ACOA/DF Characteristics

Co-dependents often share the following experience:

• difficulty trusting others and forming and maintaining close, intimate relationships

• intense need for control

• lack of personal and professional fulfillment

• feeling inadequate, never able to do enough

• feeling alone and depressed and not knowing why

• fear of being "found out" as bad, incompetent or crazy

• inability to feel or identify feelings

• difficulty identifying or communicating needs

• suffering from various compulsive behaviors or stress-related physical problems.

If you grew up in an alcoholic or similarly disturbed household (a dysfunctional family system characterized by the fear, anger, pain and/or shame of addiction to chemicals, work, relationships, sex, food, gambling or abuse) and you identify with any of these issues as an adult, there are now effective opportunities for change.

Children learn what they are taught. Children of dysfunctional homes enter adulthood coping with life in the same ways that proved valuable to them as children. They take their childhood roles, survival strategies and rules with them into adulthood. Later, they discover that what worked in a dysfunctional childhood home does not serve them well in adult life.

But there is a curious thing about human beings. We tend to do the same things over and over again even when our behavior no longer pays off. The roles and rules of childhood, that once brought a semblance of safety and sanity, now bring little of either. As with the dysfunctions of the parents, the roles and rules of childhood progress and can encase the adult in rigid, stereotypical behaviors.