NCJ Number
160656
Date Published
1994
Length
8 pages
Annotation
Although some adult children of alcoholics (ACOA) and others benefit from recovery groups, too many of those in such groups have trivial problems and are unwilling to accept responsibility for their own lives.
Abstract
It is an odd program in self-esteem that rewards people for calling themselves helpless, childish, addicted, and diseased and punishes them for claiming to be healthy. Admit that you are sick and you are welcomed into the recovering persons fold; dispute it and your are "in denial." Under this regimen, your bad behaviors and unwanted feelings become conditions of your being. In labeling all their problems symptoms of disease, people in recovery find not only the promise of a cure but an external cause for what ails them, i.e., the dysfunctional family. When the minor mistakes that every parent makes are dramatized, the terrible misconduct of some is trivialized. The author of this paper compares the dynamics of and her reaction to a 12-step recovery groups she attended with a group therapy session with Cambodian women refugees that she also visited. She notes that the 12-step groups depressed her, as so many people talked about relatively trivial problems with such seriousness and in the same "nonsensical jargon." The Cambodian women's group, on the other hand, impressed and heartened her, as the members showed such resilience under circumstances of great pain and loss. The hierarchy of suffering must be recognized, so that relatively trivial suffering does not become so awesome or a qualification for belonging to a cult of victimization.