*Adult Children of Alcoholics/Addicts/Dysfunctional Families*
Adult children of alcoholics, addicts, and dysfunctional families have similar character traits that were nurtured in the dysfunction of the home growing up. This list from the program of ACA identifies these traits. I use this as a tool to help normalize the experiences for my clients but also as a wayto help make sense of current thought and behavior patterns. See if any of these traits resonate with you.
*Feelings play an important role in helping us understand what's happening internally; they can be our alert system. I use this feelings wheel in my sesssions with clients to help them give voice to their experiences by assigning feeling language to what has happened to them or what they have done. This is how we process through experiences in a healthy way by giving feeling language to the experiences.
*Shame Based Identities plague many of us. Use this free resource below to run your own shame based identity through the cycle to see how it becomes the self-fulfilling prophecy. I use this as a tool with my clients to help them understand their patterns of thinking and behaving as related to issues of shame. This is a resource I use in conjunction with EMDR therapy to help my clients work through shame based identities also known as SBI.