My father was an alcoholic and when I was thirteen, he ended his life. According to the experts, I fall under two categories; I am an adult child of an alcoholic as well as an adult child of family dysfunction. I’ve read the list of psychological behaviors listed for both adult children of alcoholics and adult children of family dysfunction and can relate to many of those traits; lack of self confidence, difficulty trusting others, fearfulness and feelings of guilt. I’ve often thought that with all the dysfunction in my past, it is a wonder I know how to tie my own shoes, but luckily, I do. 

          What We Have Going for Us

I did not stumble across the lists of qualities that I accumulated from my dysfunctional background until recently. For the most part, and for the longest time, I was immune to these official lists. 

In some ways, I count my ignorance to the list of propensities of adult children of alcoholics and adult children of family dysfunction to be a blessing. If someone had shown me these two lists I would have waved the white flag, surrendered to a victim mentality and given up trying to grow and mature into a healthy adult. 

Consequently, I do value the knowledge these lists give me. Though the information can be a bit overwhelming, it does shed light on some of the wonderings I still have about a few of my behavioral patterns. 

But, imagine for a moment, that you are told that because of your home life you will be plagued with; unexplained anger, high anxiety, the tendency to isolate, bouts of sadness, self condemnation and fearfulness. How would this make you feel? 

Now imagine you make the decision to live a physically and mentally healthy life. You do everything in your power to rest, exercise, eat well and take care of yourself. Along the way you begin to recognize thoughts that need to be altered and behaviors that you want to change. You don’t immediately connect them with your dysfunctional background, but a light begins to dawn and you start to see the connections. 

Here is the best part of growing and maturing into a healthy adult in spite of all that we seem to have against us; it happens bit by bit.  The more we become aware, the better we get at finding the best way to live a better life than the one shaped from our past. 

Why bother gaining understanding of ourselves? No matter the amount of dysfunction we begin with, we don’t have to continue with it. When we acquire and apply whatever little knowledge we gain along the way, then we begin to understand ourselves and understanding ourselves means we are growing beyond our dysfunctional pasts.