Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

participation in a 12-step group may be sufficient. The bottom line
will always be the quality of life that we are experiencing (we do
not mean the financial quality of life, by the way).
Often times people will expend a lot of time and energy in therapy
during the first two years of recovery. They will then reach a point
of new-found stability and then just maintain their recovery with a
self-help support group. Then as life progresses and becomes
richer, there may be a need to delve even deeper into issues that
have not yet been addressed.
A large precentage of women who attend inpatient treatment for
chemical dependency are survivors of incest or sexual abuse, for
example. The first two years of recovery may just be about the
chemical addiction quitting the use of chemicals, changing
friendship patterns to others who are also in recovery, and so on.
Later on, it will be necessary to address the sexual abuse issues in
therapy but only when one is ready to do so.
We have summarized the recovery process in the following flow
chart. (See Figure 18.1.)
Recovery is lifelong, and it becomes less and less painful as we
progress. Stresses that five years ago would have thrown us into a

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deep depression are now handled directly with strength and
wisdom. Stresses that put us on the verge of acting out our
symptoms now, will not do so five years from now. It is not life
that changes. It is we who change.
Recovery is a relearning process in which, step by step, we come to
see and feel and know the Little Child inside of us.
Recovery is allowing ourselves to experience the truth. At first, this
is terribly painful. In the end, it lets us make that Child inside of us
feel safe, warm, lovable, whole, proud, honest, peaceful and real.

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Page 183
Figure 18.1. 
Recovery Process Flow Chart

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Page 185
19 
A Word About Healing And Spirituality
All Adult Children and Co-dependents are victims of abuse and
neglect. The core inside of us has been damaged. We have called
this core inside of us our Little Child. What needs to heal are the
guilt, shame and fear of abandonment experienced in our Little
Child. Ultimately, our healing must take place from the inside out.
In Chapter 3 we talked about our symptoms as being about feelings
and about intimacy. Put another way, our symptoms block
relationship. They block our relationship with ourself; they block
our relationship with others; they block our relationship with the
world at large and they block our relationship with our own
spirituality. The only way to truly heal, then, is to restore our
ability to be in relationship. This is why recovery never happens
alone. It is a contradiction in terms.
"Spirituality" itself is cause for much controversy and inner
battling for so many of us. The idea of a Higher Power, which is an
essential part of 12-step recovery programs, keeps many people
away from Anonymous groups for a long time.

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Page 186
"I don't want any of that 'God stuff'," we proclaim loudly. "I've had
it up to here with that."
The authors believe this is true because spirituality is
misunderstood. We believe that many of us confuse spirituality
with formal religion. Part of it gets confused because somewhere
along the line we were presented with a lot of black-and-white
thinking you must either be a Catholic, a Protestant, a Jew, a
Buddhist, a Moslem, or you are nothing at all. This puts our Little
Child in a double bind which makes us want to avoid the issue
altogether. So we want to make it very clear that we are talking
about spirituality, not religion. The religion you choose or don't
choose is your own business, not ours.
As we view it, spirituality is one's relationship with the