(ACA) Coming Out of Isolation
Mon, Oct 30
|Zoom link (see below information)
ACA is meant to let people speak and share their feelings and experiences growing up in families with an alcoholic or dysfunctional background and how that has affected us; along with doing a study to reparent ourselves.
Time & Location
Oct 30, 2023, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Zoom link (see below information)
About the event
Adult Children of Alcohol and Dysfunction (ACoA)
Online Meeting on Thursday
October 30, 2023
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Please RSVP on this site on or before October 28, 2023 @ 6:00 PM. Please be aware that if you do not RSVP before this time, the meeting will be cancelled. We must have at least 2 people to RSVP to have the meeting. Please be on time. At 6:05 p.m. the meeting will start and after that we cannot add more people due to disrupting the Zoom meeting. People who RSVP will be admitted to the meeting only.
We meet online through Zoom for a very laid back ACA meeting for 60 mins.
ACA is meant to let people speak and share their feelings and experiences growing up in families with an alcoholic or dysfunctional background and how that has affected us; without being judged, analysed, fixed, or given advice to. We need to concentrate on our own problems in ACA and feel heard.
Please be respectful of other people's shares and experiences. Please do not give your opinions or feedback when other people share their stories. We do NOT crosstalk. If a member asks for feedback or advice, you may trade information and communicate outside of the meeting.
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WHAT IS CROSSTALK?
Crosstalk is interrupting, giving advice, playing amateur psychotherapist to others, or making comments about another person’s sharing. It is also talking to someone or making distracting noise during sharing time. In ACA, we don’t crosstalk. When others share with us, just listen; our reality, our truth, our ideas, our feelings, our self-image, our beings are affirmed. When we focus only on our own recovery (keeping out of other people’s), we are taking responsibility for our own lives. We do this by presenting all statements in the “I”, first-person, form. If you crosstalk, you will have 1 warning during the meeting, afterwards you will bumped from the meeting and not allowed back in. We want this to be a safe meeting, where everyone feels free to speak freely, no matter what they have to say.
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MEETING PLACE: ONLINE
Join Zoom Meeting By Clicking Link Below and using Meeting ID and password:
https://zoom.us/j/7451361698?pwd=NWd4OVpPNXJLQXg1bHlFZG56eEFlZz09
Personal Meeting ID: 745-136-1698
Password: 610282
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Please have the ACA Big Red Book and
The Loving Parent Guidebook: The Solution is to Become Your Own Loving Parent.
(not required for first time visitors)
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Begin Meeting Here:
(Keep this page open so you can follow along.)
The ACA program is not easy, but if you can handle what comes up at six consecutive meetings, you will start to come out of denial. This will give you freedom from the past. Both you and your life will change. In the beginning, many of us could not recognize or accept that some of our current attitudes or behaviors result from some experience related to alcoholism or dysfunction in our childhood. We behave as adult children, which means we bring self doubt and fear learned in childhood to our adult interactions. By attending six meetings in a row and attending regularly thereafter, we come to know and begin to act as our True Selves. We encourage each member to share openly about his or her experiences as time allows. This is a safe place to share your adult and childhood experiences without being judged. To allow everyone a chance to share during the meeting, we ask each person to limit their sharing to five minutes (three to four if the meeting is large). What you hear at this meeting should remain at the meeting. We do not talk about another person’s story or experiences to other people. Please respect the anonymity of those who share with us today. We do not cross talk during the sharing time. Cross talk means interrupting, referring to, or commenting on what another person has said during the meeting. We do not cross talk because adult children come from family backgrounds where feelings and perceptions were judged as wrong or defective. We accept without comment what others say because it is true for them. We work toward taking more responsibility in our lives rather than giving advice to others.
Anonymity
Anonymity allows us to share our feelings and to experience an “Identity” apart from a “label”. “Who you see here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here,” is a good rule to follow in creating a safe place to share our feelings and recovery without fear of gossip, retaliation, or of our anonymity being broken.
From: Adult Children of Alcoholics®/Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, Inc. POST OFFICE BOX 3216 TORRANCE, CALIFORNIA 90510-3216 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
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7th Tradition
Thank you! Contributions maintain our actual group's expenses for the Zoom weekly meetings and the materials we need to do our group meetings. Any amount helps!
“Every ACA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions.”
“Meditation: Higher Power. I am here to do your will. Help me give for the right reason with the right amount. Help me remember that I have a different life today because of ACA. May I be willing to give back what was freely given to me. May I claim spiritual ownership in this fellowship.”
-From Tradition 7, ACA Big Red Book
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This Week's Reading Materials:
1- RELEASING ANGER Exercise & Meditation
2- Daily Affirmations – Strengthening My Recovery
3- The Loving Parent Guidebook: The Solution is to Become Your Own Loving Parent
We will be doing this study out of the Loving Parent Guidebook on 10/26/2023:
We are Reading Chapter 2 in our meeting.
4- Watch these videos:
COMPLEX PTSD (CPTSD) AND WHY WE ISOLATE
What Social Isolation Does To Your Brain – How To Undo The Damage
Working Through a Freeze Response, The Fastest Way Out
5- Read This:
The Impact of Social Isolation on Mental Health
NOTES
Feelings Indentification Worksheet
print this off and keep it
MEMBERS CAN SHARE AT THIS POINT. Please limit your shares to five minutes. If you do not want to talk, or are finished with your share, just say, "pass."
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LINKS:
Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization
Emotional Flashback Management in the Treatment of Complex PTSD by Pete Walker, MFT
Intherooms.com online recovery site
13 Characteristics of Adult Children of Alcoholics
Healing Trauma - How To Start Feeling Safe In Your Own Body with Dr. Bessel van der Kolk
12 Dysfunctional Family Characteristic
How To Let Go the Need to try and control EVERYTHING around you 8 SIGNS YOU HAVE CONTROLLING ISSUES + HELPFUL TIPS