What is ACA? ​

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ACA is a Twelve Step, Twelve Tradition program of people who grew up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional (abuse, neglect, mental health issues...) homes which affected us as children and cotinue to affect us as adults through our feelings about ourselves, our behaviors and our relationships with others.  
We meet to share our experience, release the negative feelings, replace them with positive feelings and develop tools to help us recover in an atmosphere of mutual respect.   By practicing the Twelve Steps, focusing on The Solution, and accepting a loving Higher Power of our own understanding, we find freedom. 

The Laundry List​

These are common traits that Adult Children share and identify with themselves, when untreated. 
  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 not to look too closely at our own faults, etc. 
  7. We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.  
  8. We became addicted to excitement. 
  9. We confuse love and pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue"
  10. We have "stuffed" our feelings from our chaotic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so 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 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.  
  13. Alcoholism is a family disease: we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink. 
  14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors. 

The ACA 12-Steps

  1. We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable. 
  2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. 
  3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understand God. 
  4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. 
  5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. 
  6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character. 
  7. Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings. 
  8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all. 
  9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others. 
  10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it. 
  11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for us and the power to carry that out. 
  12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we  carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
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Art by Tracy M

The Solution

​The Solution is to become your own loving parent. 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.
The healing begins when we risk moving out of isolation. Feelings and buried memories will return. By gradually releasing the burden of unexpressed grief, we slowly
move out of the past. We learn to reparent ourselves with gentleness, humor, love, and
respect. This process allows us to see our biological parents as the instruments of our
existence. Our actual parent is a Higher Power whom some of us choose to call God.
Although we had alcoholic or dysfunctional parents, our Higher Power gave us the
Twelve Steps of Recovery.
This is the action and work that heals us: we use the Steps; we use the meetings; we
use the telephone. We share our experience, strength, and hope with each other. We learn to restructure our sick thinking one day at a time. When we release our parents from responsibility for our actions today, we become free to make healthful decisions as actors, not reactors. We progress from hurting, to healing, to helping. We awaken to a sense of wholeness we never knew was possible. 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. You will not do this
alone. 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. 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. 
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Art by Tracy M

The Promises

​1) We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves.
2) Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis.
3) Fear of authority figures and the need to “people-please” will leave us.
4) Our ability to share intimacy will grow inside us.
5) As we face our abandonment issues, we will be attracted by strengths and become
more tolerant of weaknesses.
6) We will enjoy feeling stable, peaceful, and financially secure.
7) We will learn how to play and have fun in our lives.
8) We will choose to love people who can love and be responsible for themselves.
9) Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set.
10) Fears of failure and success will leave us, as we intuitively make healthier choices.
11) With help from our ACA support group, we will slowly release our dysfunctional
behaviors.
12) Gradually, with our Higher Power’s help, we will learn to expect the best and get it
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Art by Tracy M