<div>This ACA group is a Twelve Step, Twelve Tradition program of women who grew up in dysfunctional homes.</div><div style="margin-top: 20px"><div style="margin: 20px 0;line-height: 22px;"><img src="https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F145163127%2F59013091097%2F1%2Foriginal.20210820-220352?h=2000&w=720&auto=format%2Ccompress&q=75&sharp=10&s=42b83d56d9ab63e1b21c03a07e59610b" alt="" /></div><div style="margin: 20px 10px;font-size: 15px;line-height: 22px;font-weight: 400;text-align: left;"><h1>Welcome to Adult Children of Alcoholics®/ Dysfunctional Families</h1><p>We meet to share our experience of growing up in an environment where abuse, neglect and trauma infected us. This affects us today and influences how we deal with all aspects of our lives.</p><p>ACA provides a safe, nonjudgmental environment that allows us to grieve our childhoods and conduct an honest inventory of ourselves and our family—so we may (i) identify and heal core trauma, (ii) experience freedom from shame and abandonment, and (iii) become our own loving parents.</p></div><div style="margin: 20px 10px;font-size: 15px;line-height: 22px;font-weight: 400;text-align: left;"><p><strong>The 14 Traits of an Adult Child, also known as The Laundry List, are shown below. </strong> </p><p>If you identify with any of these Traits, you may find a home in our Program. We welcome you.</p><p>1. We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
</p><p>2. We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
</p><p>3. We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
</p><p>4. We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
</p><p>5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
</p><p>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.
</p><p>7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
</p><p>8. We became addicted to excitement.
</p><p>9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
</p><p>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).
</p><p>11. We judge ourselves harshly and have a very low sense of self-esteem.
</p><p>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.
</p><p>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.
</p><p>14. Para-alcoholics** are reactors rather than actors.</p></div><div style="margin: 20px 10px;font-size: 15px;line-height: 22px;font-weight: 400;text-align: left;"><p><strong>In addition to alcoholic and addicted families, there are at least five other family types that can produce Adult Children.</strong></p></div><div style="margin: 20px 0;line-height: 22px;"><img src="https://img.evbuc.com/https%3A%2F%2Fcdn.evbuc.com%2Fimages%2F145163493%2F59013091097%2F1%2Foriginal.20210820-221214?h=2000&w=720&auto=format%2Ccompress&q=75&sharp=10&s=a1bad49de065df4c142e4dd24fcaa2c9" alt="" /></div><div style="margin: 20px 10px;font-size: 15px;line-height: 22px;font-weight: 400;text-align: left;"><p><strong>The solution is to become your own loving parent.</strong></p><p>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.</p><p>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.</p></div><div style="margin: 20px 10px;font-size: 15px;line-height: 22px;font-weight: 400;text-align: left;"><p><strong>You will not do this alone. </strong></p><p>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.
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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.</p></div></div>