I don't know how the 12 step programs are viewed now but I ran across this from 1992.
Best wishes, gb
***
Awake! 1992 May, 22 pages 8-12
Help
for
Adult
Children
of
Alcoholics
A CASE HISTORY
I am an adult child of an alcoholic. My father became an alcoholic when I was eight years old. When he drank, he became violent. I remember the terror the entire family felt. At a time when I should have had a happy childhood, I learned to bury my feelings, wants, desires, and hopes. Mother and Father were too busy taking care of his problem ever to be there for me. I was not worth their time. I came to feel worthless. At age eight the role thrust upon me forced me to stop being a childto grow up instantly and shoulder family duties. My life was put on hold.
My fathers behavior was so shameful that his shame rubbed off on me. To compensate I tried to be perfect. I gave and gave, trying to buy love, never feeling worthy of unconditional love. My life became a performance, with feelings frozen. Years later my husband and children told me I was a robot, mechanical. For 30 years I had slaved for them, sacrificed my emotional needs for theirs, given to them as I had always given to my parents. And this was my thanks? It was the ultimate wound!
In anger, confusion, and desperation, I determined to find out what was wrong with me. As I talked with others who had been reared in alcoholic homes, a lot of pent-up feelings began to come out, things never remembered before, things that had caused my frequent bouts with debilitating depression. It was like an unburdening, a catharsis. What a relief to know that I was not alone, that others shared and understood the trauma of my upbringing in an alcoholic home!
I turned to a group called Adult Children of Alcoholics and began to apply some of their therapy. Workbooks helped change twisted views. I kept a journal to unearth additional feelings, feelings that had been buried for years. I listened to self-help tapes. I watched a TV seminar by a man who was himself an adult child of an alcoholic. The book Feeling Good, from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, helped me to build self-esteem and improve my distorted thinking patterns.
Some of these new patterns of thinking became tools, statements to cope with life and relationships. Some of these that I learned and applied are: It is not what happened to us that matters, it is how we view or perceive what happened. Feelings are not to be frozen within but need to be examined and expressed constructively or dismissed. Another tool is the phrase act yourself into the right way of thinking. Action repeated can form new brain patterns.
The most important tool of all is Gods Word, the Bible. From it and from the congregations of Jehovahs Witnesses, along with their elders and other mature Witnesses, I have received the finest of spiritual healing, and I have learned to have proper love for myself. I have also learned that I am a unique person with individuality, that there is no one in the universe like me. Most important, I know that Jehovah loves me, and Jesus died for me as well as for others.
Now, one and a half years later, I would say that I am 70 percent better. Total healing will come only when Jehovahs new world of righteousness has replaced this present wicked world and its god, Satan the Devil.