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ADULT CHILDREN OF
FAMILY DYSFUNCTION
The Chemically
Addicted
(click here for a printable version)
The Problem and
Solution
Do you feel
isolated, uneasy with other people, especially authority figures?
Are you a people
pleaser, even though, in an effort to protect yourself, you lose
your own identity in
the process?
We have become
alcoholics ourselves, or married them, or both. Failing that,
we found another
compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our
sick need for
abandonment.
The Problem
• Guess what is
normal.
• Have difficulty in
following a project through to completion.
• Lie, when it would
be just as easy to tell the truth.
• Judge themselves
without mercy.
• Have difficulty
having fun.
• Take themselves
very seriously.
• Have difficulty
with relationships.
• Over-react to
changes over which they have no control.
• Constantly seek
approval and affirmation.
• Either super
responsible or super irresponsible.
• Extremely loyal
even when there is evidence that the loyalty is undeserved.
• Look for immediate
rather than deferred gratification.
• Lock themselves
into a course of action without giving serious consideration
to alternate
behaviors or possible consequences.
• Seek tension and
crisis and then complain about the results.
• Avoid conflict or
aggravate it; rarely do they deal with it.
• Fear rejection and
abandonment, yet are rejecting of others.
• Fear failure but
sabotage their success.
• Fear criticism and
judgment, yet criticize and judge others.
• Manage time poorly
and do not set priorities in a way that works effectively
for them.
The Solution
The solution is to
become your own loving parent.
• Find the freedom
to express all the hurts and fears kept inside and gain
freedom from the
shame and blame carried over from the past.
• Become an adult
who is no longer imprisoned by childhood reactions.
• Recover the child
within you, learning to accept and love yourself.
• Move out of
self-imposed isolation.
• Rediscover
feelings and buried memories.
• Gradually release
the burden of unexpressed grief; slowly move out of
the past.
• Learn to re-parent
ourselves with gentleness, humor, love and respect.
• Learn to see our
biological parents as the instruments of our existence.
• Trust that your
actual parent is the Higher Power, Jesus Christ.
Although we had
alcoholic parents, our Higher Power gave us the
8 Recovery
Principles.
• Receive
experience, strength and hope from others.
• Restructure
unhealthy thinking one day at a time.
• Release our
parents from the responsibility for our actions today.
• Become free to
make healthy decisions that allow us to act, not react.
• Progress from
hurting, to healing, to helping.
• Awaken to a sense
of wholeness we never knew was possible.
• Come to see
parental alcoholism for what it is and know how that
affected you as a
child and continues to affect you as an adult.
• Learn to keep the
focus on yourself in the here and now.
• Take
responsibility for your own life and supply your own parenting.
• See beautiful
changes in all your relationships, especially with God,
yourself and your
parents.
Small Group
Guidelines
1. Keep your sharing
focused on your own thoughts and feelings. Limit your
sharing to three to
five minutes.
2. There will be NO
cross talk. Cross talk is when two individuals engage in
conversation,
excluding all others. Each person is free to express his or her
feelings without
interruptions.
3. We are here to
support one another, not “fix” one another.
4. Anonymity and
confidentiality are basic requirements. What is shared in the
group stays in the
group. The only exception is when someone threatens to
injure themselves or
others.
5. Offensive
language has no place in a Christ-centered recovery group.
Accountability Team
Phone Numbers
Sponsor:
______________________________________________________________
Accountability
Partners:
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
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