Challenges
There is hope.
I specialize in working with Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA). Many of my clients describe growing up in homes where their needs weren’t consistently met. In therapy, we identify how those early dynamics still affect you and develop tools to help you feel secure, confident, and connected.
Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoA) refers to people who have been affected by alcoholism in a family member or friend.
Lasting effects
Even after leaving that environment, many carry forward patterns such as:
• Difficulty with trust or intimacy
• Over-responsibility or caretaking of others
• Fear of conflict or abandonment
• Struggles with self-worth or identity
• Feeling “different” or like they don’t belong
Common challenges
Many ACoAs identify with traits outlined by researcher Janet Woititz, who described common challenges such as people-pleasing, perfectionism, or difficulty relaxing. Therapy helps people recognize how these patterns developed as survival strategies — and how to shift them into healthier ways of relating and living.
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 often live life from the viewpoint of victims and are drawn to 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 examine our own faults too closely.
7. We often feel guilty 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 traumatic 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, and 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.
You can heal
If any of this sounds familiar, you should know you are not alone. Contact me now to start healing.
“My girlfriend had been seeing Doreen for a while when I was invited to join in on a few therapy sessions. As a result, I have experienced positive results in our relationship. We now communicate better and have implemented a more cohesive structure in our day-to-day routines.”– R.C.