When you grow up in an alcoholic home, your developmental needs as a child are secondary to the addiction.  Instead of navigating the normal difficulties of growing up you are navigating an unstable family environment, focused on surviving and adapting instead of developing a sense of self.  The lack of protective, consistent, emotionally available parents leads to children that are confused and self-blaming.  These children grow up and often struggle being in touch with their needs, appropriate boundaries and maintaining healthy relationships.  Many also struggle with PTSD, depression, anxiety and loneliness.  As adults, it can be hard to recognize or accept these symptoms as a vestige of their difficult upbringing.  Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACoAs) spend so much of their time blaming themselves, not realizing that they’re carrying around coping skills they learned then that are not serving them now.  

 

Therapy is the place to start sorting through and breaking free.  In our work together, we will begin by getting real about what happened and grieving the childhood you deserved but never received.  This process makes space for the parts of you that went underground or developed in ways that don’t serve you now.  We will start identifying patterns of how you speak to yourself and show up in relationships, as these areas are particularly difficult for ACoAs.  By tracking your patterns and exploring their origins, you will be able to build more compassion for yourself and make different choices about how you show up.  Our work will focus on finding your way back to yourself in challenging moments, important relationships, professional environments or as a stressed parent.  Therapy with me offers a chance to find yourself again.

 

For additional resources: https://adultchildren.org/