Trait Two

Trait Two

What drives someone to seek a life without alcohol and then go even deeper into healing childhood wounds? This talk from the ACA Tuesday Zoombox meeting follows Sarah J as she shares around Trait Two from the ACA "Laundry List" and how it plays out in her life. Sarah reads all four versions of Trait Two, contrasting approval-seeking with rigid self-sufficiency.

She connects most with the line, "we are lonely self-starters who are a pleasure to work with because we require little or no supervision," explaining how she became the quiet neighbour, the compliant partner, and the person who never admits to needing anything. She explains that her qualifier is her mum, who lived with bipolar disorder, and that her childhood was shaped by mental illness, abandonment and neglect rather than parental alcoholism.

With a father who left when she was three and a mother whose mood swung from "I love you so much" to sheer terror, Sarah describes never feeling safe and retreating into an inner sanctuary of invisible friends, mice jungle gyms and, eventually, a deeply comforting bond with her pony. Hypervigilance, overachievement and poor boundaries became her survival kit.

She jokes that "the idea of a 1,200‑pound animal having a tantrum does not frighten me, but a human trying to get into my internal world... that’s going to scare the living bejesus out of me." Yet ACA is helping her peel back those layers to reach "the true Sarah" underneath the traits she piled on.

Now 27 years sober in AA and 18 months in ACA, she says she has gained more emotional growth in ACA than she ever expected.

She talks about service, discomfort as a teacher, and the intense grief of her mother's recent death, all while expressing strong gratitude for a fellowship that "accepts us just the way we are." If approval-seeking, overachieving or feeling "rigidly self-sufficient" rings a bell, this honest share might have you asking where your own true self is hiding.