Adult Children of Alcohol and Dysfunction (ACA) Online Meeting about the FAMILY DIAGRAM
Tue, Sep 12
|Zoom (see link at bottom of the page)
THIS MEETINGS TOPIC: FAMILY DIAGRAM 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.
Time & Location
Sep 12, 2023, 6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EDT
Zoom (see link at bottom of the page)
About the event
Adult Children of Alcohol and Dysfunction (ACoA)
Online Meeting on Zoom w/ Kim
August 12, 2023
6:00 PM – 7:00 PM EST
Please RSVP on this site on or before September 10, 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 monthly and 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
(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 bi-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:
Daily Affirmations – Strengthening My Recovery
Adult Children of Alcoholics (Big Red Book) We will read Chapter 1 together on Kindle through screen share.
Watch this/these videos-
9 Signs You're In A TOXIC FAMILY SITUATION |Psychotherapy Crash Course
Read this-
BRB 126-128 and create your own family diagram
I sent out sheets to you so that you can do the familiy diagram and we will discuss it at our meeting on 9/12/2023
From September 10
Family Diagram
"We cannot overstate the need for creating an extensive family diagram, which reveals with greater clarity the effects of family dysfunction in our lives today." BRB p. 127
Many of our families told us we were screw-ups, and we ate that label hook, line, and sinker. We may have thought we were the only ones who were messed up - until we drafted a family tree with a twist.
Our ACA family diagram lists our ancestors, just as any family tree would. But we add at least one label from page 128 of the BRB to each person. We determine the labels by finding out whatever family history we can from our relatives. We probably know that Mom was a martyr and Dad was a loner. But maybe we didn't know that Grandpa was a ladies' man and Grandma worried excessively, or that Great Grandpa was a workaholic and Great Grandma drank too much, although they called it something else.
Our diagram helps us see that the way we talk, dress, walk, and smile may also belong to people from our past. This helps us decide what we want to keep, and what coping mechanisms we may have been imitating that no longer work for us.
When we realize that we may have been imitating what we observed, the family secrets stop and our own lives begin. Armed with this knowledge, we are free to make our own choices as we learn to reparent ourselves.
On this day I will remember the past so that I don't repeat the patterns of my family's dysfunction. The secrets are out in the open.
Copyright © 2013 by Adult Children of Alcoholics® & Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, Inc.
Page Number 263
Print this off and try 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."
* END* Discuss the pages to read for our next meeting in 2 weeks in the ACA RED BOOK
* READ BEFORE NEXT MEETING: Adult Children of Alcoholics (Big Red Book) Chapter 1 pages 3-20
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LINKS:
Adult Children of Alcoholics World Service Organization
The Crappy Childhood Fairy Daily Practice
https://courses.crappychildhoodfairy.com/daily-practice
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