Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families

Are you one of the millions of people who grew up with a parent or sibling who was alcoholic or drug addicted?  Or were you in a dysfunctional family where you experienced or witnessed physical, sexual, emotional, verbal abuse, or trauma?

As an adult, you may still be suffering from confusion and carried family pain — or carried shame — and are at high risk for getting into codependent relationships with alcoholics or addicts.

Codependency

Both Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACOA's) and Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families share many of these symptoms of codependency:

• Fear of abandonment, anger, hurt, distrust, loneliness, sadness, shame, guilt, numbness, and crippling fear
• Struggle with the ability to have fun, be emotionally intimate, or suffering from chronic psychological shock from trauma
• Severe depression, anxiety, too much tolerance of inappropriate behavior, self-defeating behavior, and poor coping skills
• Dissociation, dulled or inappropriate affect, stress-related physical symptoms, and abuse or neglect of self
• Strong need to control self and others, difficulty with intimacy, rages, and eventual addictions