People helping people overcome their
"Hurts, Habits, and Hang-ups"

Adult Children of Alcoholics Often...

·        Guess at what “normal” is.

·        Have difficulty in following a project through from beginning to end.

·        Lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

·        Judge themselves without mercy.

·        Have difficulty having fun.

·        Take themselves very seriously.

·        Have difficulty with intimate relationships.

·        Over-react to changes over which they have no control.

·        Constantly seek approval and affirmation.

·        Feel that they are different from other people.

·        Are either super responsible or super irresponsible.

·        Look for immediate rather than deferred gratification.

·        Seek tension and crisis and then complain about the results.

·        Avoid conflict or aggravate it; rarely do they deal with it.

·        Fear rejection and abandonment, yet reject others.

·        Fear failure, but sabotage their success.

·        Fear criticism and judgment, yet criticize and judge.

·        Manage time poorly and do not set priorities.

·        Have feelings of guilt when standing up for themselves.

·        Confuse love and pity & “love” people they “pity”.

·        Are frightened by angry people and personal criticism.

·        Become approval seekers and lose their identity.

·        Become alcoholics, marry them, or both.

·        Find a compulsive personality to fill their abandonment needs.

·         Have stuffed their feelings from their traumatic childhood and have lost the ability to feel or express their feelings because it hurts too much.

Common Characteristics:  Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families 

In order to change, adult children of alcoholics and adult children from dysfunctional families cannot use history as an excuse for continuing their behaviors.

They have no regrets for what might have been, for their experiences have shaped their talents as well as their defects of character.

It is their responsibility to discover these talents, to build their self-esteem and to repair any damage done.

They will allow themselves to feel their feelings, to accept them, and to learn to express them appropriately.

When they have begun those tasks, they will try to let go of their past and get on with the business of their life.

The Problem!

These symptoms of the family problem of alcoholism made us “co-victims” – those who take on the characteristics of the problem without necessarily ever taking a drink.  We learned to keep our feelings down as children and kept them buried as adults.  As a result of this conditioning, we confused love with pity, tending to love those we could rescue.  Even more self-defeating, we became addicted to excitement in all our affairs, preferring constant upset to workable relationships.

The Solution!

The Solution is to become your own loving parent.  As Celebrate Recovery - ACA becomes a safe place for you; you will find the freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past.  You will become an adult who is no longer imprisoned by childhood reactions.  You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.  The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation.  Feelings and buried memories will return.  By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past.  We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.

This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our existence.  Our actual parent is our Higher Power, Jesus Christ.  Although we had alcoholic parents, our Higher Power gave the Eight Principles of Recovery.

This is the action and work that heals us:  we us the Steps, we use the meetings and we use the telephone.  We share our experience, strength and hope with each other.  We learn to restructure our sick thinking one day at a time.  When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthful decisions as actors, not as reactors.  We progress from hurting to healing to helping.  We awaken to a sense of wholeness that we never knew was possible.  Look around; you will see others who know how you feel.  We will love and encourage you no matter what.  We ask you to accept us just as we accept you. This is a spiritual program based on action coming from love.  As love grows in you, you will see changes in all your relationships.