These may not all apply to you as an individual. However, by and large, most of these will and do apply to the "unrecovered adult children of alcoholics". May this list help you if you are one of these "children". May it help you to understand why you do some of the things you do and some of the ways you behave. May it bless you with self understanding and the strength to start healing. If you are a family member or spouse of one of these adults I hope that this will help you to understand and help the one you love. It greatly helped me to understand and find the strength to stand beside and support my husband through his healing.

1. We guess at what normal is. We don't recognize it when we see it.

2. We have difficulty in following a project through from begining to end. We have the ideas but no concept of the steps necessary to carry the idea out. Life was chaotic and we had no one to show us how to plan.

3. We manage time poorly and do not set priorities in a way that works well.

4. We lie when it would be just as easy to tell the truth.

5. We judge ourselves without mercy.

6. We have very low self esteem.

7. We have difficulty having fun. We never learned how to play.

8. We take ourselves too seriously. Life is hard work.

9. We constantly seek approval and affirmation from others. We can't give it to orselves.

10. We fear failure but sabotage our success.

11. We have difficulty with intimate relationships.

12. We fear abandonment and rejection, yet we are rejecting of others.

13. Also, being terrified of abandonment, we are dependent personalities, willing to do almost anything to hold on to relationships we have in order to not be abandoned emotionally. This is a result of haing lived with people who were never there for us emotionally.

14. We are exceedingly loyal, even in the face of evidence that the loyalty isn't deserved. Thus we make devoted friends, employees, ect. We learned from practice with alcoholic parents.

15. We keep choosing insecure relationships because they match our childhood relationships with alcoholic parents.
16. We over-react to changes over which we have no control. As a child we had no control over changes that threatened our safety, security, and survival.

17. We are super responsible or super irresponsible. We can't say "no" because of our need for approval. We set no limits. We are prime candidates for burn-out. We have to get sick to break this cycle.

18. We have no sense of cooperation or working with others. We are used to doing things alone and for ourselves. That's how we survived in a chaotic family. We give the appearance of cooperation though.

19. We are often impulsive. We lock ourselves into a course of action without serious consideration to alternatives or possible consequences.


20. We tend to look for immediate rather than delayed gratfication. We learned as a child, that if you wait for it, you don't get it.

21. We become isolated and afraid of people, and feel like we don't belong.

22. We are afraid of athority figures.

23. We fear angry people and personal criticism, yet we judge others.

24. We become alcoholics ourselves or marry them, or both. Or we found another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, with whom we could continue the kind of relationship we had with our alcoholic parents.

25. We live life as victims and are attracted by that weakness in our love, friendships, or career relationships.

26. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. It's easier for us to be concerned with others than with ourselves. This enables us to avoid looking too closely at our faults and at the responsibility we owe ourselves.

27. We feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves and don't give in to others.

28. Having denied our feelings during our traumatic childhoods, we lost the ability to feel or to express our feelings because it hurt so much. This includes our good feelings such as joy and happiness.

29. As a result of our condiioning, we confuse love with pity, tending to love those we can "rescue".

30. We are addicted to excitement, seeking tension and crisis and prefering constant turmoil to workable relationships. We aggravate or avoid conflict, rarely do we deal with it.


This list was originally from the Adult Children of Alcoholics support group in Michigan. To them I send my thanks and prayers of support.

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