For me, the path toward healing (and it's a path, not a destination) was a lot like some of the stages of grief:
Denial: The initial stage: "It can't be happening." Like Growing above, for a long time I just denied that there was anything special about my upbringing (such as, for example, the fact that it was hell-on-earth) I just thought I was a lousy person in general, and unworthy of love.
Anger: "Why me? It's not fair." I think I spent the most years here. Hating what people had done to me, hating how things happened, hating my kneejerk fear, hating how much I seemed to be an irreparably screwed up person because of my childhood.
Depression: "I'm so messed up, why bother with anything?" This was when I realized that all of my relationships were unhealthy because of the patterns and fears I'd picked up earlier in life. It's also the stage where I got help thinking it all through; I tried a few counselors and finally found one that "got me" and understood ACoAs.....it wasn't a Woody Allen "therapy for life" thing, just a regular program of checking in, working through issues, and trying different ways of doing things. Reading, forums like this, learning a lot about myself and what was important to ME, figuring out what kind of person I wanted to craft myself into.......all of this came out of being sick of the anger and depression and wanting more out of the 70-odd years I've been given to enjoy on this planet.
Acceptance: "It's going to be OK." Where Ginger describes -- and where I am nowadays too. Bad things happened that shouldn't have. Traces of them exist in me on a cellular level, it seems, and they affect my reactions to people. But I'm aware of it --- I know what's going on now --- and I can self-diagnose when I'm acting like an ACoA. More importantly, I can stop myself in mid-stride, and say "Okay, that's not the kind of person I want to be, that's not the kind of person I want to be with, that's not the way I want to spend my life......"
I'm not helpless any more. I can see it all really clearly, and I can do something about it. But I had to go through the stuff above first. And I had to learn to stand outside myself and treat myself like the young innocent girl I never got to be:
---get angry when "she" is mistreated by other people
---protect her when "she" is about to walk into a damaging relationship
---cut her some slack when "she" is beating herself up over something that's just a natural part of the learning process....
.....and on and on.
That's how I got here, anyway.
Good luck to you, Easeful. You're worth all this effort, and you're certainly worth all the joy that can be found at the other end of it.