The Laundry List

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 critcism.

4.We either became alcoholics, we married 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 are attracted by the weakness in our love and friendship relationships

6.We have a overdeveloped since of responsibility.of responsibility,and its easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us to not look too closely at our own faults, etc.

7. We get guilt feeling when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.

8. We became addicted to excitement.

9. We confuse love with pity and tend to "love" people we can "pity" and "rescue."

10We 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.

12We 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.

Tony A. ( 1978 )

What a blessing, to have been exposed to this information early in my sobriety and now A.C.A.or A.C.O.A. has it own Big Book.In 2006 the first edition was published. On New years Day of 2008 I went to a Alanon meeting in Tulsa, I had been working out town and life had become quite difficult with the significant other.The Alanoners suggested a A.C.A.meeting, which I had not attended in a number of years. It was a phenomenal meeting .I now have a Text book for living, a Blue Big Book (A.A.) and Red Big Book(A..C.A, Alcoholic/Dysfunctional Families) The Book includes an Introduction by both Claudia Black and Charles Whitfield . Along with so much information on the nature of being raised in a dysfunctional home its affects , step work to address the issue and everything needed to find an A..C. A. meeting in your town. It also info on how too start your own meeting.and so much more. The Laundry list has been read at ACA meeting in the beginning of the meetings since !978.

Billy C.