ACA Literature & Recovery Resources:

Adult Children: https://adultchildren.org/

Buy Literature: https://shop.adultchildren.org/

DID YOU KNOW?

Northeast Texas ACA Intergroup receives a discount from the WSO for orders over $100 or more. If your group wishes to place a literature order and take advantage of this discount, please email us at: netxaca@gmail.com

Am I an Adult Child?

ACA defines an Adult Child as “someone whose actions and decisions as an adult are guided by childhood experiences grounded in self-doubt or fear.” Pg. 302 of our ACA Fellowship text

Here are some of the questions we use to help identify ourselves as an Adult Child:

Do I fear authority figures and angry people?.
Do I see most forms of criticism as a personal attack?
Do I have difficulty identifying feelings?
Do I involve myself in the problems of others? Do I feel more alive when there is a crisis?
Do I judge myself without mercy and guess at what is normal?
Do I recall anyone at my home drinking or taking drugs or being involved in some other behavior that I now believe could be dysfunctional?
Did one of my parents make excuses for the other parent’s drinking or other behaviors?
As an adult, do I feel immature? Do I feel like I am a child inside?

Answering yes to any of these questions may mean you are suffering from the effects of growing up in a dysfunctional household, whether it was due to alcoholism or another addiction, workaholism, perfectionism, or some other factor or form of abuse.

The questions above were taken from our trifold “25 Questions: Am I an Adult Child“ that is available for free download on the adultchildren.org

ACA’s 12 Steps:

The ACA Twelve Steps:
1) We admitted we were powerless over the effects of alcoholism or other family
dysfunction, that our lives had become unmanageable.
2) Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3) Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we
understand God.
4) Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5) Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6) Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7) Humbly asked God to remove our shortcomings.
8) Made a list of all persons we had harmed and became willing to make amends to them all.
9) Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10) Continued to take personal inventory and, when we were wrong, promptly
admitted it.
11) Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with
God, as we understand God, praying only for knowledge of God’s will for us and
the power to carry that out.
12) Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to others who still suffer, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

The Twelve Steps are reprinted and adapted from the original Twelve Steps of Alcoholics Anonymous.

Adult Children of Alcoholics®/Dysfunctional Families World Service Organization, Inc.

NETX ACA Quarterly Newsletter:

ACA Newsletter Q1 2026 Download

Other Recovery Resources:

In accordance with Tradition 4: Each group is autonomous except in matters affecting other groups or ACA as a whole. We cooperate with all other Twelve-Step programs, please see the resources below if you or a loved one is in need.