The ACOA Laundry List, My Personal Experiences, and Book Recommendations

If you have read my about me or know me personally...You probably know that I grew up with alcoholic parents. I really hate bringing light to the subject, in fear of what others will think, but it is my truth, and telling it allows me to be authentic. 

Many books helped me along in my journey to overcome being an adult child of an alcoholic. I do not yet sell these books in my store but I have attached amazon affiliate links for the books that I highly recommend: 

Adult Children of Alcoholics by Dr. Janet G. Woititiz

This was the first specifically ACOA book that I read:

The Complete ACOA Sourcebook 

Recovery: A Guide For Adult Children of Alcoholics 

For those who love adults who are children of alcoholics, please, try to understand we were not raised normally and probably missed out on a lot of important lessons that you learned, this is book is to help with that.

Loving An Adult Child of An Alcoholic

Other books not directly related to alcoholism but you will find growing up in this environment, you missed out on lessons involving codependency, emotional regulation, boundaries, relationships, what normal families look like, toxic people...The following are books to help with that. 

This book was the book that brought the issues to life, this book started it all for me, it helped me to see the toxic cycles my mother was in and the family dynamics that I experienced as part of an emotionally immature family...I highly recommend starting with this book, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents. 

Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents by Lindsey Gibson

For those who had a mother that was around and provided physical needs but not emotional needs 

The Emotionally Absent Mother

Mothers Who Can't Love A Healing Guide For Daughters

Codependent No More by Melody Beattie

Boundaries When To Say Yes, How To Say NO by Dr. Henry Cloud

I'll be honest, I have not been able to finish "The Body Keeps The Score" something about it hits me a little too deep, however it is highly recommended among childhood trauma and neglect survivors, it is about the way that trauma is stored in the body, the body remembers, and reacts even when your mind isn't consciously aware.

The Body Keeps The Score

This book tremendously changed my perspective on how I internally talk to myself, I highly recommend it, if your inner dialogue is similar to that of a mean girl/bully. 

Mastering Your Mean Girl 

This book has helped me recently with relationships. Many adult children can figure out how to be okay on their own but really struggle getting close to others and knowing how to operate in a relationship because everything they ever knew or saw was disfunction. This book has really opened my eyes to some of the dynamics that cause trouble in close relationships and what to do about them, how to approach them. Very, very helpful. Myself and my very best friends all have a copy that we talk about quite a bit. 

The Inner Work of Relationships

Lastly, read a book about attachment theory, it's really important knowledge that will help you with relationship dynamics and explains a lot about why people act the way they do in relationships, people who experience trauma in their childhood are often at one end or the other of an extreme attachment style. I am linking the book that I read but there are many good books about attachment, just study it one way or another. 

The Attachment Theory Workbook

 Now to the laundry list, this is the list that adult children often have in common and are behaviors formed due to our upbringing. These are my personal experiences. 

In this list I will highlight in red what affected me personally. 

The Laundry List – 14 Traits of an Adult Child of an Alcoholic

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. [This still effects me today in my 30's} 
4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs. (I did not end up with an alcoholic or become an alcoholic my experiences made me act in ways that would never put me back in that alcoholic situation but I did pick a partner with familiar characteristics from my childhood that I discovered also weren't healthy. )
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. (This is part of being a peacekeeper personality) I had to put my mother before myself, even as a young child I was able to see that she is more fragile than I am.) 
8. We became addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue." (This got better once I recognized it) 
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). (I wasn't afraid of the pain of expressing feelings but afraid of having feelings altogether. I knew happy, sad, jealous, and bummed, and I think I logically understood other emotions but I couldn't feel them or experience them personally. I still struggle with expressing anger even when I know logically that something should make me really mad) 
11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem. ( This was one of the first things I worked on after gaining this laundry list knowledge, changing the way I talked to myself)
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. (I ended up with an avoidant attachment style, this has gone back and forth for me but typically I can let people go, I tried not to get emotionally attached to anyone for a long time) 
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. I talk about this in the "about us" section, the children of alcoholics end up with an alcoholic personality as their inner self. 
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

Tony A., 1978

Note: The Laundry List serves as the basis for The Problem statement.

To download a printable PDF of The Laundry List click here.

The Flip Side of The Laundry List

1. 1. We move out of isolation and are not unrealistically afraid of other people, even authority figures.
   2. We do not depend on others to tell us who we are.
   3. We are not automatically frightened by angry people and no longer regard personal criticism as a threat.
   4. We do not have a compulsive need to recreate abandonment.
   5. We stop living life from the standpoint of victims and are not attracted by this trait in our important relationships.
   6. We do not use enabling as a way to avoid looking at our own shortcomings.
   7. We do not feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves.
   8. We avoid emotional intoxication and choose workable relationships instead of constant upset.
   9. We are able to distinguish love from pity, and do not think “rescuing” people we “pity” is an act of love.
   10. We come out of denial about our traumatic childhoods and regain the ability to feel and express our emotions.
   11. We stop judging and condemning ourselves and discover a sense of self-worth.
   12. We grow in independence and are no longer terrified of abandonment. We have interdependent relationships with healthy people, not dependent relationships with people who are emotionally unavailable.
   13. The characteristics of alcoholism and para-alcoholism we have internalized are identified, acknowledged, and removed.
   14. We are actors, not reactors.

To download a printable PDF of The Flip Side of The Laundry List click here.

To access The Flip Side of The Laundry List in different languages click here.

The Other Laundry List

1. To cover our fear of people and our dread of isolation we tragically become the very authority figures who frighten others and cause them to withdraw.
2. To avoid becoming enmeshed and entangled with other people and losing ourselves in the process, we become rigidly self-sufficient. We disdain the approval of others.
3. We frighten people with our anger and threat of belittling criticism.
4. We dominate others and abandon them before they can abandon us or we avoid relationships with dependent people altogether. To avoid being hurt, we isolate and dissociate and thereby abandon ourselves.
5. We live life from the standpoint of a victimizer, and are attracted to people we can manipulate and control in our important relationships.
6. We are irresponsible and self-centered. Our inflated sense of self-worth and self-importance prevents us from seeing our deficiencies and shortcomings.
7. We make others feel guilty when they attempt to assert themselves.
8. We inhibit our fear by staying deadened and numb.
9. We hate people who “play” the victim and beg to be rescued.
10. We deny that we’ve been hurt and are suppressing our emotions by the dramatic expression of “pseudo” feelings.
11. To protect ourselves from self punishment for failing to “save” the family we project our self-hate onto others and punish them instead.
12. We “manage” the massive amount of deprivation we feel, coming from abandonment within the home, by quickly letting go of relationships that threaten our “independence” (not too close).
13. We refuse to admit we’ve been affected by family dysfunction or that there was dysfunction in the home or that we have internalized any of the family’s destructive attitudes and behaviors.
14. We act as if we are nothing like the dependent people who raised us.

To download a printable PDF of The Other Laundry List click here.

To access The Other Laundry List in different languagues click here.

The Flip Side of The Other Laundry List

1. We face and resolve our fear of people and our dread of isolation and stop intimidating others with our power and position.
2. We realize the sanctuary we have built to protect the frightened and injured child within has become a prison and we become willing to risk moving out of isolation.
3. With our renewed sense of self-worth and self-esteem we realize it is no longer necessary to protect ourselves by intimidating others with contempt, ridicule and anger.
4. We accept and comfort the isolated and hurt inner child we have abandoned and disavowed and thereby end the need to act out our fears of enmeshment and abandonment with other people.
5. Because we are whole and complete we no longer try to control others through manipulation and force and bind them to us with fear in order to avoid feeling isolated and alone.
6. Through our in-depth inventory we discover our true identity as capable, worthwhile people. By asking to have our shortcomings removed we are freed from the burden of inferiority and grandiosity.
7. We support and encourage others in their efforts to be assertive.
8. We uncover, acknowledge and express our childhood fears and withdraw from emotional intoxication.
9. We have compassion for anyone who is trapped in the “drama triangle” and is desperately searching for a way out of insanity.
10. We accept we were traumatized in childhood and lost the ability to feel. Using the 12 Steps as a program of recovery we regain the ability to feel and remember and become whole human beings who are happy, joyous and free.
11. In accepting we were powerless as children to “save” our family we are able to release our self-hate and to stop punishing ourselves and others for not being enough.
12. By accepting and reuniting with the inner child we are no longer threatened by intimacy, by the fear of being engulfed or made invisible.
13. By acknowledging the reality of family dysfunction we no longer have to act as if nothing were wrong or keep denying that we are still unconsciously reacting to childhood harm and injury.
14. We stop denying and do something about our post-traumatic dependency on substances, people, places and things to distort and avoid reality.

To download a printable PDF of The Flip Side of The Laundry List click here.

To access The Flip Side of The Other Laundry List in different languages click here.