7 Healthy Actions For Adult Children Of Alcoholics And Dysfunctional Families

The effects of growing up in a dysfunctional family can follow you well into adulthood, but you do not have to live with these crippling effects forever. Wake Counseling & Meditation suggests taking these key healthy actions to help yourself recover from growing up in a dysfunctional family:

Take time to see your childhood from your now-adult perspective.

Spend some time reflecting on your childhood experiences now that you are an adult. You will likely see some jarring, shocking details from a fresh perspective. What seemed normal or routine then may shock your adult self. You are no longer your child self – you are now an adult. Taking time to look back on your past experiences as the adult you are versus the child you were is essential for fully understanding what you experienced.

Do not make excuses for parents or “let things slide.”

Wake Counseling & Meditation highlights the temptation to continue “covering” for dysfunctional parental choices from back in your childhood. Rather than continuing to make excuses or allow parents to deny or explain away bad choices, hold them accountable. Recognize what happened and don’t allow parents or other family members to ignore or hide the truth.

Don’t fall into the victim mentality.

Dysfunctional households rob children of happy childhood experiences. While this may have happened to you, you don’t have to let it negatively impact your adult life, too.

Rather than focusing solely on how bad you had it during your dysfunctional family upbringing, focus more on what you learned from the experience and how you can grow past it as an adult. Empower yourself by taking responsibility for your recovery.

Focus on building up your current self.

You do not have to let dysfunction follow you into adulthood. Instead, focus on bettering yourself, finding ways to explore, grow, learn, and improve as you age. Rather than allowing your bad experiences to define your entire life, use them as motivation to move forward, heal your pain, and work on your issues so you can grow into the great human being you were always destined to become.

Attend therapy – whether it’s group or family therapy, or therapy just for yourself.

Working through dysfunctional childhood experiences can be a challenge. If you want to work toward a better relationship with your parents and siblings, consider trying family or group therapy. If you have decided to cut ties with family or don’t want to explore therapy options with them, consider going to therapy on your own. There are therapists who specialize in dysfunctional childhood experiences and dysfunctional families – they have wonderful strategies for working through these issues for a better adulthood.

Practice identifying dysfunctional traits so you can weed them out of your adult life.

If you grew up in a dysfunctional household, you may fear that those old family experiences are hereditary. You may fear that you’ll do some of the same bad things to your own children or partner, for example. If this is the case, practice identifying some of those dysfunctional traits so you can game plan methods for weeding them out of your adult life. Practice replacing them with their healthy alternatives.

Get to know your true identity.

Get to know who you are outside of your dysfunctional family. You may feel like you just “are” a certain way based on your family’s particular beliefs or traits, but this isn’t the case. You get to choose who you are and be who you want to be. Spend some time really getting to know yourself outside of the context of your parents and siblings so you can live a functional and healthy life geared toward your own desires and needs.