The ACoA Trauma Syndrome: The Impact of Childhood Pain on Adult Relationships
An Interview with Author Tian Dayton, Ph.D.

Q: For those of our readers who don’t know, could you define ACoA Trauma Syndrome?
A: The ACoA Trauma Syndrome is one in which unresolved pain from relationships in the family of origin gets triggered and played out in adult relationships, such as partnering and parenting.

Q: How has your personal experience informed the content of this book?
A: I’ve lost a parent to addiction and married someone who lost a parent to addiction, and together we have been doing the work to get better from the trauma of all that so that we could be better, saner partners to each other and more balanced parents to our kids. We were good, fun, intelligent people, we just carried a lot of pain that we didn’t know quite what to do with and that society in general sort of thought shouldn’t be there. Afterall, we’d left home right? We were all in one piece, right? But we weren’t all in one piece, not on the inside.

Q: When did the AcoA Movement Begin?
A: In 1980, [ACoAs] got a name, and people literally poured out of the woodwork selfidentifying. All sorts of people who didn’t grow up with addiction identified as well, so the name “co-dependent” was coined to cover them. But trauma is really the culprit, trauma from growing up with addiction, abuse or neglect, that’s why I call it the AcoA Trauma Syndrome; it’s the experience of being traumatized that we need to heal.

Q: How has your clinical experience informed the content of this book?
A: People who get triggered a lot and then either intimidate or withdraw from others, or a combination of both, or continually recreate and re-enact old pain in new relationships, are usually suffering from some form of PTSD. If you’re not still suffering, it means that you’ve grieved, elevated your buried pain to a conscious level, accepted and integrated it. But if you haven’t gone through this process, you need to investigate whether or not past pain is still being lived out in present day. Investigating that pain as trauma has been the most useful concept clinically for me. ACoAs carry these unconscious childhood wounds with them and they bleed into their adult relationships, so many dysfunctional dynamics are at play here.

Q: Why isn’t this process conscious?
A: This kind of pain, when experienced in childhood, often gets pushed out of consciousness because for kids, it’s too overwhelming to process. It is so difficult for children because the trauma happens in the very relationships they are dependent upon for survival. The people they would normally go to for comfort, like their parents, are the very ones hurting them.

Q: They say kids are resilient; is this true in light of this syndrome?
A: Kids appear to be resilient and in many important ways are, but a lot of their hurt and anger also goes underground. A lot of the pain is just in this sort of icloud place waiting to be “clicked” or “triggered” and pulled down into functioning reality. Kids are only able to make sense of their family interactions with the developmental tools they have at any given age. So they often end up with a distorted childlike “read” of the events they have experienced.

Q: Then we grow up carrying that pain?
A: Yes, when we become adults (AcoAs), all that unresolved pain and anger we pushed away, gets triggered by some event that mirrors a situation from our past. For AcoAs, the triggers are often intimate relationships, because that’s where they got hurt before. Unresolved pain from old relationships gets imported into new ones. We feel like that helpless, hopeless kid all over again. And that makes us want to look big and intimidating on the outside because we feel so scared and little on the inside. Or it makes us want to isolate ourselves because we think we’ll avoid further pain.

Q: What, in your mind, is the single biggest impact on a child of an alcoholic in his or her adult years?
A: In partnering and parenting relationships; when we re-create families of our own, that’s the equivalent of returning to the scene of the crime, the war zone. The memories and feelings that are attached to the family experience get triggered. The three year old we raise triggers the pain of the three year old inside of us.

Q: What is your best piece of advice for someone who is an ACoA?
A: Participate in a 12-step program – ALANON, CODA or ACOA, whichever is best in your area, something like that – so you can start to get comfortable with sharing the experiences of childhood and you’ll take it from there (i.e. decide if you need professional help or need to make lifestyle changes). Be open. Be willing. Take it one step at a time, but definitely take a step – stop pretending it’s not an issue. ACoAs want to outsmart their pain; it makes them feel too vulnerable to face their own inner pain, because they fear that they can’t handle the feelings it will bring up. But we build strength and resilience from facing the pain; facing it and working through it winds up being faster and easier than dealing with the effects of all the complications we create by not dealing with it. Because what we don’t know can still hurt us, it can still influence and even run us.

Q: Do you believe that some ACoA’s “escape” harmful effects in their adult years?
A: I’m open to the idea that they do, but I just haven’t met any who have. But the ones whose families deal with the addiction and both parents go into recovery (for addiction and co-dependency), interrupt the pattern early, which can make all the difference. It just depends on how the family handles it.

Q: Did any information surprise you in the process of researching and writing this book?
A: It is notable that we can be so unconscious of the pain that we carry. It’s amazing, really, that we just act it out, unaware of what drives it.

Q: Who is your intended audience?
A: ACoAs or anyone who has grown up with dysfunction in their family, such as abuse, neglect or even rigid family structures or ones that are abusive and super controlling in what they pass down; ones that lay impossible expectations on kids.

Q: What do you hope ACoAs will take away from your book?
A: Knowledge of how much hope there is and how much healing is possible. Being an AcoA is no life sentence. You can become more aware, human, alive, dynamic, and spiritual. But you do have to do the work, and the work may take longer than you think. But just keep doing it until the work doesn’t feel like work anymore.

Q: What do you hope clinicians will take away from your book?
A: An awareness of how important they are in someone’s life just by being a consistent, caring person who’s willing to hang in there for the long haul. I also hope clinicians will feel a strong urge to do their own personal work and not hide behind the clinical role. ACoAs can have a pattern of hiding pain and being caretakers, so clinicians need to process their own pain, they need to keep growing throughout their careers.

Q: Any final thoughts?
A: Become willing to look at yourself and be self-reflective. We carry relationship templates inside of us, so looking inside is really looking at the whole system. For those who resist doing the work, I would say that while it may at times, feel like the longest route, it is actually the shortest route. At the end of it, you get freedom, and a renewed zest for life. You get pieces of yourself back and you feel more whole and alive. And you have more to take to your life and your relationships. Don’t be afraid, just take the first step. Or be afraid, but take the first step anyway.

The ACoA Trauma Syndrome: The Impact of Childhood Pain on Adult Relationships. Available online or at bookstores, or to order directly from the publisher, contact: (800) 441-5569 or www.hcibooks.com. ISBN: 978-0-7573-1644-9.