ACA Recovery: Am I an Adult Child of a Dysfunctional Family? 

Let's set labels aside and look beyond the term "dysfunctional."
The 12 Step fellowship, Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA), is for anyone feeling and acting out the affects of being brought up in a dysfunctional home. But what is dysfunction?
The name Adult Children of Alcoholics deters some folks from getting help. The most common fallacy of ACA inclusion is, "I didn't come from an alcoholic family." Even the addition to the ACA name, And Dysfunctional Families, shadows the Alcoholic Family qualifier. Some can not identify with family dysfunction. Let's remove the subjective terms and see what might be the missing in the connection identifying with the ACA Laundry List traits.
Removing the word dysfunction, aparent stress and tension within a family, or outside the family unit, might be easier to identify. Stress, tension, neglect, violance, abuse, shame, and abandonment may occur without the presence of alcohol or drugs. Can you identify with family pain? Can you identify with chaos within your home? Can you identify with family roles, such as the hero child, the lost child, the scapegoat, and the family mascot?
Please share this video with anyone who may be questioning the "normalcy" of their childhood or if they qualify as an Adult Child.
The ACA fellowship is a marriage between the 12 Step programs of Alcoholics Anonymous/Alanon (spirituality), the Kaiser A.C.E. Study (science), and Internal Family Systems Therapy (therapeutic construct). There is a lot of history, science, sweat and tears behind the formation of the ACA fellowship as it stands today.
I'm Ken Francis, M.S., California licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and author of The Intimacy Gram and The Gratitude Snorkel and Other Bedtime Stories. I specialize in Alcohol Addiction treatment, Substance Use Disorder Treatment, trauma recovery, and group therapy. With Covid-19 social distancing practices, I have had to stop teaching classes at my clinic. This video and others are my attempt to make my educational topics available to my patients. I have placed them on RU-vid so others can benefit. Please like and subscribe to get more videos on recovery: Alcoholics Anonymous, Narcotics Anonymous, Alanon, Adult Children of Alcoholics, Mindfulness, good Mental Health and Self Care.
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Kenneth M Francis