous system is your best friend, and your nervous
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system loves you so much that it's always going to do what's best for you
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to keep you alive. And so for a child in a home with a
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lot of chaos, instability, violence, fear, that child has to learn
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how to cope with that because that child has got to get up and go
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to school and play with her friends and do her homework and her chores and
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all of the other things that any kid has to do. So in order
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to adapt and cope with that situation, your nervous system might want. One
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possible adaptation is to get really hyper vigilant and be really ready so that you
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can head it off at the past. But what that does is it teaches,
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it trains your nervous system to stay in that chronic, hyper aroused state,
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and then your system learns it's not really okay to settle and be calm.
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So then fast forward a few decades. If we haven't done our work
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on that, then what that can look like in adulthood is the people who
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can't sit still, they can't relax, They are chronically exhausted because they're packing
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their schedules. They don't know how to just go on vacation and let it
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be they or even if they are in a kind of calmer moment, they
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don't feel that way on the inside because their nervous system hasn't learned that it's
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safe to rest. So that's that's a really classic example and one of the
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you know, really common you know symptoms that I see. The other adaptation
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that I see a lot is the kind of the opposite. It's the chronic
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hypo arousal, which means now our system, same situation. Maybe this person's
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nervous system adapted by getting really kind of numb. It went kind of it
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down shifted, like way down shifted into like I'm just gonna kind of,
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you know, get by here. I'm going to disappear like I'm not like
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I'm checking out. I'm I'm almost like dissociating. I'm not really even here.
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It's it's that almost playing dead kind of response that you might see in
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the animal Kingdom. Because in these in these ways, we're really not that
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different from the animals. So that person in fast forwarding a few decades into
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adulthood might look like the person who's really struggling to advocate for themselves at work
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in that of real you know, it might be that fawn response that kind
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of really helpless, you know, depressed, kind of numb, checked out,
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you know, really not able to really be present, kind of that
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doormat, you know, like they just they're they're sort of the office,
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you know, like the one that's always picking up the slack for everybody because
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they don't feel like they have much choice. So there's a few different ways
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people can adapt, But again, you're any person's nervous system just does what
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it needs to do for them to help them cope with what's happening and give
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them the best chance at at making it through. And so those are those
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are two of the most common responses I see and at least the people that
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are drawn to my practice. Those are the two pretty common situations that I
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see. And when people come to you, again, I realized it's many
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different reasons, but I'm imagining, you know, there's You've got this interactional
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relationship between the child who's an adult child with their parent who is or was
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an alcoholic, and I'm imagining there is shame there, there's a variance of
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quality of a relationship. Maybe there was a lot of neglect. Are the
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people who are coming to you do they recognize or maybe are they wondering that
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this has gone on for them? M hm yes, yes. And so
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when we talk about adult children, what we mean by that is that you
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have an adult who has grown up in a family of origin environment with emotional
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abandonment, chaos. And maybe this is another good thing to mention, is
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you know, I work with adult children of alcoholics. That's a really specific
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kind of adult child, but really an adult child is any adult who grew
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up in a home where there was emotional abandonment, chaos, emotional neglect,
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any kind of abuse. So addiction or alcoholism can be one of those types
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of situations that could result in you know, all of those things, but
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it's certainly not the only ones. So, you know, when we're talking
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about adult children, we could be talking about an adult child of you know,
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overly worked parents, or we could be talking about adult children of narcissistic
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parents. We could be talking about adult children of mentally ill parents, any
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situation that impairs the parents' ability to really be emotionally, physically present for that
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child and nurture them in the way that any child needs. So if we
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don't get that, then we grow up and we become adults. And when
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we talk about the adult child, what that means is we are the adult
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and we have a child part of us on the inside that never got its
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needs met and never got to grow up and develop the way it should have
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been able to. We are adults, but our decisions and our actions and
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our feelings and behaviors in our adult life are sort of driven by and grounded
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in that unresolved childhood experience. So the child is in us, we are
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the we are the adult child. So that is sometimes kind of a It
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can be a difficult concept for some people to suggest that there's parts of them
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that they that we're going to be trying to form a relationship with on the
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inside, because many people tend to think the answer is on the outside,
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right, right, So it's really learning how to pay attention to inside.
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And most adult children have spent their entire lives childhoods being trained to pay way
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more attention to what's happening outside of them than what's happening inside of them.
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Yeah, I mean there's something sad, really sad about this, this whole
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idea of neglect, you know in a band, emotional abandonment. Wow.
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And oftentimes a lot of us don't realize that that's what happened, right,
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We just see the alcoholic behavior of an alcoholic but not realizing that what we
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experienced as a young kid is now coming out, is now the effects of
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that are revealing themselves. And I would imagine that oftentimes people are like,
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oh, no, that's not really what happened, when in fact, that's
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really what happened. Yeah, well, denial is a beautiful thing. It's
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wonderful, it's amazing, and I really validate that, you know whatever,
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Sometimes we use the word defenses. I don't love that word. I tend
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to think in terms of protection. So whatever protective parts are there, or
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protective responses are there for a person, they're there for a really good reason.
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So if you are in denial, that denial is there for a really
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good reason. It has helped you tremendously imagine where you would have been without
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that denial. And so when people can feel safe enough in the here and
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now to begin to get curious about that, then we can start to move
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out of denial. And you know, that's that happens at any given person's
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own pace. I'm not in the business of tearing down people's protective parts.
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Let me just pause a moment to thank our sponsors. We're speaking with Christy
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Pearl. We'll be back in a few seconds. Hang on, So,
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Christy, I know we did talk about this previously, but I want to
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it's coming up for me again. You know, as you're talking, there's
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obviously you have your own experience with this. What what do you feel,
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how do you engage with people? Someone comes into your office, maybe they
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don't they don't know what the heck is going on. Yeah, I know
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something happened. But what do you feel allows you to reach in and work
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with these people? Guide these people? Mm? Well, I think my
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own ability to help other people is directly proportional to my work that I do.
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You know, I can't take or you know, I don't take anybody
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anywhere, but I can't guide. I can't go with someone to a place
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where I don't know how to go. And at the same time that,
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you know, it's important for me to have done my work so I can
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be present, I can be aware of where are my buttons and I you
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know, I I know where those are, and I can be aware of
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them. I can do my own self management to you know, soothe myself,
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and then I am better at helping someone else learn how to do that
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on their own time, you know. And at the same time, it's
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not all up to me, you know, I'm I'm half of the relationship.
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I show up. My job is to show up, be present,
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tell the truth with kindness to the best of my ability, and to not
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attached to the outcome. The moment I get attached to someone else's outcome,
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I'm overstepping. So people get to stay as dysfunctional as they want to for
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as long as they can until they don't, you know, until they're feeling
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curious about something different, and then I I'm available. But I have to
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you know, I think any any therapist knows hopefully that we we have to
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be willing to let people stay sick if they need to, the words of
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a seasoned therapist right now, might might Was it always that way for you?
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Oh, of course not. You should have seen me twenty years ago.
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Yeah, I mean, yeah, that's that's something that you know comes
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with experience and years of doing the work, both professionally and personally. I
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mean, and I'm guessing that's really challenging to be able to say that,
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you know, we have to be willing to let people be sick, be
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ill. Yeah, And this is where you know, I might get a
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little bit on a soapbox here, but this is really where I think many
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therapists get into some trouble. If we haven't done our own work and we
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are in the helping professions, it's really easy to get codependent with your clients
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and to be overly invested in the outcomes, to be overly concerned with them,
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and again back to that pattern of that we that we learn in early
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childhood. When we have you know, unmet emotional needs, we get really
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good at looking more to outside ourselves, to the other, being overly preoccupied
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with the other, thinking our answers are out there somewhere, our reality becomes
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out there. And so those are the seeds of codependence. And if you're
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a therapist and you haven't done your own work, it's really easy to fall
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into that that dynamic. And you know, I've been there, most of
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us have. But hopefully we don't make a pattern out of it. But
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I think there are many therapists who do you mentioned earlier that you know in
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your experience there seem to be a kind of I don't know what one of
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these were, camaraderie between people who identify as ACAS or an understanding there.
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We'll talk more about that. Yeah, Well, you know, a CoA
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is it's a twelve step community. In addition to being sort of an identifier,
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it is an actual twelve step community, just like AA and AOA or
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you know. So there are there are places and spaces for people to gather
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together to you know, support and heal with each other. And so sometimes
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people who identify as ACOA are familiar with that twelve step community. There are
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you know, there's literature, there are books. So sometimes people might have
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accessed some of those resources that are available and so that you know, might
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have really strengthened for them that sense of identity as an ACOA. And then
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sometimes people haven't. Sometimes people just recognize that they've heard that somewhere. They
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might not have ever actually participated and in a more organized way into in the
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ACOA you know community, but they might have just known or been aware that,
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yes, that that's me, you know, there's We're lucky. We
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have a lot of information we can access, you know, from from the
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comfort of our own our own homes at this point. So that's a good
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thing. And that's what I'm hoping to do today with you, is to
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add to the information that's available. So more more to that, how are
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you working? Who are you working with? So how I work is I
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do intensive work. One of the things one of the nice things about modalities
32:12
like em DR is we don't necessarily have to follow the traditional convention of week
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to week forty five fifty sixty minute sessions, you know, week after week,
32:27
forever and ever. Amen, you know, we don't have to do
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that. There's actually no research that supports that. That is, you know,
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like the best way to go about things. It's a convention because that's
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what insurance companies pay for. So we've all fallen into this is what we
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do. But you know, I don't do that anymore because for two reasons.
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One there's there's no research that really supports that, and two, with
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em DR, I really need more time with a client on any given day
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for us to actually finish our work and get something done. So the forty
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five fifty even sixty minute session works really well for talk therapy, the top
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down approaches like skill building, coping skills, verbally processing things, kind of
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describing what happened, exploring maybe emotionally what that was like for you that you
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can get that done in forty five minutes to an hour. But for E
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and DR and you know, modalities like that by the time you say hello
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and by the time you you know, hello, what have you been noticing
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or you know, like figuring out like getting oriented for the day, and
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then the other end you know, containing and saying goodbye. That left me
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with like twenty minutes to actually do any work, and that was really unsatisfying
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to me, and my clients, in my opinion, were not getting as
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much out of that as they could. So at this point in my career,
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I actually and this might seem a little provocative, but I actually feel
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like it's doing a disservice to clients to unnecessarily drag out their healing. So
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at this point, I do longer sessions. I practice intensively because it gives
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us more time to actually see change. Because that's what I do. I
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do change therapy. I don't really do support therapy for the most part.
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Of course, you know, if I have a client who's going through something
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and we need to kind of integrate or verbally process something, that's fine.
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That there's a there's a time and a place for everything. But by and
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large, I'm wanting to do change therapy and that takes a little more time.
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So that's how I work, and who I work with is you know,
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mostly mid you know, middle age adults I do, you know,
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I would say young adults in their twenties, kind of that identity exploration,
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you know, I love my twenty somethings that are sort of getting their feet
35:22
under them and moving into their adult lives. And then I work with middle
35:27
aged adults who are sort of reassessing. That tends to be the two groups
35:31
that come to me, and you know, we we do exactly what my
35:38
BIO says. I'm all about helping them be who they want to be now
35:43
instead of who they had to be as children. So moving out of that
35:47
chronic, hyper aroused state so that you don't always have to be on you
35:53
When when it's time to rest, you can actually rest. When it's time
35:57
to play, when it's time to have fun, when it's time to go
36:00
on vacation, you can actually enjoy yourself. So that's how I work and
36:07
who I work with. And you also offer consultation, yes I do.
36:14
I do work with other EMDR therapists who are wanting to develop their skills,
36:20
get certified in EMDR, or learn how to do intensive work like I do.
36:25
I also offer private practice coaching for therapists and I really it's important to
36:32
me to really convey that in my consultation or coaching, the therapist comes first
36:40
with me because I believe in putting our own oxygen mask on first. So
36:46
I really support the therapists that I work with in consultation in much the same
36:53
way that I do my clinical clients, which is helping them pay attention to
36:59
themselves. And like life before business, your your work ideally supports and reflects
37:08
who you are. So your business was working just as hard for you and
37:15
giving you just as much as you're giving it. Awesome, all right,
37:22
Christy. What's the best way for people to get in contact with you?
37:27
Yeah, they can just go to my website. That's the best place to
37:30
go. You can see all my availability there and get to know a little
37:37
bit more about me. And that's Christy Pearl C h r I S t
37:42
I E p e a r l dot com will have that linked up here
37:45
at the show notes page at the Trauma Tapis podcast dot com. Christy,
37:49
Awesome, love having you on here, Love talking to you so inspiring.
37:55
That's a pleasure. Thank you so much, Thank you. It's just such
37:59
a pleasure to be with you. I've really enjoyed it. I appreciate that.
38:01
Take care you too.