The Laundry List

Common Characteristics of Adult Children of Alcoholics and Dysfunctional Families

These are some characteristics we seem to have in common due to being raised in an alcoholic or dysfunctional household.

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 by personal criticism.
4. We may become alcoholics, marry alcoholics, or both. We may also find another compulsive personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill deep fears of abandonment.
5. We live life from the viewpoint of victims and are attracted to that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
6. We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and find it easier to be concerned with others rather than ourselves. This allows us to avoid looking too closely at our own faults.
7. We feel guilty when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
8. We become addicted to excitement.
9. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can pity and try to rescue.
10. We have stuffed our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and lost the ability to feel or express them because it hurts too 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 relationships in order to avoid painful abandonment feelings from growing up with emotionally unavailable people.
13. Alcoholism is a family disease, and we became para-alcoholics. We took on the characteristics of the disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
14. Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.