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Karen shares her powerful story of growing up in an alcoholic home and the impact it had on her life, including her struggle with emotional suppression and disconnection. Tune in to hear Karen's journey towards healing, self-discovery, and finding peace within herself. She offers insightful advice for those dealing with addiction in their lives and emphasizes the importance of seeking support and approaching these situations with curiosity and compassion. This podcast is a must-listen for anyone looking to overcome past traumas and experiences and connect with themselves and others on a deeper level._____If you or anyone you know is struggling with addiction, depression, trauma, sexual abuse or feeling overwhelmed, we've compiled a list of resources at secretlifepodcast.com.______To share your secret and be a guest on the show email secretlifepodcast@icloud.comABOUT OUR GUEST:Karen Maloney“Your life is like a mirror reflecting your beliefs to you.” Life wasn’t always how it is now. To many people I may look and appear the same, but INSIDE I feel like a completely different person. Just like a computer, I’ve installed a whole new operating system. I’ve deleted old files & replaced them with new programs instead (i.e. habits, beliefs, thoughts etc) and revolutionised my internal world, shifting the way I think and what I believe about myself. Everything comes from within – ‘as within, so without’. It’s been life-changing for me and I know it can be the same for you!Now I can see CLEARLY that for most of my life I lived in the baseline energy of fear. I lived my life in ‘freeze’ mode. I felt disassociated, unsafe, anxious and I felt awkward being myself. I judged myself harshly (always trying to be perfect!) and my brain went a 100 miles and hour. But for the most part I never realised there was anything wrong with that. It was my ‘normal’. I thought it was a sign of my ambition and drive. Out of an unconscious fear, I lived from the level of my mind. I thought if I can think, plan, control and rationalise everything in my mind, I would be safe. That need for control provided me with a sense of safety and security inside, that I didn’t feel in the external world. But it also lead to burnout. Find out MORE: Soulpowerlight.comCuriosity & Consciousness Podcast_____SECRET LIFE’S TOPICS INCLUDE:addiction recovery, mental health, alcoholism, drug addiction, sex addiction, love addiction, OCD, ADHD, dyslexia, eating disorders, debt & money issues, anorexia, depression, shoplifting, molestation, sexual assault, trauma, relationships, self-love, friendships, community, secrets, self-care, courage, freedom, and happiness._____Create and Host Your Podcast with the same host we use - RedCircle_____Get your copy of SECRET LIFE OF A HOLLYWOOD SEX & LOVE ADDICT -- Secret Life Novel or on Amazon______HOW CAN I SUPPORT THE SHOW?Tell Your Friends & Share Online!Follow, Rate & Review: Apple Podcasts | SpotifyFollow & Listen iHeart | Stitcher | Google Podcasts | Amazon | PandoraSpread the word via social mediaInstagramTwitterFacebook#SecretLifePodcastDonate - You can also support the show with a one-time or monthly donation via PayPal (make payment to secretlifepodcast@icloud.com) or at our WEBSITE.Connect with Brianne Davis-Gantt (@thebriannedavis)Official WebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterConnect with Mark Gantt (@markgantt)Main WebsiteDirecting WebsiteInstagramFacebookTwitterTranscript[0:00:00] Karen: Often a child who grew up in an alcoholic home can have difficulties with trust, with identifying, expressing feelings. And they either go one of two ways totally controlled, or feeling like they have no control over their life. This is 1 million% describing me.[0:00:23] Brianne Davis: Welcome to the Secret Life Podcast. Tell me your secret, I'll tell you mine. Sometimes you have to go through the darkness to reach the light. That's what I did. After twelve years of recovery in sex and love addiction, I finally found my soulmate myself. Please join me in my novel, Secret Life of a Hollywood Sex & Love Addict. A four-time bestseller on Amazon. It's a brutal, honest, raw, gnarly ride, but hilarious at the same time. Check it out now on Amazon. Welcome to Secret Life Podcast. I'm Brianne Davis-Gantt. Today, I'm pulling back the curtains of all kinds of human secrets. We'll hear about what people are hiding from themselves or others. You know, those deep, dark secrets you probably want to take to your grave, or, you know, those light or funnier secrets that are just plain embarrassing. Really.[0:01:23] Brianne Davis: The how, what, when, where, why of it all. Today. My guest is Karen. Now, Karen, I have a question for you. Dun dun dun. What is your secret?[0:01:37] Karen: I grew up in an alcoholic home. And actually, the impact that it had on me that I totally did not connect the dots to that at all.[0:01:48] Brianne Davis: Like the denial of what living in an alcoholic home does to you.[0:01:53] Karen: Yeah, well, I don't even because there's so many different I suppose that word was never used. It wasn't a thing. It wasn't as if my dad was out all day every day and coming home drunk and crawling havoc and messing up the place and all this kind of thing. No, he totally worked all day, but he went out every single night and came home, particularly when I was a child, I remember him coming home drunk, like, absolutely obliterated, and I hated it. And I always just wanted to be in bed and I would be like, oh, please don't come in and wake me up. Because sometimes he would he'd come in and he'd wake me up and that's when he'd be like, oh my God, I love you so much. profusing his undying love. And sometimes he passed out as well. With life an arm over me. And as a child, I was just terrified.[0:02:41] Brianne Davis: So terrifying. That overwhelming. It's almost like when a family member would do that, it was like you didn't know what to do with all that energy coming at you.[0:02:53] Karen: Yeah, and that's when I literally stopped breathing. Because as a child and before the age of seven, we're literally in PETA. We've been programmed. It's like we're in a hypnotized state again. I'm looking back now as a journey of discovery and healing and connecting all the dots, but I didn't know this at the time. But that's when I stopped breathing, I'd be so terrified. I went into freeze mode because even my dad, if he passed out with his arm over me, I would stop breathing because I'd be like, I don't want to wake him, because if he starts producing his love again, the smell of drink, it's just not cool for a child. And I live my life in that freeze mode.[0:03:39] Brianne Davis: Like, you would realize you were holding your breath.[0:03:43] Karen: And especially if I felt triggered or vulnerable or particularly when it came to relationships and opening up and expressing feelings and emotions, life, I just did not do that. I was a closed book. And if ever I felt in that space of needing to open up, I would go in that freeze mode. It was like, stop breathing. Shut down. Yes.[0:04:05] Brianne Davis: I want to ask you, so I've taken breath class. As an actor, you work with your breath and all. My teacher told me that I breathe just in my chest, and I didn't connect my breath to my belly. And the lower area, is that how you life? I guess I was disconnected too.[0:04:25] Karen: Yeah, upper chest breathing. Because I've studied a lot and done a couple of courses while on breath work. And that upper chest breathing, is that really kind of panic, fight or flight you're passing extra cortisol you're in fight or flight, essentially. You're not in that rest or digest, like, full, deep, diaphragmic breaths that allow oxygenated blood to pass around your body. So, yeah, it does have an impact. But it's so funny because recently I joined Alanon, and honestly, by joining there and that's through another episode of a person close to me drinking. And I was just like, oh, my God. Even with all my skills, all my tools, all my practices, I couldn't cope. It was really triggering me. So I was like, oh, my God, I need help here.[0:05:12] Brianne Davis: Wait, let's not jump ahead, though. Wait, let's go back. I have a couple of questions. Okay. You're like, I know exactly what I want to say, but no. When your household was in that state so he drank every night. He was a functioning alcoholic. It sounds life.[0:05:27] Karen: Now you can look back and go, yeah, absolutely. Because he was up every morning, went to work.[0:05:31] Brianne Davis: Yeah. And that's the hardest ones to diagnose. If your life is not falling to pieces, it's hard to be like, oh, I have a problem.[0:05:39] Karen: Yeah.[0:05:40] Brianne Davis: So was there a word you guys used for when he was in that state, or was it just not talked about?[0:05:46] Karen: No, like I say, it was not mentioned. That word was never brought up. It was never an issue. It was just like and honestly, when I look back, I didn't see it as an issue. I didn't think, oh, my God, my dad goes out every night. It was just like a normal as far as I knew, it's what everyone did.[0:06:04] Brianne Davis: Wait and where are you from?[0:06:06] Karen: Ireland.[0:06:06] Brianne Davis: Ireland, that's it. You're Irish, right? But I'm Irish too and it's like a lot of people I hear say, well, Irish just drink a lot. Like it's our culture, it's the society we were raised in. Yeah.[0:06:19] Karen: And it definitely was part that. But I could see as well, it was probably his bit of a wind down his sanctuary where he met his buddies and they all catched up, caught up, but also when it's every single night of the year. The only two nights he didn't go out was Good Friday because the pubs were closed during Christmas Day because the pubs were closed and I do not remember a single day when he did not go. That's just how it was. But like I'm saying, it was just so normalized and I think this is what happens a lot in trauma or whatever kind of situation. They're just so normal. You don't see that there's any issue. They're just like your blind spots and those particularly coming home life really drunk and kind of waking us up in the middle of the night to tell us he loves us so much, in that I remember that happening literally a handful of times. But when I was really young, like five, six, seven, maybe around that age, it didn't happen as we got older, but he still went out. But it happened enough times for me to live my life in a programmed state of that not feeling safe, that fear, that living in freeze mode, shutting down. That's what we do.[0:07:40] Brianne Davis: You're supposed to rely on, is not in a healthy state. So the boundaries are crossed. Like your boundaries were crossed as a little girl. A father should not be climbing in bed and passing out drunk with his arm over his daughter. Is that when you had that AHA moment? Because you had it after we talked, right? Like we talked on your podcast. So how did that AHA moment realize, I know you have another family member that's also an alcoholic. Can you connect all those dots when this moment of AHA happened for you?[0:08:13] Karen: Yeah, my AHA moment when it all connected and I really saw the impact that those events had on me was like I mentioned, just another family member and just me not being able to cope and I was like, oh hell, I need help here.[0:08:30] Brianne Davis: And did something happen with the other family member? Did the person bottom out or just.[0:08:37] Karen: Every now and again they're just not in a good place, don't have healthy supportive habits. So it's just kind of like, well, I don't give a shit anyway, so I'm just going to go and get obliterated and maybe on a weekly Davis would just be obliterated and awake all night and singing and Wake Me up and I'm just like, what the fuck? So I was just life, oh my God, I need help here. Because obviously again, that's a coping mechanism and they're not ready to do anything else. But it was really triggering me more than anything else because, like, that I have so many tools and skills of and have been on this journey. So I reached out to Alanon and it's so funny because obviously there's so many groups, but it's not funny because there's no such thing as coincidence. But I ended up joining a group called growing up in an Alcoholic Home. And even though looking at it, I was life. Yeah, but that's not really the truth because you have this idea that Narcolic is drunk all day every day and calls him mayhem, which happens.[0:09:35] Brianne Davis: But I was grown up and well, they call Alanon, just so anybody's listening, you don't have to have a drunk parent to be an Alanon. I also went to Alanon. Neither of my parents were drinkers, but it was a dysfunctional family. So they say Alanon's for alcoholic or dysfunctional family, or if you have a.[0:09:52] Karen: Relative or friend, they say, yeah.[0:09:57] Brianne Davis: Well, they're another addiction. Like, my mom is a workaholic. She'll say that other family members had problems. But yeah.[0:10:04] Karen: So this group jumped out at me and at first I was like, no, I'm not going to join that one. I didn't really grow up in the Melcolic home, but then I was like, because this was a Friday and I was like, I really want to just join now. So this was a Saturday morning, so it was the next day. So I was like, yeah, I'm just going to join it. And oh my God. On their opening paragraph, even they describe this adult child and they describe this person who as a child, if they grew up in an alcoholic home and if they often felt either physically unsafe or psychologically unsafe, and that was obviously me, psychologically unsafe.[0:10:44] Brianne Davis: When a parent crosses a line that is just unsure and not normal, which happened to me, I wasn't as sexually abused by a parent, but there was some line crossing where boundaries that is inappropriate for a child. So if you're out there and something has happened where you're like, well, it wasn't sexual abuse, but it definitely made me really uncomfortable as a child. It was too intimate and it was emotionally a meshing and physically meshing a little bit. You're okay to say something happened and I'm uncomfortable, even if it wasn't sexual? I just have to say that because it was so hard for me doing the work to be like, but nothing sexual happened. And my therapist would be like, no, it was inappropriate at six years old for this to happen to you. So I just have to say that because I had the hardest time admitting that to myself.[0:11:35] Karen: Yeah, no, for sure, you're right. And it does make sense, as I say, although I didn't feel physically unsafe. Of course it makes sense. Like you say, yes, absolutely. Boundaries were crossed that's just not normal behavior, definitely, but, like, that it was more a psychological effect for me and how I life. But they had this paragraph on an adult child and how it impacts them, how often a child who grew up in an alcoholic home can have difficulties with trust, with identifying, expressing feelings. And they either go one of two ways total control or feeling like they have no control over their life. And I swear to God, my jaw dropped on the ground because I was like, this is 1 million% describing me and how I operated in my life. I was a total and not sure control freak because I suppose I didn't feel safe. So I had this story. And again, this was all unconscious at the ti…
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