ADULT CHILDREN OF ALCOHOLICS/DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILIES: Big Red Book

Denial Some Choice Greater Choice Discernment

I wasn’t aware of the family secret until I came into ACA.

We also learn how to ask for what we need, instead of manipulating people for something we don’t need.

We projected our abandoning parents onto a Higher Power, believing that God was vengeful or indifferent.

I’ve been through my Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Steps so I know the truth about myself. The truth is that I am a good and loving person who has some flaws. Those flaws are like small cracks in a beautiful vase.

The traits also caused us to recreate our family of origin in our adult relationships.

We also learned that our compulsion to control ourselves or others was a major stumbling block in our ability to let God help us.

We also learned that our survival traits from childhood could look like character defects; however, they had much deeper anchors and responded better to integration. We made peace with the traits and asked them to step aside so that we could live our lives in freedom.

In addition to asking for spiritual help with our defects, we begin to pray with a quiet patience for a Divine Spirit to temper our most glaring survival traits. We pray for integration of these characteristics which served us well, but which now must fade.