Healing as an Adult Child of Addiction (ACOA) Program

Growing up with a parent or caregiver who struggled with addiction often means living in a home filled with emotional unpredictability, denial, neglect, or covert chaos—even if no one ever talked about it.

As an adult, you may now:

• Struggle with self-worth, trust, or emotional intimacy

• Overfunction, people-please, or control to feel safe

• Avoid conflict or numb out rather than express needs

• Feel responsible for others’ emotions or afraid of being “too much”

• Sense that you’re always waiting for something to go wrong

This therapy program helps you:

• Understand how those early dynamics shaped your patterns

• Reconnect with your own emotions and inner child

• Set boundaries that weren’t allowed before

• Learn to feel safe, even when life is calm

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Weeks 1–2: Understanding the ACOA Legacy

• Goals: Identify how your family’s substance use history shaped your inner world.

• Learn about the common roles ACOAs take on: the Hero, Scapegoat, Lost Child, Mascot, or Caregiver.

• Begin mapping family patterns: secrecy, emotional unavailability, codependency.

• Reflect on rules you may have internalized: Don’t feel, don’t talk, don’t trust.

• Start building emotional safety in the therapy space.

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Weeks 3–4: Reclaiming the Inner Child

• Goals: Begin healing the part of you that adapted to survive chaos.

• Use inner child work to connect with the younger you who had to “be strong,” stay silent, or take care of others.

• Explore emotional neglect and unmet needs for safety, nurture, and attunement.

• Begin practicing reparenting tools: self-soothing, validation, boundaries.

• Develop compassionate self-awareness for current behaviors that were once survival strategies.

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Weeks 5–6: Emotion Regulation & Self-Trust

• Goals: Relearn how to feel emotions without fear or shame.

• Use DBT and somatic tools to regulate anger, fear, sadness, and guilt.

• Reflect on whether certain emotions felt unsafe or punished in childhood.

• Practice identifying and expressing feelings, rather than avoiding or numbing.

• Build trust in your ability to feel and stay grounded.