When a family is steeped in denial, the person who is trying to say that "the emperor has no clothes on" is generally viewed negatively by those who are not willing to see what's really going on.

Old pain that gets imported into new relationships is the hallmark of the ACoA trauma syndrome.

Nothing is black and white, and no one -- not even the most fortunate among us -- makes it through life unscathed. So what questions do we need to ask ourselves in order to find that invisible line between too little and too much focus on a painful past?

Adult children of alcoholics (ACoAs) can and often do suffer from some features of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) that are the direct result of living with the traumatizing effects of addiction.

Mariah Haberman, recently crowned "Miss Wisconsin" is using her platform as a pageant winner to talk about what it is like to grow up in an alcoholic ...

Physical sobriety can take around 72 hours to achieve. Emotional sobriety, or learning to balance feeling states, thinking and behavior, takes a lot longer.

Part of "Recovery Month" Series In the 1960s, when my Dad got treatment, we all thought that once the alcoholic got sober, the rest of us in the fa...

Here's what these "natural antidepressants" can do for us. Serotonin keeps our moods balanced and up beat. It calms anxiety and improves our sleep.

Using drugs and/or alcohol to cope with PTSD is extremely common. It looks 45-year-old Mark Kerrigan, sister of Olympic skater Nancy Kerrigan, may be doing just that.

Humor has a way of sliding through the cracks, of reminding us that whatever is going on just isn't that important. It keeps things in perspective, provides relief, gets us to see things in new lights and yes, has tons of health benefits.

Why do people feel better after attending a twelve step meeting? Why do twelve step meetings work so well for healing emotional pain and establishing...

Dealing with the sorts of challenges that living with addiction inevitably poses can challenge kids, to say nothing of leaders of the free world, to develop unusual talents and strengths.

It has long been clear to me that being an ACoA needs aggressive and long term treatment. Ignoring the damage only allows it to leak out in intimate relationships.

When the attachment with a parent is fraught with fear, the child can become overly preoccupied with getting it right for the parent rather than for themselves.

Real contentment has much more to do with what's going on inside ourselves rather than outside. If this is a period when we have to live more simply, it may also be a period in which we can rediscover the joys in simple pleasures.