Originally Posted by
CodeJob 
My family - we do not have emotions. We manipulate and hide every vulnerability. Now after working on FOO, I realized my two grandmothers were personality disordered. Of course my parents don't know how to express emotions! It would have been suicide to admit to liking or loving or caring about anyone or anything.
Holy cow, CodeJob--this hit me like a ton of bricks. I've heard the saying that ACOAs "don't talk, don't trust and don't feel" many times. I've never understood it until just now, reading your post. There was no active A in my childhood, just an abusive stepfather and a mother who is an ACOA who never sought any help, but the situation was extremely similar to what a child in a home w/an active A lives in.
A boyfriend commented, many years ago after meeting my family, that he had never seen another family that acted like ours did. I blew it off, what did he know? The details of those comments are still in my head, and
they all make sense now...
This is scary stuff, even scarier than the A stuff that first brought me here.