The Laundry List – 14 Traits

• We became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures.
• We became approval seekers and lost our identity in the process.
• We are frightened by angry people and any personal criticism.
• We either become alcoholics, marry them or both, or find another compulsive personality such as a workaholic to fulfill our sick abandonment needs.
• We live life from the viewpoint of victims, and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and friendship relationships.
• We have an overdeveloped sense of responsibility, and it is easier for us to be concerned with others rather than ourselves; this enables us not to look too closely at our own faults, etc.
• We get guilt feelings when we stand up for ourselves instead of giving in to others.
• We became addicted to excitement. We confuse love and pity and tend to “love” people we can “pity” and “rescue.”
• We have “stuffed” our feelings from our traumatic childhoods and have lost the ability to feel or express our feelings because it hurts so much. (Denial).
• We judge ourselves harshly and have a shallow sense of self-esteem.
• We are dependent personalities who are terrified of abandonment and will do anything to hold on to a relationship in order not to experience painful abandonment feelings, which we received from living with sick people who were never there emotionally for us.
• Alcoholism is a family disease; we became para-alcoholics and took on the characteristics of that disease even though we did not pick up the drink.
• Para-alcoholics are reactors rather than actors.

Tony A., 1978