Contact

Do you have questions or comments? We are happy to hear from you! Use our contact form below or email us directly at munich@aca-munich.de.

ACA is a worldwide fellowship of adults who spent their childhood in dysfunctional, often (but not always) alcoholic family settings. Now, being grown up and often living far from our families of origin, we as adult children still experience problems that stem from our childhood experiences, from patterns we learned back then. In Munich we have currently two English speaking ACA meetings.

Fixing Others
It is a weird thing with „fixing others“. Only recently I noted how deeply this behavior is ingrained in my system. Actually it was a recent incident that made me understand: I run into a friend. This friend has a tooth problem. She lives with it since about four years now, having it fixed with a temporary denture only. That is partly because she does not want to spend much money, but also because she has real fear of dentists. And the only dentist she trusts is an extremely expensive one… This week her temporary denture finally broke. Four years ago I had spent hours researching solutions, such as where to get her teeth fixed at very little cost. She did not follow any of my advice. This is why these days when I heard about her mishap I had no idea what else to tell her. I had exhausted my jokers. Frankly: I was rather annoyed when I heard about her problem. I felt so… helpless. I definitely could not fix her problem back then and much less now. What should I tell her? One thing I had heard from various sources recently was that “just listening”, “just being there”, is very helpful and soothing for people in discomfort. I took notice of this information, but it was hard for me to fully get the point of why “just listening” could be of any help or special benefit to people in need. I am a fantastic fixer – I find solutions for almost anything. Isn’t “fixing the problem” much better that just “listening to the problem”? Yeah. And then I run into that friend who’s problem I could not fix… and instead of “listening” I turned away, annoyed and… ashamed… All that made me think. “I am no good listener” came into my mind. Why is that so? I am a highly sensitive ACA (all ACAs are highly sensitive, it is our character trait, our survival mechanism). I could almost read other people’s minds. Why can’t I listen? And then the insight hit me: Listening to another person takes time. You have to listen for quite a while, and then, very, very carefully assemble the information you heard to a very provisional overall picture of the situation. Then maybe ask some additional questions to make the picture clearer… listen some more, just listen, and listen and ask, and listen some more… What did I do instead, all these years? I jumped at the information that was given within the first 30 seconds and rushed into a making a very rough sketch of the situation – good enough for me to get into action mode and work out a solution. A solution which I then threw at the person, but which – honestly speaking – very seldomly “fixed” the problem. Very frustrating. Maybe it is time to try out something new. To switch from “fixing mode” to “listening mode”. Just thinking of it gives me a good feeling… 🙂
Childhood Memories
Laundry List Trait 10: 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.) Actually that is not actually the trait we are currently working on in our group. However, somehow I sense that I am getting closer to understand what trait 10 refers to… All of a sudden I felt sad these days. “Mama drinks, passes out. Child alone.“ In short, it is at about this kind of sadness. I do not allow myself to escape the situation, I stay in, stay in that feeling, I allow myself to feel the sadness in all its depth. I examine what I feel, calmly, almost like a surgeon. Sadness. Sadness about having been left alone. Being blind to drunkenness A weird thing for me was that for a very long time, for almost all of my adulthood, I was literally blind to drunkenness. I could not determine if that other person sitting in front of me was drunk or not (ok, seeing them falling of their seat would me make think…). I had no clue. I figured that this fact was somehow connected to my childhood. But how exactly? Slowly, after attending ACA meetings for almost three years now, I note that I learn to determine if someone is drunk. It started quite abruptly. What hurts me about noticing drunkenness is not so much that people drink – adult persons should know best what they do, after all they are adults! Today, what hurts me when I see them getting drunk is that it makes me feel quite lonely. People getting drunk leave… they leave for another place, Alcohol Country. And I am left behind. Even if they are loving, caring people: Once drunk they no longer care. The only thing they are concerned with is their… trip. That is fine. Adult people. I am adult too. I can walk away – what I often do, nowadays, just leave the party, heading home. Walking through nocturnal landscapes/cityscapes is an esthetically uplifting experience. It makes me feel good. No damage done, to nobody. But when I was a child? What a different situation! A child cannot just walk away when Mama is drunk and unable to respond. Actually I did walk away, as a child, more than once, heading for shelter at my grandmother’s place. What an awful situation. Re-encounter with that Inner Child within me And all that dawns on me, these days, just by… seeing people get drunk at parties. It reminds me of myself, being a child. Or eventually: it makes me get in touch with that Inner Child within me. That child that never allowed herself to feel these feelings of loneliness and sadness. Because handling the situation required all attention, no energy left for feelings. Today I feel good. Save, loved, supported. By friends, by my ACA group. Today, there are people in my life who care, who ask how I feel. Quite a new experience. But why do these feelings of loneliness and sadness creep up now? Maybe this is natural. Maybe I slowly let go of my survival-mode, a mode that shuts off feelings which are too overwhelming, too painful, too threatening. Maybe now that I feel very OK, I do have that extra energy required for feeling old feelings. Feelings connected with my painful past experiences. And the good news… So probably that is the good news: These feelings are connected to my past experiences. And they come up because my present is happy, safe enough so that I can let them allow to come up. Obviously these (childhood-)feelings are a sign that I did something… right. 🙂 That an old wound is healing. 🙂 That I start letting go of that… painful past. Maybe the only thing I have to do is to give the honors to that inner-child-that-was-me. And I give her the honors by recognizing the feelings she had: feelings of sadness and loneliness. Feelings which I did not allow myself to feel back then. But I do so now.