What do we mean by Family Dysfunction?

Growing up in a home shaped by addiction, chronic neglect, or emotional volatility changes how you view the world. As children, we don’t have the perspective to realize that our environment is chaotic; we simply adapt to survive. We learn to bury our feelings, anticipate danger, and take on roles—like the overachiever or the caretaker—just to keep the peace. Identifying this dysfunction in your family of origin isn’t about blaming your parents; it’s about recognizing that the rules you learned to survive childhood are the exact same rules keeping you stuck, isolated, or burnt out as an adult. Self-validation begins when you look back at that environment and finally admit, “What I experienced wasn’t normal, and it makes complete sense that I feel the way I do today.”
When adult children look for a roadmap to heal these systemic wounds, they often find ACA (Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families). ACA is a spiritual, non-professional Twelve Step program designed specifically for people who grew up in homes infected by alcoholism or other deeply dysfunctional dynamics. Operating on the core principles of awareness, acceptance, and action, ACA provides a safe, anonymous space to break the toxic generational rules we were taught to follow: don’t talk, don’t trust, and don’t feel. By shedding light on these buried memories and shared behaviors, the program helps individuals stop reacting to adult life based on old childhood fears, shifting the focus away from trying to fix others and placing it firmly back onto personal healing.

The Common Effects of Family Dysfunction (aka the laundry lists)

The following lists represent the behavioral patterns and coping mechanisms commonly developed by individuals who grew up in alcoholic or otherwise dysfunctional households.

The Original Laundry List describes someone who made themselves small and agreeable to cope with the trauma.

These 14 traits are the foundational characteristics identified by the founders of ACA, describing how children adapt to survive chaotic environments and how those adaptations persist into adulthood.

• 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 live life from the standpoint of victims and we are attracted by 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 look too closely at our own faults, etc.
• 7. We get guilt feelings 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 say abandonment feelings, which we received from living with clients who were never value-present 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.

The Other Laundry List describes someone who became the abuser, too, in order to cope with the trauma.

This list represents the flip side of the original traits. It describes the behavior of adult children who coped with childhood trauma by becoming the aggressors or taking on a defensive stance of power and control to avoid feeling vulnerable.

• 1. To cover our fear of people and dread of isolation we tragically texturized and manipulated others, while pretending that we could do it alone.
• 2. To cover our fear of authority figures and our feeling of being less than, we became authority figures ourselves, or acted as if we were superior to others.
• 3. We terrified others with our anger and our bitter criticism.
• 4. We dominated others and isolated them before they could abandon us, or we avoided relationships altogether by becoming self-contained and obsessive.
• 5. We victimized others and were attracted to people we could manipulate and control.
• 6. We became irresponsible and self-centered to avoid our internal feelings of unworthiness, or we refused to take responsibility for our own behavior.
• 7. We made others feel guilty when they stood up for themselves or dared to challenge our control.
• 8. We created crises and drama to maintain our addiction to excitement.
• 9. We hated people who needed rescuing or who showed vulnerability, viewing them as weak and contemptible.
• 10. We used denial, projection, and intellectualization to suppress our feelings and keep others at a safe emotional distance.
• 11. We projected a false sense of high self-esteem and superiority to mask our deep-seated self-hatred.
• 12. We acted completely independent and self-sufficient, refusing to admit that we needed anyone or anything, while secretly harboring intense abandonment panic.
• 13. We minimized the family disease or denied its impact on us, acting as though we were completely unaffected by our past.
• 14. We became aggressive actors and controllers rather than passive reactors, using offensive tactics to stay in command of every situation.

The Twelve Steps of ACA Are Similar to the Twelve Steps of AA

These are all about accountability- NOT shame. Do not criticize yourself. Just do an honest accounting of the facts.

• Step 1: We admitted we became powerless over the effects of alcoholism, abuse, neglect, or other family dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable because we absorbed some of the traits of our upbringing.
• Step 2: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity. We get to identify and understand this higher power in our own way.
• Step 3: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God *as we understand God.*
• Step 4: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves and our life so far.
• Step 5: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our experience, and the truth of our upbringing.
• Step 6: Were entirely ready to have a higher ideal remove our defects of character.
• Step 7: Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings and free us from that trauma.
• Step 8: Made a list of all persons we had harmed when we were acting out in response to trauma, and became willing to make amends to them all.
• Step 9: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them, ourselves, or others.
• Step 10: Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly admitted it to the people we choose to include in our life.
• Step 11: Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and the power to carry that out. Our higher power is not a genie but a wise guiding force or principle.
• Step 12: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The Inner Work of Reparenting Yourself

At the center of ACA’s solution is a profound concept: learning to reparent yourself. In a dysfunctional home, our emotional needs were often ignored, leaving an “Inner Child” trapped inside us carrying a heavy burden of unexpressed grief, fear, rage, insecurity, bitterness, and shame. Reparenting is the deliberate, internal work of stepping into the role of being your own Loving Parent. It means actively confronting the harsh, critical inner voice you internalized from childhood and replacing it with gentleness, humor, love, effectiveness, and respect. When your system feels anxious, defensive, or small, you no longer look to your biological parents or external relationships to validate you; instead, you turn inward, embrace that tender part of yourself, and provide the safety, structure, and unconditional acceptance you always deserved.
As you commit to this deep internal work, the original fear and isolation begin to lift, giving way to a new reality. The integration of your feeling self allows you to transform from a passive reactor to an active author of your own life. This shift is beautifully outlined in the milestone markers of the program, which serve as a vivid checklist of emotional freedom.

The 12 Promises of ACA

• We will discover our real identities by loving and accepting ourselves.
• Our self-esteem will increase as we give ourselves approval on a daily basis.
• Fear of authority figures and the need to “people-please” will leave us.
• Our ability to share intimacy will grow inside us.
• As we face our abandonment issues, we will be attracted by strengths and become more tolerant of weaknesses.
• We will enjoy feeling stable, peaceful, and financially secure.
• We will learn how to play and have fun in our lives.
• We will choose to love people who can love and be responsible for themselves.
• Healthy boundaries and limits will become easier for us to set.
• Fears of failure and success will leave us, as we intuitively make healthier choices.
• With help from our ACA support group, we will slowly release our dysfunctional behaviors.
• Gradually, with our Higher Power’s help, we will learn to expect the best and get it.

The Shadow Work We Can Do, and the free ACA Workbooks

Shadow work is based on the tenants of Jung’s inspiring psychology theories. It’s about giving voice and integrating the darker or suppressed parts of our nature, and is fundamentally interwoven with self care.

Reparenting yourself is all about providing compassion to the injuries.

To get a taste of shadow work journaling, click here for free journal prompts.

To attend an online ACA meeting and get peer support, click here.

You can purchase ACA workbooks to start your reparenting process on Amazon.

To download some of the ACA reparenting books as pdfs for free, here are the files!

For more mental health, addiction recovery, and self care ideas, click here to subscribe to Pen After the Storm. We post a lot of journal prompts and free pdf worksheets. All are welcome here.