Out From Under: Treating Your Own Addictions, Appendix 16

Adult Children of Alcoholics seem to have several characteristics in common as a result of having been brought up in an alcoholic household.

1) We became isolated and afraid of people 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 fill our sick abandonment needs.

5) We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted by that weakness in our life, friendship, and career 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 faults or our responsibility to ourselves.

7) We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.

8) We become addicted to excitement.

9) We confuse love with 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. This includes our good feelings such as happiness and joy. Our being out of touch with our feelings is one of our basic denials.

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 to experience painful abandonment feelings which we receiving from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.

13) Alcoholism is a family disease. 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.