Greater Capital Region ACoA Intergroup

Greater Capital Region ACoA IntergroupGreater Capital Region ACoA IntergroupGreater Capital Region ACoA Intergroup

Greater Capital Region ACoA Intergroup

Greater Capital Region ACoA IntergroupGreater Capital Region ACoA IntergroupGreater Capital Region ACoA Intergroup
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    • Home
    • Meetings
    • The ACA Program
    • Contact Us
    • ACA WSO
    • ACA Links
    • Troy Saturday Study Group
    • Donations
    • Services
  • Home
  • Meetings
  • The ACA Program
  • Contact Us
  • ACA WSO
  • ACA Links
  • Troy Saturday Study Group
  • Donations
  • Services

ACA Program essentials

The Laundry List - The Problem

14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic

We have a list of characteristics we feel we have in common. In the past, they probably helped us survive growing up in a dysfunctional family; now, they get in the way of our living. We found that by identifying with this list and learning to see how these show up in our lives, we can begin to change.


  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 fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
  5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we 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 on to 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.

Tony A., 1978

The Solution

The solution is to become your own loving parent

As ACA becomes a safe place for you, you will find freedom to express all the hurts and fears you have kept inside and to free yourself from the shame and blame that are carryovers from the past. You will become an adult who is imprisoned no longer by childhood reactions. You will recover the child within you, learning to accept and love yourself.

The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly move out of the past. We learn to re-parent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.

This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our existence. Our actual parent is a Higher Power whom some of us choose to call God. Although we had alcoholic or dysfunctional parents, our Higher Power gave us the Twelve Steps of Recovery.

This is the action and work that heals us: we use the Steps; we use the meetings; we use the telephone. We share our experience, strength, and hope with each other. We learn to restructure our sick thinking one day at a time. When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthful decisions as actors, not reactors. We progress from hurting, to healing, to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible.

By attending these meetings on a regular basis, you will come to see parental alcoholism or family dysfunction for what it is: a disease that infected you as a child and continues to affect you as an adult. You will learn to keep the focus on yourself in the here and now. You will take responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting.

You will not do this alone. Look around you and you will see others who know how you feel. We will love and encourage you no matter what. We ask you to accept us just as we accept you.

This is a spiritual program based on action coming from love. We are sure that as the love grows inside you, you will see beautiful changes in all your relationships, especially with God, yourself, and your parents.

More ACA Program Essentials

The ACA 12 Steps


  1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God.
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
  7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it.
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out.
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The Twelve Steps are reprinted and adapted from the original Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous and are used with the permission of Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.

Tony A's 12 Steps


  1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of living with alcoholism and that our lives had become unmanageable.
  2. We came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could bring us clarity.
  3. We made a decision to practice self-love and to trust in a Higher Power of our understanding.
  4. We made a searching and blameless inventory of our parents because, in essence, we had become them.
  5. We admitted to our Higher Power, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our childhood abandonment.
  6. We were entirely ready to begin the healing process with the aid of our Higher Power.
  7. We humbly asked our Higher Power to help us with our healing process.
  8. We became willing to open ourselves to receive the unconditional love of our Higher Power.
  9. We became willing to accept our own unconditional love by understanding that our Higher Power loves us unconditionally.
  10. We continued to take personal inventory and to love and approve of ourselves.
  11. We sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with our Higher Power, praying only for knowledge of it’s will for us and the power to carry it out.
  12. We have had a spiritual awakening as a result of taking these steps, and we continue to love ourselves and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

from “The Laundry List” by Tony A.


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