Am I an Adult Child?
An Adult Child is ...
The ACAD Fellowship Text (the "Big Red Book" or BRB) defines an Adult Child as “someone whose actions and decisions as an adult are guided by childhood experiences grounded in self-doubt or fear” (BRB, pp. 302). According to the ACAD World Service Organization, there are several questions we can use to help identify ourselves as an Adult Child, such as:
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Do I involve myself in the problems of others? Do I feel more alive when there is a crisis?
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Do I judge myself without mercy and guess at what is normal?
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Do I recall anyone at my home drinking or taking drugs or being involved in some other behavior that I now believe could be dysfunctional?
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Did one of my parents make excuses for the other parent’s drinking or other behaviors?
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As an adult, do I feel immature? Do I feel like I am a child inside?
Many of us also come to identify ourselves as Adult Children after reading "The Laundry List" or "The Other Laundry List." If the lists detailed below resonate with you, "you may be suffering from the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional household, whether it was due to alcoholism or another addiction, workaholism, perfectionism, or some other factor or form of abuse" (ACAD, World Service Organization).
The Laundry List and the Other Laundry List
These are the characteristics we seem to have in common due to being brought up in an alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional family. Some of us identify with one list more than the other and some of us identify with traits on both lists.
The Laundry List
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 to not look too closely at our own faults.
7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving into 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 too 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 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 the disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.
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 distain 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 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" emotions.
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 or behaviors.
14. We act as if we are nothing like the dependent people who raised us.
There is hope.
If you find that you identify with one or both of the laundry lists, you are not alone.
In this program, we focus on "emotional sobriety" and living in "The Solution". We welcome you to join us to see if our meetings, this program, and/or these solutions are right for you. To learn more about "emotional sobriety" and the ACAD "Solution", click the link below.
