Hi DD
I too am a fellow traveller, starting the steps of ACA. I too am in my 40's (44 to be precise) and I'm an alcoholic.
My FOO seem similar to yours; not poor but drunk, emotionally sick and heavily dysfunctional. I never knew love as a child and I attempted to extract it from others from an early age. I too was very controlling, I self medicated with alcohol, I stuffed my feelings to a point that I could no longer identify them, I acted out with all the 14 traits from the laundry list.
I have found a similar relief from understanding that I am Powerless over the effects of alcoholism and (in my case) other family dysfunction as I did when I discovered I was powerless over alcohol in step 1 AA i.e. There is surrender.
From the Big Red Book I see that my desire to control others and myself is my unmanageable life manifest.
I very much like and identify with your objectives; starting with "authentic self" and all you write in the closing paragraph and I'll add to the list 'full remembrance' -- there is much I can sense, but cannot remember or make sense of. I want to remember, to discover what happened in the hope that discovery can lead to recovery.
Please forgive my cross talk and I hope you'll continue to post on the steps of ACA as it seems like I am in a similar place to you, although having been around ACA (in some small way) for around 8 months, I'd describe my position as 'bouncing around the bottom'.
Thanks for opening up this thread, I intend to 'keep coming back' :-)
Mako
Last edited by makomago; 05-12-2014 at 08:08 AM.
Reason: typo