Bearing the scars of where we lost connection to ourselves:

Our personality traits revealed?

I often times sit with the stark reality of how much of our wiring and makeup is tied to our pre-memory experiences, or, in other words, the experiences that have shaped us that were too early on in our formative years, so we can’t recall them.

I am reading The Myth of Normal, in which Gabor and Daniel Mate outline this, stating that:

“It is sobering to realize that many of the personality traits we have come to believe are us, and perhaps even take pride in, actually bear the scars of where we lost connection to ourselves, way back when.”

I think we often times don’t want to have to face that harsh truth because it feels very disempowering, like so little of what we are, of who we are, and what we’re like, is really within our control.

I know I don’t.

I remember having that big existential crisis, along these lines, when I was fifteen.

I was an active member of Awareness Theatre, Chautauqua Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Council’s theatre (As therapy and peer mediation) performance group. Through our training I learned more about the roles that children of alcoholics (and other dysfunctional families) take on.

I was so obviously the hero role.

It was so so painfully apparent to me—I did well in school and didn’t get in trouble, I took on the role to make the family look good. I took on that role willingly and eagerly, hoping to win my father’s affection and approval, which, of course, he was unable to give.

But what shook me to my core was not that I was like that, but rather, this notion that I had been pre-programmed to be like that, simply because of the family that I was born into.

My mother did well to raise me to believe that I could create a better life and more stability than I had in my home growing up.

I knew that. I trusted that. I believed in myself.

It was a huge reckoning to come to terms with that I was a dime a dozen as “the hero” and my traits were textbook for a family with a parent who is an alcoholic.

I remember I just keep repeating it in my mind, and to my theatre director, “But am I just this way because I am the child of an alcoholic? How do I know who I really am this way?”

I was diving at a much larger, deeper, more philosophical question which was—

Am I who I am because of my own volition? Am I who I want to be? Who I choose to be? Or simply because of the family that I was born into?

Later in life, after my brother’s and father’s suicides, I would revisit this question again, and again, through many hours of therapy.

At the time though, it was a pretty daunting line of questioning for a fifteen year old.

I am often times saddened by the degree to which my family’s trauma and poor life choices and lack of mental health help have influenced my journey.

Of course, I am.

And yet, also, because of their actions and inactions, I have made and continue to make different choices. To live my life differently.

Because of all that unfolded, I was made to confront intergenerational trauma and emotional inheritance and work to heal myself.

I know that I still bear the traits of an adult child of an alcoholic, as a hero role, mainly that I feel that I must earn someone’s love through service or acts, rather than simply just be…me.

But, at least I am cognizant of this, and I can/will/am working to unlearn those things, or, at least, to be more cognizant of them.

In tending to my wounded inner child, I try to make these traits that I have part of a work ethic, to make them and myself more healthy and functional, rather than debilitating, basing my self worth entirely on my achievements and service to others, in how I may “earn” love.

I am working, instead, on just being.

And working on that being enough.