CentralOhioDad

Thanks, Learn2Live, for posting this for someone else. My Wife is a ACoA, and many of these points, especially the bottom half, really fits her to a T. The low self-esteem, overly critical of self, super-responsible, seek approval, stuffed the feelings from traumatic childhood.. Wow. Thanks again.

This doesn't excuse the fact she drinks way too much, but it helps me understand why she acts the way she does sometimes.

OK, so I was reading this book called Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Woititz. And in it she lists these 13 traits of ACoAs. Here they are:

1. ACoAs guess at what normal behavior is.
2. ACoAs have difficulty following a project thru from beginning to end.
3. ACoAs lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.
4. ACoAs judge themselves without mercy.
5. ACoAs have difficulty having fun.
6. ACoAs take themselves very seriously.
7. ACoAs have difficulty with intimate relationships.
8. ACoAs overreact to changes over which they have no control.
9. ACoAs constantly seek approval and affirmation.
10. ACoAs usually feel that they are different from other people.
11. ACoAs are super responsible or super irresponsible.
12. ACoAs are extremely loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
13. ACoAs are impulsive. They tend to lock themselves into a course of action without giving serious consideration to alternative behaviors or possible consequences. This impulsivity leads to confusion, self-loathing and loss of control over their environment. In addition, they spend an excessive amount of energy cleaning up the mess.

Now, I have been reading my "ACA" workbook. ("ACA" is a type of Adult Children of Alcoholics: Welcome to Adult Children of Alcoholics - World Service Organization, Inc.). And this workbook says the following:

An adult child is someone who responds to adult situations with self-doubt, self-blame, or a sense of being wrong or inferior. It provides a "Laundry List" of characteristics we seem to have in common due to being brought up in an alcoholic or pther dysfunctional household. Note that the ACA program is for ACoAs and people raised in other types of dysfunctional families.

1. We became isolated and afraid of peole and authority figures.
2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."
10. We have stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much (denial).
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
12. We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold onto a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease and we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

Learn2Live

Thank you CentralOhioDad. Since finding these lists, I have been thinking about them a bit. And they are helping me to discover just how deeply affected by my father's alcoholism and all of its fallout I have been. I thought last night how if you are not an ACoA, you have no idea what it feels like to be those words. Yes, they are descriptive and insightful. Yes, they help me to better understand myself and why I do what I do. But I hope that people can try to understand that these things are at our core. They are the essence of our being. They define us and control us and cause us utter despair time and again. I am in my mid-40s and am still defined by the alcoholism and sickness I was mired in for the first two decades of my life.

And no, you are right, being an ACoA is not an excuse for continuing to drink and be a drunk. If anything, being an ACoA should make someone want to NOT be a drunk.

CentralOhioDad

That's my point!!! That's what I don't get! My father was an A later in life (I was in my 20's when he got that way), and he was there until he went into a nursing home, where he couldn't get anymore. And from seeing what it did to my parent's marriage, I knew that this was something I DIDNOT want to become, or have my child see.

And yet, my Wife 'says' she won't let our son be a part of that, she is by drinking the 10-12 ozs every night and waking him up in the morning still reeking of vodka. She doesn't 'get it' how her behavior and actions are starting to mirror what her Mother did.. Luckily, DS has yet to see her drunk and hallucinating, but it's only a matter of time..

Sorry, I just ranted.

Learn2Live

DS likely senses more than you know.

When you are an alcoholic, there is much you do not see. Alcoholics are not rational people. They are people driven by something other than what non-alcoholics are driven by. And they become sicker and sicker over time.