Discover Your Transformation Journey Through Adult Child Fire
- Tom O'Connor
- Dec 27, 2024
- 7 min read
Updated: Mar 29
Adult Child Syndrome Series
Tom O'Connor, Author
December 27 2024
Topic
Transformation allows people with adult-child syndrome (ACS) to take control of their lives and continue living a life of change. An adult child is someone who grew up in a dysfunctional family, which prevented them from fully maturing emotionally. Adult child syndrome is characterized by an inability to navigate adult decisions and relationships due to the long-term impact of childhood trauma.
The term “adult child” was first used by the organization Adult Children of Alcoholics (ACA). ACA defines an adult child as “someone whose actions and decisions as an adult are guided by childhood experiences grounded in self-doubt and fear.”
Definitions of an “adult” for most purposes when you turn 18 years of chronological age. Chronological age begins at birth and continues when a person is alive. Emotional development has no age requirement. Examples of emotional development in adults include effectively managing stress levels, demonstrating empathy towards others, expressing a healthy range of emotions, developing self-awareness, actively regulating emotions in challenging situations, building strong and healthy relationships, setting personal boundaries, and showing resilience in the face of adversity.
Your transformation journey is a deliberate process of radical change that aims to move a person in a new direction and change the course of one’s life journey.
Recovery from being a child of an alcoholic parent is an ongoing process that requires personal development and self-improvement. It involves recognizing one’s weaknesses and intentionally altering damaging behaviors with your family and others.
Additional Information For You
While the transformation is deeply personal, the willingness to embrace change, take accountability, and seek support are universal steps toward success.
For Me, Born to Run – Run, Run, Run!
I recall when my inner self was a whisper shut out from running away from home to leave my childhood behind. Running away to escape generational alcoholism, running on cross-country and track teams in college, and running fast from one professional job to another, with each job reaching great success until working to please my bosses to running my business strategy consulting firm until I retired and invested time in my inner self. Now, I am shouting through writing a book, Discover Your Adult Child: Survival Skills with an Alcoholic Parent, and this weekly Adult Child Vital Voyage Newsletter.
I am the firstborn son of an alcoholic father, whose father before him (my grandfather), and my uncles and cousins on my dad's side of the family were generations of alcoholics. Living in this substance abuse, dysfunctional family was akin to walking through fire, which was an excruciating emotional journey.
As a struggling firstborn to an alcoholic, penniless parent, I turned that childhood struggle into a series of adult working successes. Away from my working life, my childhood fears of intimacy and abandonment in my adult personal life journey had many disruptions with romance. The most primitive parts of our brain tell us that safety lies in familiarity. The early romantic partners I became most attracted to all came from dysfunctional families. Since it was a familiar family setting, I could work on my unresolved family issues by saving them from their dysfunctional family homes.
With adult child syndrome, I was more emotional with my family, feeling impatient and on edge. Outside of my emotional home with a wife and two children, I played an actor at work. I was the classic individual with adult child syndrome to be a “people-pleaser” outside my home, creating weak boundaries and overextending myself to please others. This childlike coping strategy of throwing myself into my work became an escape hatch to bury my feelings. It also became an essential way to prove my worth and get validation from others outside my family.
Before I began my transformation journey in 2024, if I kept an emotional well-being report card, I struggled with the following:
Effectively managing stress levels
Demonstrating empathy towards others
Expressing a healthy range of emotions
Developing self-awareness
Actively regulating emotions in challenging situations
Building strong and healthy relationships
Setting personal boundaries
Showing resilience in the face of adversity.
As with me, transformation is not an instant action or a run but a step—no matter how small—that can lead you through the fire to a safe place full of happy times. My transformation journey is endless and lifelong.
Now, I make inner self-calls daily, acknowledging my needs and feelings, which I once had hidden deep within. My inner self, now singing, has become my path to healing. Create new memories and discard your childhood traumatic memories.
Most Important Lessons Learned Running Through My ACS Fire
The most important lesson I learned was waiting too long to break free of the survival skills I learned as a child of an alcoholic parent. The child-damaging emotional fire kept burning year after year without any effort on my part to distinguish it until I retired from working life. My emotional and behavioral symptoms advance themselves into an adult child syndrome (ACS), which upon reflection, I should have discovered as a young adult versus the old codger adult I have become.
I wished as a young adult, I would have been a better husband and parent if I had worked through my childhood trauma before I married. My 2025 New Year’s Wish for the 20+ million of you with adult child syndrome (ACS) to take the following actions at a much younger age than I did.
For You, You Are Not Alone
Please realize that 1 in 8 children grow up with substance use disorder (SUD) parents. Most of these children grow up with adult-child syndrome (ACS).
The most important aspects I learned about your adult child syndrome are its potential symptoms like fear of abandonment, difficulty setting boundaries, people-pleasing behavior, low self-esteem, and origins related to childhood experiences, as well as how to manage it through therapy, self-awareness, and healthy coping symptoms to build stronger, more balanced relationships.
Your Call to Action
Create a Sense of Urgency. Don’t duplicate my ACS performance and wait until retirement. Do it now and make 2025 Your ACS Year! Go to Google and research substance use disorder (SUD), alcohol use disorder (AUD), drug use disorder (DUD), and adult child syndrome (ACS).
Commit Yourself to Self-Care. Stop putting the needs of everyone around you first. Give yourself time to rest, eat healthy foods, and exercise daily. Set aside a hobby you enjoy and devote some time to it.
Get Educated on Addiction and its Effects on Families. Understanding the ways that a parent’s addiction has impacted your life will provide reassurance and understanding of the ways you have adult child syndrome (ACS) and guide you on your path to recovery.
Improve Key Emotional Development Issues:
Self-Awareness. Recognize and understand your own emotions, including both positive and negative feelings.
Emotional Regulation. Develop strategies to manage and express emotions appropriately, including coping mechanisms for stress.
Empathy. Desire and ability to understand and share the feelings of others.
Resilience. Bounce back from any challenges and setbacks you experience with a positive attitude.
Social Skills. Build and maintain healthy relationships through effective communication and interpersonal skills.
Positive Self-Esteem. Have a healthy sense of your self-worth and build confidence.
Goal Setting. Identify your personal goals and actively work continuously toward achieving them.
Conflict Resolution. Approach any disagreements constructively that work for all parties involved.
Define a Goal and Specific Actions to Achieve Each Goal with a Timeline. Setting realistic written adult child syndrome (ACS) short-term and long-term goals and taking specific actions to achieve them is one of the best ways to increase your confidence and feel proud of your accomplishments.
Understand the Challenges or Obstacles You Face to Achieve Your Goal. Overcoming ACS presents challenges such as difficulty setting boundaries, overreliance on others for decision-making, struggles with independence, feeling emotionally immature, and a tendency to seek validation from parents, even as adults.
Enlist Family Support. To enlist family support for those struggling with ACS, it is crucial to openly communicate your concerns, educate them about the syndrome, set clear boundaries, encourage empathy, and actively involve them in supporting your child’s positive changes while respecting their autonomy as an adult.
Connect with People Outside Your Family For Help. For most support groups, all that is required to join is a desire to be in recovery as an adult child. Most people join a support group by simply walking in the door of a meeting near them. There are several support groups available. You can find local group support meetings at Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families (https://adultchildren.org). ACA is a traditional 12-step program for people who grew up in dysfunctional homes. There are also Al-Anon and Alateen. Al-Anon is a mutual support group for people who have been affected by a loved one’s drinking. Alateen is a similar family group that supports young people who live with or who have been affected by alcohol.
Engage with a Licensed Therapist. An experienced licensed therapist specializing with individuals addicted to substance abuse and their family members can effectively treat the root causes of adult child syndrome while giving individuals new skills for coping and emotional regulation. Furthermore, therapy can support recovery from anxiety, depression, and other mental health conditions arising from your childhood trauma.
Focus on Your Adult Child Syndrome Journey. You will lead a happier, more satisfied life if you follow the previous action steps on your healing journey away from your dysfunctional fire, tampered out for good. Although this path to your recovery will take you time, as it did for me, the most important thing you can do is now focus on your path to healing and, most of all, remember that you are not alone in your struggle. Remember, 1 in 8 children grow up with substance use disorder (SUD) parents. And most of these children grow up with adult-child syndrome.
In this New Year, I wish the very best for you!
Tom O’Connor
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