The ACOA Blind Spot: 5 Patterns Keeping You Stuck

Why do so many high-functioning adults secretly feel “something’s wrong”—even when life looks fine on paper? In this empowering episode, Lisa A. Romano uncovers the ACOA blind spot: the predictable patterns that form when alcoholism (or “dry” alcoholism) and emotional neglect shape a family system.

You’ll learn the five core patterns that keep adult children and grandchildren of alcoholics stuck—and the practical roadmap for getting your power, clarity, and self-respect back.

Transcript

Welcome to Breakdown to Breakthrough,

The podcast that empowers you to transform your life by awakening to your true,

Authentic self.

I'm Lisa A.

Romano,

Your host.

As an award-winning author and certified life coach,

I've dedicated my life to helping others understand the incredible power of an organized mind.

I believe that true empowerment begins with awakening to our false self.

My mission is to support you on your journey toward mental and emotional regeneration through conscious and deliberate awakening.

In this podcast,

I'll share insights,

Tools,

And transformative stories that illuminate the path to healing and self-discovery.

A topic that is very near and dear to my heart has to do with being raised by adult children of alcoholics,

Or being raised by an alcoholic parent,

Or being raised by two alcoholic parents.

And like anybody else,

It's important to me because it hits home.

I was raised by two unrecovered adult children of alcoholics.

Three out of my four grandparents were active alcoholics.

It was just a mess.

My brother's twin brother was an active alcoholic,

Although he didn't finally ultimately find recovery,

Was a compulsive gambler.

Her other brother was also an alcoholic and a compulsive gambler.

In my opinion,

My mother was a dry alcoholic.

And it's anyone's guess whether or not my father was a real alcoholic or a functional alcoholic,

But I can tell you that narcissism ran rampant in my family,

Denial ran rampant.

My sister,

My brother,

And I,

We did not grow up feeling secure or like we had a sense of self.

And it was hard for us to identify what was wrong.

And I wanna address that because so many of us grow up in homes where something was wrong,

But nobody's talking about it.

And we might look like we're extremely functional people.

We may have relationships,

We may have businesses,

We may have children,

We may be successful in our careers,

And on the outside,

Everything looks fine,

But we are the people in society,

And there are at least 28 million of us,

Which is incredible.

And I think the numbers are much,

Much higher because a lot of adult children of alcoholics don't even know they're adult children of alcoholics.

No one ever said,

Oh,

Yeah,

Mom's an alcoholic,

What?

And even if it was acknowledged,

Yeah,

Mom was an alcoholic,

Or dad was an alcoholic,

Or grandma or grandpa were an alcoholic,

Oftentimes the system is so enmeshed in denial that we have no clue what that frickin' means.

I knew my parents were,

My grandparents were alcoholics,

Excuse me.

I knew my uncles were alcoholics,

But my parents made no big deal of their childhood.

It was like,

Okay,

It happened,

It's over,

Pass the butter.

Meanwhile,

My dad's a raving narcissist,

Gambling,

So controlling with my mom,

Can't handle stress.

He's about maybe 10 or 11,

12 years old emotionally,

Has breakdowns whenever he doesn't get his way.

Mom's codependent,

People-pleasing,

Stuffing her rage,

Secretly resents him,

And explodes when no one's around.

And so our family was obviously sick,

But no one talked about it.

I receive emails every day from people who say,

I've been in therapy for 20 years,

And no one ever said I was codependent.

I didn't know it was okay to talk about my mom.

My therapist shamed me,

Or my husband keeps telling me to just get over it.

My kids tell me that I'm a drama queen,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

I'm too much.

My siblings are telling me I'm crazy.

You can't heal in that environment.

That's why I'm so grateful to be able to offer this information in the way that I offer it to those who need it the most.

So let's break this down,

Shall we?

I do tend to,

When I talk about alcoholism,

I do also clump together the narcissist in this group,

Because alcoholics,

I know from example,

Are people that they're struggling,

Yes,

And they have issues,

Yes,

And this is a disease,

And well,

So is narcissism.

If you want to look at it that way,

It's a personality disease.

So alcoholism is a disease,

Yes,

But alcoholics oftentimes take on the traits of narcissists,

And oftentimes the wife or the spouse of the alcoholic is highly codependent.

And so me personally,

I see the similarities.

I see the tentacles,

How this all gets joined together,

And while they seem like separate issues,

Being the spouse of an alcoholic and taking on codependency,

And the jury is out by the way,

We don't know if we're born with codependency.

I believe that most of us,

Maybe we're highly sensitive as children,

But we grow up invisible when we grow up feeling unheard and unseen,

When our family is sick and no one's talking about it,

And we learn that the best way to survive is by being hypervigilant.

We dissociate from the self,

And we're taking care of everybody else,

And now we marry people that need to be taken care of.

We're very comfortable in the caretaker role.

We're abandoning the self.

And so yeah,

We tend to attract people who are sick,

Who want us to take care of them,

And are very comfortable exploiting our codependency,

Our people pleasing,

And our disease of invisibility,

As I have coined it and coined it many,

Many years ago.

So today we're going to talk about five reasons why we don't know what's wrong.

It sounds so silly,

Right?

Like,

How could I not know what was wrong?

I didn't know what was wrong.

I was married,

Had three kids,

Had a business,

I had no idea what was wrong.

I just thought everything was happening to me.

The big aha was,

Oh wow,

Like I have control over this,

But holy Hannah,

Was that really hard for me to wrap my mind around?

You know,

Acknowledging I was a stuck codependent,

I was operating as a little girl,

Feeling unseen,

Looking for people to value me by taking care of them,

Attracting people who just exploited that.

This idea that that was happening inside of me,

That it started with me,

Even though it wasn't my fault,

That was a huge paradigm shift.

And it took me years,

I would say decades,

To be able to like,

What the heck does that mean?

And that's why I'm also so grateful for these platforms,

Because I get to teach people my breakthrough method.

I get to teach them how to develop a stainless steel spine,

And I am so excited that I get to spend my life that way,

And I get to save other people the stress and the anxiety that I went through.

So let's talk about the first reason we don't know what's wrong.

It's because our reality was denied in our home.

So in an alcoholic or dysfunctional household,

Notice how I said,

Or dysfunctional household,

Children are often told not to trust what they see,

What they hear,

Or what they feel.

Now how does this happen?

For example,

A parent may be intoxicated,

They might be angry or abusive,

But deny it outright.

I'm fine,

You're imagining things,

You're making a big deal out of anything,

Everything,

You always do this,

You're just too much,

You're just looking for attention,

That's why you're crying,

It's just the way you're perceiving it,

I'm not yelling at you,

I just talk loud,

All this gaslighting crap,

Right?

And this constant gaslighting conditions the child to doubt their own perceptions.

So I think I'm being abused,

I call it out,

I cry,

Now I'm being abused because I called out that I was being abused and I had an emotional reaction to this event.

So alcoholics,

Narcissistic parents,

They do something,

They move the cheese,

And then they tell you that they didn't move the cheese.

Because they didn't hit you,

They say,

Well,

Nothing happened.

Something happened.

When there is a visceral emotional reaction to what's happening,

The drama in the house,

Something happened.

But alcoholic and narcissistic parents act like nothing happens.

Now,

As an adult,

We often feel off or we feel anxious,

Or we can feel empty,

But can't name why.

It's because we learned early that our internal signals just weren't valid and we shouldn't trust them.

That's where all the cognitive dissonance is so common for an adult child.

And we're always seeking permission and validation from outside of us,

Is this okay,

Is this okay?

Thank goodness you can break through that and you can reprogram your subconscious mind.

Number two,

Feelings weren't safe.

Alcoholic homes are unpredictable.

Sometimes they're warm,

And sometimes they're violent,

And sometimes they're neglectful.

So this idea that it's an unpredictable environment,

A child never knows what to expect.

So to survive,

Children suppress their emotions,

Like fear and anger and sadness,

Because expressing them might trigger conflict or abandonment from others.

So what choice does a little child have but to suppress what they feel because their feelings are tied to more chaos?

Now,

By adulthood,

What we end up doing is ACOAs,

Which is an acronym for Adult Children of Alcoholics.

We can't easily access or trust our feelings.

We're disconnected from the very inner compass that should guide us through life.

Like I said earlier,

All is not lost.

It is possible to retrain your brain,

To teach your mind from a higher state of consciousness to recognize what went wrong.

It's not you.

It was the environment,

And your brain was responding appropriately to this chaos,

Just simply trying to keep you safe.

A little caveat here,

Groundbreaking neuroscience for the neuroscience geeks out there like me.

Your brain is wired at the subconscious level to predict movement,

Danger,

And pleasure.

All outside of consciousness,

Your brain is 15 seconds ahead of you generally before your conscious mind can catch up.

It's already predicting movement.

This is why we are subconsciously hypervigilant.

It's a survival skill.

It's not your fault.

You're not crazy,

But you can get out of this loop.

Your brain is also wired to seek out pain and danger so it can avoid it.

Remember,

It's 15 seconds ahead of you,

And pleasure.

The codependent seeks pleasure by people-pleasing and by avoiding rejection.

Number three is our identity,

Our very identity,

Was built around survival.

It wasn't rooted in,

You're enough,

Lisa.

How do you feel?

How did that experience affect you?

Come here,

Sweetie pie.

Oh,

You're afraid?

Okay,

Let me help you with that.

Let me help you regulate.

None of that in a codependent home,

In a toxic,

Narcissistic,

Or alcoholic home,

Or neglectful home does not happen.

What is our identity rooted in?

What is your self-concept?

Remember,

Your brain is holding and hosting a bunch of neural fibers that it's associated with who you think you are.

Now,

Instead of being encouraged to explore who we are as children,

Children from these homes take on survival roles.

We take on the role of the caretaker,

The hero,

The scapegoat,

Or the lost child.

Our worth is then tied to what we do for others rather than who we are authentically,

And that's not our fault.

As adults,

We may feel empty.

We may feel codependent or emotionally dependent upon others in unhealthy ways.

We could feel broken,

Wrong,

Not good enough,

And this is because we never developed a stable sense of self.

Again,

Not our fault.

Number four,

Our brains wired and adapted to chaos.

Sadly,

This is our comfort zone.

Groundbreaking neuroscience shows that chronic childhood stress wires the brain for hypervigilance and survival.

The nervous system stays on high alert,

Scanning for danger always,

And that's not your fault.

Remember,

It's happening in the background of your mind.

Rather than fostering self-reflection or growth,

Your brain as the adult child of an alcoholic is hijacked.

Your nervous system is hijacked to stay on high alert.

You operate the best in high-stress situations.

While other people fall apart,

Not you,

Dear adult child of the alcoholic,

You are at your best when the heavens are falling.

Why?

Because you were raised in chaos.

You know how to remain hypervigilant.

You know how to triage.

You know how to get things done.

The bad side about that or the downside of that is that you're always scanning for alert and you're not fostering self-reflection or self-growth.

But the good news is you can be taught to do that.

I did that once I understood what I was doing wrong.

Number five,

Shame was internalized.

So important.

In dysfunctional homes,

Children often believe they are the problem.

If I were better,

Mom wouldn't drink.

Or if I were lovable,

Dad wouldn't rage.

In my case,

It was if I had brown eyes like dad,

He'd love me,

He'd protect me from mom.

If I had blue eyes like mom,

Then she would love me like my little sister.

If I wasn't born bad,

I mean,

I really believe that I was just born bad.

I could not wrap my head around what could be so wrong with me.

But when you're little,

You don't think it's your mom.

You don't know she's the 19-year-old unrecovered adult child of an alcoholic who's highly codependent and suffered severe trauma in her childhood and she is just blind to it all.

You don't know that.

You don't know that she's going to pass down her mother wounds to you.

You don't know that.

You don't know that she's struggling with feeling enough and she's exhausted and she resents this little girl that you are,

Even if it's your own child.

Narcissistic moms or highly narcissistic moms resent their children.

I get emails every once in a while from people who say,

How could you spew this stuff on the internet?

You're not helping families stay together.

I get it.

Anybody who hasn't experienced the wrath of a narcissistic mother or the rejection or the jealousy or the envy or the gaslighting or the minimizing or the devaluing,

You're not going to get it.

And I personally forgive you,

Dear one.

I'm happy you don't know what that feels like.

But for me,

This is my reality.

This toxic shame buries our truth.

It buries the fact that we were born enough.

That dysfunction was not our fault.

We didn't even know what we were experiencing was abusive or dysfunctional.

And this is why we don't know what's wrong,

Which is why we don't know how to heal because you cannot fix a hole in the wall that you can't see.

You cannot solve a problem or find an answer to a problem that you have yet to identify.

I want to help you identify these problems,

Then fit you with the solution so you can finally break free.

As adults,

People that have internalized shame,

It manifests as a chronic sense of defectiveness,

Even though they can't point to why.

So how this shows up is like everything's going great in your life,

Bam,

You have an argument with your boyfriend or he does something that's really immature and you get so triggered by it and you go right into this defective sense.

Like I'm defective.

This always happens to me.

It's always going to happen to me.

It's probably my fault.

It's something that I've done.

I'm just broken,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah,

Blah.

That's shame.

We've internalized the shame of our faulty family system.

You know why?

For so many reasons,

But we also internalize shame because there was never a counter balance where you're enough or you matter or you belong to me and I want you,

I want you and I love you and I'm going to protect you and I'm never going to do anything that makes you feel unsafe.

There was none of that.

There was just chaos.

There was just neglect.

And so to a little child left to try to figure out why,

Why,

Why,

Why is this chaos happening?

You're two years old and you're already wondering why.

And when you're two,

You're egocentric and it's always going to come down to your fault.

That's an internalized shame experience.

So the bottom line is adult children of alcoholics struggle to know what's wrong because they were raised in an environment where reality was denied.

It's not happening.

You're just perceiving incorrectly.

You're crazy.

Emotions weren't safe.

And so they,

They doubt that their emotions are valid and that their identity is tied to survival.

So it's not who I am.

My identity identity is tied to avoiding pain.

Our brains adapted to chaos.

Our nervous system is now primed for chaos and not self growth or self reflection.

And number five,

Shame became our default lens.

So dear ones,

I'm here to tell you that you are not broken,

But you are wounded.

And healing begins when you realize what's wrong.

When you realize that what is wrong is not you,

What's wrong is your programming.

That's when you can heal.

And that's when we can begin rewiring you from the subconscious level,

Addressing the wounds,

Offering you tremendous compassion,

Teaching you mindfulness skills,

Eradicating negative self-talk,

Replacing it with compassion-based talk.

It takes time,

But it is possible.

Dear adult child of an alcoholic or dear adult child of a narcissistic parent,

You're not broken.

You're not broken.

You're just wounded.

And guess what?

You are enough.

Namaste.

Until next time.

Bye for now.

Reviews

Thank you, Lisa for always having the courage to talk about these topics… That a lot of people wanna stay in denial about 🙏💛✨💛🙏

Understanding myself better opens space to forgive my wounded, suffering mother. Dad too. It runs deep, eh?

I so need to rewire my brain and my programming. I am so interested in learning how to talk to myself with compassion. This is so eye opening. Thank you!

Thank you. This really resonates with me. Makes alot of sense of how it was and how I am struggling with close relationships today as an adult.
Thank you thank you 🙏💓

Thanks Lisa!

Oh Lisa
Thank you for this. I always wondered what was wrong. I'm 72 and have had therapy probably 3 out of 4 months. Got into anon recovery 7 years ago. Love knowing that while I'm the main character in this story, it wasn't all me

Bookmarking this. 🙏❤️

I see you i feel you… 😌 such amazing insight and assurance… thanks alot 😌🙏