Adult Children of Alcoholics: When Their Mother Is an ACOA

If you’re like me, and your mother is the adult daughter of an alcoholic, you may have grown up feeling more like a specimen in a petri dish than an innocent, carefree child seeking joy. If your mom is an ACOA who hasn’t done her recovery work, you may have grown up feeling like something was always wrong, but because there was no alcohol abuse to point to, you may have sadly learned to assume that the heartbreak that you felt inside- -that you couldn’t name- was ‘you’.

Adult children of alcoholics who have not done their recovery work are not aware of how severely their emotional selves have been impacted. Because their priorities in life have been ranked according to their needs to simply survive, many times ACOAs are inadvertently stuck and don’t even realize it.

Because alcoholism is such an insidious disease, it seeps into the cracks of the psyche like a fog. To make matters worse, because alcohol use is often so socially glorified, it’s hard to hold on to the idea that people who abuse alcohol are acting irresponsibly, not just toward others, but toward themselves as well. .

If your parents were emotionally neglected as children because their parents were alcoholics, they may not realize how ‘disconnected’ they are from themselves. When a childhood is saturated with fear, survival is often the only thing on a child’s mind. Because a child’s basic instincts must be in hyperdrive, to simply survive, there is little time to emotionally mature and connect with the spiritual side of the Self. And when these adult children of alcoholics have children of their own, they are blind, detached parents. from any notion that they are emotionally disconnected at all. As a result, many times ACOAs are unable to form authentic parental bonds with their children, simply because they have no idea what they are NOT giving their child.

ACOAs, like the rest of us, are doing the best they can. But unfortunately, they are often blind to what it means to ‘feel’ psychologically loved, because they don’t have the experience of ‘feeling psychologically seen’ themselves, as a result of being raised by self-absorbed, drunken, unselfish people. . sensible, alcoholics. Because they themselves had alcohol to point to as the reason ‘why’ mom or dad wasn’t there for them, later in life many ACOAs make a conscious decision NOT to drink, assuming that by choosing not to drink, their adult lives will turn out well. However, what they don’t understand is that alcohol is not the problem. A painful sense of self-alienation–it is.

If you are the adult child of an emotional manipulator, alcoholic mother, narcissist, drug addict, sexual abuser, verbal abuser, and the like, you have been raised by an individual who is shrouded in the curse of self-alienation. Because they are so alienated within the Self, they are not aware and unfortunately cannot ‘see’ you in an authentic way. You were raised like someone trying to lift a sofa. You were supposed to sit there, be still, quiet and out of the way. One day you were supposed to magically grow up, be happy and move on. Your adult son of an alcoholic father, of course, would have been totally dumbfounded by any statement you made, implying that they didn’t do enough to instill in him a true sense of worth. Their reaction to your claim might sound something like, “You ungrateful little brat. Can’t you see how hard I tried to make you happy? I brought you to this house, fed you, and clothed you. There was always heat running through the walls, and I always I said ‘good morning and how was your day’, what more did you want from me?

Any attempt on his part, the adult son of the adult son of an alcoholic, to try to make his parents “see” or “understand” the emptiness or disconnection he felt with them would have been met with harshness and insurmountable burdens. of guilt You would have been made to feel like the lowest of the low for daring to insinuate that there was something your ACOA parents didn’t give you. In their minds, because all of their basic needs were met, unlike theirs as children, they would not have been able to understand that there was something they might have missed. In their minds, they didn’t drink, their house was always clean, and there was always food in the fridge. Because you never had to worry about where you went to sleep at night, in your parents’ minds, they don’t know what ‘disengagement’ you’re trying to express.

To be fair to our adult children of alcoholic parents, if they didn’t choose to drink, they actually made better parenting choices than their own parents. Although we, your children, may have grown up feeling lost in the abyss that is the fog that lingers long after the death of our alcoholic grandparents, it is not our ACOA parents’ fault that they were raised by parents who were so drunk and self-absorbed that they couldn’t see them psychologically.

On the road to recovery, you will face many hidden secrets. If part of your poignant dig has you looking at the fact that your parents are adult children of alcoholics, congratulations, you’ve found another piece of the puzzle which is you.

In the future, he will have to come to terms with the lack he feels within himself: that has been the torch of alienation from himself that his ACOA parents have passed on to him. Healing requires you to embrace the lost and shattered facets of Self. Try not to spend too much time blaming your parents for lost time. Instead, look at it, acknowledge it, welcome your soul home, learn to forgive, and finally let it go.

Hire a therapist or life coach to walk you along your path in life, so you can start making healthier life choices for your future.

Read as much as possible about what it means to be an adult child of an alcoholic, as well as what it means to be the grandchild of an alcoholic. Attend 12-step meetings and online social communities that are geared toward increasing self-awareness. Learn about codependency, empowerment, denial, projection, and fantasy-type distraction-based thinking. Start meditating in the mornings before you start your day and do another while you fall asleep. Start taking baths, instead of showers. The goal is to learn to embrace the Self, instead of avoiding it any longer.

Congratulations and good luck to you on your journey of transformation.

You are loved.

Namaste.