How we learn to love in our early relationships forms the template for how we love

throughout our lives. My name is Andrea and this is Adult Child.

Welcome back to Adult Child, where we took a deep dive into the impact of growing up in

a dysfunctional family. How are we doing? For any new listeners, my name is Andrea. I am a big

shitshow and we use shitshow as a term of endearment around here. I'll have you know. And if you're

wondering what an adult child is, an adult child is someone who grew up in an alcoholic or dysfunctional

family whose unresolved childhood pain surfaces and plays out in adulthood and not in a good way,

I might add. And how do you know if you are one? Well, I'm actually going to read you the laundry

list right now. So these are the 14 common characteristics of an adult child. You know, I don't even know

if I've ever actually fully read the list on a podcast episode before, which is kind of a bit

atrocious. So this comes from the 12-step program ACA, adult children of alcoholic and dysfunctional

families. But when I read this list for the first time, I about shit myself. It was a spiritual

experience indeed. And this is the case for so many of us. I believe it says that if you, if you

relate to three or more, you probably are an adult child. Okay, here we go. Number one,

we became isolated and afraid of people and authority figures. Two, we became approval seekers

and lost our identity in the process. Three, we are frightened by angry people in any personal

criticism. Four, we either become alcoholics, marry them, or both, or find another compulsive

personality, such as a workaholic, to fulfill our sick abandonment needs. Five, we live life from

the viewpoint of victims, and we are attracted by that weakness in our love and kiki.

Hello? Hello? For anybody who's new, that's my cat, and she's deaf, and she, she does this like

weird, hello, howly thing. Only in this bedroom, in the second bedroom is the only place that she

does it, and my podcast studio is in the closet of the second bedroom. Five, we live life from the

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