Therapy for Adult Children of Alcoholics
in person in Center City, Philadelphia and online across PA & NJ
You’ve never known what it means to feel like a child.
What You Lived Through:
You were a kid trying to survive a household ruled by chaos, shame, and unpredictability. You learned early that your needs didn’t matter—or that they were too much.
You figured out who you needed to be in order to stay safe—or at least survive.
Even back then, you knew something wasn't right. Now, you’re starting to understand why it felt so different.
How It Shows Up Now:
You replay conversations over and over at night, convinced you must have said something wrong.
You say sorry at work before you even know what you’re apologizing for—just waiting for someone to finally get fed up with you.
When your partner forgets something important, you laugh it off like it’s fine, but it still stings more than you want to admit.
Around your family, you can feel yourself disappearing—back into the role they always put you in, like nothing about you has changed.
You stare at the phone when they call, arguing with yourself about whether to pick up—part of you hoping they'll finally show up differently, part of you hating yourself for even wanting that.
You keep your distance from people who are good to you, because deep down it feels safer to expect the worst.
And even when everything looks fine from the outside, it’s hard not to wonder if you’re just too screwed up to ever really get it right.
You’d love to have closer relationships with healthy family members, friends, or coworkers, but you feel like a burden.
It’s not that you’re broken. It’s that you were set up to survive.
The mood swings, hostility, entitlement, weaponized silence, degrading comments framed as ‘opinions’, and triangulation with others, and more.
What’s harder is it feels like you’re the only one who sees it.
Your sibling, complicit parent, or relatives make you seem like the problem for not bending to your emotionally immature parent's demands.
There’s nothing wrong with you. (No, really.)
It might feel hard to hear this, especially since many moments of your childhood and adult life have told you the exact opposite.
Loving relationships, true self-love, and respectful boundaries are possible for you.
By working with one of our specially-trained therapists, you can…
Gain control over your triggers with your parent and other difficult family members
Determine how you’d like to interact with your parent in a way that centers your safety and well-being (i.e. low-contact or no-contact)
Avoid harmful relationship patterns you learned from your parent—or catch yourself quickly when you notice them happening
Feel seen, respected, and cherished in the close relationships of your choosing
Learn how to identify emotionally mature people who will care about your needs, apologize when they are wrong, and be consistent and steady
Heal and recover from the scars of not being seen, and experience genuine hope and excitement about your path ahead
Growing up with an emotionally immature parent, you didn't know what to expect from one moment to the next.
With this in mind, here’s a flexible framework for how we might work together.
✔ Unpack Your Past
Allow yourself to fully feel, process, and honor the pain of the past.
✔ Uncover Your True Self
Reveal and embrace aspects of your authentic self. You don’t have to hide anymore.
✔ Reclaim Your Future
Take empowered steps to create the life and relationships you deserve and long for.
“But they did the best they could…”
As an adult child of an emotionally immature parent, it can be challenging to know how to feel about your parent’s actions.
You are told to practice forgiveness, or “that’s just the way they are.”. You might even say this to yourself.
At the same time, there is the true reality of the ongoing pain and harm caused by your parent’s behavior.
We won’t be another voice making excuses for your parent, but we do understand how complex this process can feel.
Therapy will be a space for you to center your own experience.
Full disclosure: we can’t promise you’ll feel immediately ‘better’
You’ve had to push down difficult feelings to survive being raised by your emotionally immature parent(s).
Once we start to look closer at your experience, there may be immense grief, anger, rage, abandonment, and betrayal.
All of those feelings are welcome and we are trained to support you with them.
Whatever emerges in our work, we can reassure you we’ve walked alongside many clients like you.
They have emerged on the other side with self-respect, self-love, and a renewed hope that they no longer have to be defined by their emotionally immature parents.
We can’t tell you how things will end, but we will bring endless compassion, empowering skills, and expert-level information to guide you through this healing journey.