Once upon a time, you were a child. That fact has an important bearing on your life today. As adults, we often try to ignore our lives as children and discount the impact that may have on our adult lives. An estimated ten million alcoholics in the US have affected 120 million young children and teens. Support groups such as ACOA, Al-Anon, and Alateen are designed for family members and friends of alcoholics and addictive personalities.
The first step is to become involved in a group. From this point on, the friend or relative of an alcoholic is responsible for his or her behavior. They can stop lying or denying or making excuses for the alcoholic/abuser. Children learn how to cope with the drinking/abuse/dysfunction of their parents by sharing experiences during the meetings. Distorted visions of themselves and life can be replaced with a vision that is both more accurate and more emotionally satisfying. Family experiences can be understood in a totally different way. This understanding can lead to new, healthier and more adaptive feelings and behavior. Most children of alcoholics/abusers are desperate to talk about it, crying for a way to understand what is going on. Adult children of alcoholics/abusers need and are entitled to talk about their feelings and problems. Lives can be turned around by group support.
Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA) may be of help to those of you whose parents were not able to consistently attend to your needs, who were not able to help you believe that you were special and who were not able to offer you a sense of emotional "Safety" as you grew from childhood and adolescence into adulthood.
It is common for adults to feel guilty for wanting to reflect on how parenting during their childhood affects their adult life, often saying, "It wasn’t that bad for me." No matter how severe another person’s situation is, your own loss remains true. It is suggested that you do not compare your situation to another person’s in order to ascertain whether or not you need to address these issues. What has occurred in your life is yours, sadness, fears, broken promises, silent punishments, absent parents. Whatever your situation is, it’s yours. It is not negated by anyone else’s experiences.
ACOA is not meant to blame our parents. Our parents did the best they knew how to do; yet, our parents’ ability to raise us was often limited because of some significant trauma in their lives. This trauma may have been physical, financial, or emotional. For most of us, our parents loved us. Yet many lacked the ability to consistently show that love. If they didn’t love us, it was because they didn’t know how to love. It was not because of us. They wanted it to be different but they did not have the ability to make it different, nor were they able to ask for help or accept help.
Children of alcoholics/abusers learn that they love the parent but they hate the liquor. The most important thing to remember is that you are not alone. 12 Step groups include people who know what you are going through; they have been there themselves.
We find that a difference in identity and purpose distinguishes ACOA from other 12-Step Programs and underscores the need for our special focus. Two characteristics identify the ACOA Program. The program is for adults raised in alcoholic/abusive/dysfunctional homes, and although substance abuse may exist, the focus is on the self, specifically on reaching and freeing the inner child, hidden behind a protective shield of denial.
The purpose of ACOA is threefold; to shelter and support "newcomers" in confronting "denial"; to comfort those mourning their early loss of security, trust and love; and to teach the skills for reparenting ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.
ACOA can also help you recognize how your present life is influenced by your past; can allow you to release the parts of the past you’d like to put behind you; and enable you to take responsibility for how you live your life today. Freedom from the past means no longer having our lives dominated by our childhood years. It means no longer living in fear. In the process of freeing ourselves, we’ll begin to say, "I’m angry that . . . ," "I needed . . . ," "No . . . ," "It wasn’t right . . . ," "I was only a kid . . . ," "Thank you . . . ," "I’m loveable . . . ," "It doesn’t matter . . . " This can be said without blame and judgement. We learn together how to stop blaming ourselves or our parents or our loved ones.
ACOA’s relationship to other anonymous programs is a shared dependence on the 12 Steps for a spiritual awakening. Each program’s focus is different, but the solution remains the same.
Moving from isolation is the first step an Adult Child makes in recovering the self.
Isolation is both a prison and a sanctuary. Adult Children, suspended between need and fear, unable to choose between flight or fight, agonize in the middle and resolve the tension by explosive bursts of rebellion or silent, enduring despair. Isolation is our retreat from the paralyzing pain of indecision. This retreat into denial blunts our awareness of the destructive reality of family alcoholism/abuse/dysfunction. Denial is the first stage of mourning and grief. It allows us to cope with the loss of love and to survive in the face of neglect and abuse.
The return of feelings is the second stage of mourning, and indicates healing has begun. Initial feelings of anger, guilt, rage and despair resolve into a final acceptance of loss. Genuine grieving for our childhood ends our morbid fascination with the past and lets us return to the present, free to live as adults.
Confronting years of pain and loss at first seems overwhelming. As we share the burden of grief with others, we each receive the gifts of courage and strength to face our own bereavement. The pain of mourning and grief is balanced by being able, once again, to fully love and care for someone and to freely experience joy in life.
The need to reparent ourselves comes from our efforts to feel safe as children. The violent nature of alcoholism/abuse/dysfunction darkened our emotional world and left us wounded, hurt and unable to feel. This extreme alienation from our own internal direction kept us hopelessly dependent on those we mistrusted and feared.
Freedom begins with being open to love. The dilemma of abandonment is a choice between painful intimacy and hopeless isolation, but the consequence is the same--we protect ourselves by rejecting our vulnerable inner child and are forced to live without warmth or love. Without love, intimacy and isolation are equally painful, empty and incomplete.
Love dissolves hate. We give ourselves the love we need by releasing our self-hatred and embracing the child inside. With a child’s sensitivity, we reach out to explore the world again and become aware of the need to trust and love others.
ACOA’s loving acceptance and gentle support lessens our feelings of fear. The warm affection that we have for each other heals our inner hurt. We share our beliefs and mistrust without judgement or criticism. We realize the insanity of alcoholism/abuse/dysfunction and become willing to replace the confusing beliefs of childhood with the clear, consistent direction of the 12 Steps and Traditions, and to accept the authority of the loving God they reflect.
In childhood our identity is formed by the reflection we see in the eyes of the people around us. We fear losing this reflection, thinking the mirror makes us real and that we disappear or have no self without it.
The distorted image of family alcoholism/abuse/dysfunction is not who we are. And we are not the unreal person trying to mask that distortion. In ACOA we do stop abusing a substance or losing ourselves in another. We stop believing that we have no worth and start to see our true identity, reflected in the eyes of other Adult Children as the strong survivors and valuable people we actually are.
The paradox of independence is that only in separation do we find the courage and strength to live in the world as complete human beings, capable of giving and receiving love thereby creating a sense of wholeness. In normal separation, children are reassured by leaving and returning to consistent, loving parents, and they carry these parents inside to remind themselves that they are safe and loved. In a normal home, children also internalize the strength of their parents. They feel securely held by a sense of parental power which gives logic and structure to their lives. With this foundation and strength, they are able to build a self and create a loving intimacy through their own sense of power. Children of alcoholics have an overriding feeling of powerlessness for being unable to stop the destructive affects of family alcoholism.
The Twelve Steps and the Serenity Prayer remind us we can receive real power and apply it in our lives to things we are able to change. We need to recognize that we gained sufficient strength from our parents, as destructive and confusing as they were, to let go of the false sense of security they provided and to find true security in a new attachment to our Higher Power, who is always accessible and ready to direct our lives in a meaningful loving way.
We are grateful to Alcoholics Anonymous and Al-Anon Family Groups for bringing clarity and sanity to our lives. In the clear, consistent mirror of the Steps and Traditions, we finally see who we are--adult children of alcoholics. Our particular need is to create a new identity based on being valued and loved.
By accepting and reuniting with the vulnerable child we keep hidden inside, we begin to heal the broken pieces of our shattered selves and become whole human beings capable of interacting in the world with confidence and trust. We need the security, strength and positive support we find in ACOA to grow to independence and to take our own experience of Recovery and to share it with fellow Adult children.
What ACOA shares with other anonymous programs is the holistic transformation of ourselves as promised in the Serenity Prayer. We accept the unchangeable past and begin to change the beliefs that kept us bound and confused. By doing this we will broaden and deepen the Steps and Traditions for ourselves and for all those who are affected by family alcoholism / abuse / dysfunction. It works if you work it !