Because it's never too late. . . .
Many of us find that we have several characteristics in common as a result of having been brought up in an alcoholic household:
We came to feel isolated, uneasy with other people – especially authority figures. To protect ourselves, we because people-pleasers, even though we lost our identities in the process. We perceive personal criticism as a threat. We either become alcoholics ourselves, or marry them, or both. Failing that, we find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our unhealthy need for abandonment. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and prefer to be concerned with others rather than with ourselves. We some how get guilt feelings we stand up for ourselves rather than giving in to others. Thus, we become reactors rather than actors, letting others take the initiative.
We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment – who will do almost anything to hold on to a relationship in order not be abandoned emotionally. Yet, we keep choosing insecure relationships because they match our childhood relationship with alcoholic parents. Thus, alcoholism can be seen as a family disease and we can see ourselves as co-alcoholics – those who take on the characteristics of the disease without necessarily ever taking as drink. We learned to stuff our feelings in childhood and keep them buried as adults through 6that conditioning. In consequence, we confuse live and pity and tend to love those we can rescue and, even more self-defeating, we became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upsets to workable relationships. This is a description, not an indictment.
And there is a solution . . .
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The solution is to become your own parent.
By attending A.C.O.A. meetings on a regular basis, you will come to see parental alcoholism for what it is: a disease that infected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult. When you accept the disease concept, you will see your parents and yourselves as co-victims. You will learn to keep the focus on yourself in the here and now, and free yourself from the shame and the blame that are hangovers from the past. You will become an adult no longer imprisoned in childhood reactions. You will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting.
You will not do all this alone. Look around you in A.C.O.A. and you will see other men and women who know exactly how you feel. We know where you’re coming from because we’ve been there. We will love and support you no matter what.
We want you to accept us as brothers and sisters, just as we already accept you.
We look now on our biological parents as the instruments of our existence. Our actual parent is a Higher Power that we call God. God gave us life. And if God gave us alcoholic parents, God Also gave us the Twelve Steps of Recovery.
We use the Steps. We use the slogans. We use the telephone and we share our experience strength and hope with each other. This work enables us to heal our defects and unhealthy thinking one day at a time. We release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, and thus become free to make healthy decisions as actors, not reactors.
A.C.O.A. is a spiritual program abased on action coming from love. We’re sure that, as the love grows inside you, you will see beautiful changes in all of your relationships – especially with your parents, your God and with yourself.
"Traits" List" for Adult Children of Alcoholics [top]
Situations
(those states over which we have no control):We were raised in alcoholic, emotionally abusive households. Consequently, each of us has many issues to resolve. One issue is that we acted as parents to our parents, and took responsibility for our siblings. As a result, we need to explore our sense of never having had a childhood.
Attitudes
These are reactions to our self-perceptions:1. We Judge ourselves harshly.
2. We take ourselves seriously and have difficulty having fun.
3. We are approval-seekers and fear personal criticism.
4. We feel isolated, different from other people.
5. We focus on others rather than look honestly at ourselves.
6. We are attracted to people who are rarely there emotionally.
7. We guess at what normal is.
8. We live from the viewpoint of victims.
1. We are overly responsible
2. We are frightened by angry people and authority figures.
3. We need intimacy, yet have difficulty with intimate relationships.
4. We fear abandonment.
5. We have an exaggerated need to control.
6. We have strong guilt feeling.
7. We are overly reactive
8. We are loyal to others even though that loyalty may be undeserved.
9. We stuff our feelings, unable to either feel or express them.
10. Our impulsivity leads to anger, self-hate, and loss of control.
11. We tend to look for immediate, rather than deferred gratification.
12. We are angry people.
13. We find it easier to give in to others than to stand up for ourselves.
14. We are addicted to excitement.
15. We often confuse love and pity.
16. We have a tendency toward procrastination.
17. We have difficulty trusting both ourselves and others.
18. We have problems with self-esteem.
19. We are anxious people, often dwelling on our past and future fears.
20. We have the potential for, and tendency towards, becoming alcoholics and
Many meetings alternate discussions of traits and characteristics with discussion of the Twelve Steps. The steps are the very basis for our entire program of recovery -- our way to bridge over from where we are to where we want to be.
1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amendments to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of Gods will for us and the power to carry it out
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
1. Our common welfare should come first; personal recovery depends on ACOA unity.
2. For our group purpose there is but one ultimate authority - loving God as may be expressed in our group conscience. Our leaders are but trusted servants, they do not govern.
3. Adult Children of Alcoholics, when gathered together for mutual aid, may call themselves an ACOA Group, provided that, as a group, they have no other affiliation. The only requirement for membership is that one identifies with the "Problem."
4. Each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups, ACOA as a whole, or another Anonymous 12-Step Program.
5. Each ACOA Group has but one purpose: to help adult children. We do this by practicing the Twelve Steps of recovery ourselves, by encouraging and understanding our alcoholic parents or caretakers, and by welcoming and giving comfort to other adult children.
6. ACOA Group ought never endorse, finance or lend the ACOA name to any outside enterprise, lest problems of money, property and prestige divert us from our primary spiritual aim. Although a separate entity, we should always cooperate with other anonymous 12 Step Programs.
7. Every ACOA Group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.
8. ACOA Twelfth Step work should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers.
9. ACOA Groups, as such, ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve.
10. ACOA Groups have no opinion on outside issues; hence the ACOA name ought never be drawn into public controversy.
11. Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, TV and films. We need to guard with special care the anonymity of all members of all anonymous 12-Step Programs.
12. Anonymity is the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities.
-- [top] IF WE PAINSTAKING ABOUT OUR RECOVERY, THE FOLLOWING TWELVE PROMISES WILL ENRICH OUR LIVES.
1. We are going to know a new freedom and a new happiness.
2. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it.
3. We will comprehend the word serenity.
4. We will know peace.
5. No matter how far down the scale we have gone, we will see how our experience can benefit others.
6. That feeling of uselessness and self pity will disappear.
7. We will lose interest in selfish things and gain insight in our fellows.
8. Self-seeking will slip away.
9. Our whole attitude and outlook will change.
10. Fear of people and of economic insecurity will leave us.
11. We will intuitively know how to handle situations which used to baffle us.
12. We will suddenly realize that God is doing for us what we could not do for ourselves.
Are these extravagant promises? "We think not!" They are being fulfilled among us, sometimes quickly, sometimes slowly. They will always materialize if we work for them. .
God, grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
Courage to change the things I can and the
Wisdom to know the difference.