Adult Children of Alcoholics or Family Dysfunction is a phrase that is meant to provide hope for those who have grown up in alcoholic or other dysfunctional families. It is a group of people that have come together and realized that they have so many of the same struggles. It is not limited to just families of alcoholics. Many people ask if they are welcome or if they can be a member of a group where alcoholism didn't happen within the family system. My answer to that is "yes". If you identify with feelings of shame or abandonment then you have a place in the group. ACA is an identified group that have found a new way to live, having unraveled their story, not only making sense of it but having found healing. This healing has then enabled them to change.
ACA is a 12 step community that addresses childhood issues and how we developed survival skills. We developed these survival skills in response to deficiencies we experienced while growing up. For example, there may have been so much chaos or an absent family member that it required you to become the responsible one. It is these survival skills, such as over-responsibility, that ended up causing pain in our current life. When we feel emotions bigger than the moment we are in, it usually always relates to our childhood. Therefore, the work of ACA is around reconnecting with our inner child and also re-grieving, meaning we get to grieve the painful moments of our past in a new way, often experiencing relief as a result.
Adult Children often refer to the following laundry list (14 traits):
The Laundry List – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic
We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
We are frightened of angry people and any personal criticism.
We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
We became addicted to excitement.
We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."
We have "stuffed" our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (Denial).
We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
Alcoholism is a family disease; and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.
Written by Tony A., 1978 taken from Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization, Inc.
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