Soulshine

     I am a champion at beating myself up-- even after years of recovery. I sharply criticize myself for how I look, how I act, for my many mistakes, for operating out of fear when I want to have power over my life through faith-- and the list goes on. Most of the time, I'm not even aware of how nasty I am being to myself. It's so ingrained inside of me. It's a natural reaction. I promised myself in early 2023 that I was going to "wake up" and begin living life from my conscious mind instead of reacting to life from my subconscious mind. I broke that promise. As a result, a year that should have been the best year of my life was filled with knee-jerk, fear-based decisions that destroyed my greatest hopes for personal happiness. Since late last summer, I have mercilessly beaten myself up over the disaster I created. But now, I've decided it's time to stop. In Christian churches we are in the season of Lent. Many denominations urge people to "give up&qu

In my recovery process I have learned that mending my brokenness requires the intention and the effort to do so. Understanding the 12 Steps and other recovery tools provides us with motivation to repair our lives. It was one of the greatest experiences of my life to be in early CODA meetings and to experience light-bulbs flashing in my head. Every meeting I gained wisdom for moving forward by listening to other CODA members share their stories. They placed words and definitions on experiences and feelings I had never known how to explain: "Fear of abandonment," "people-pleasing," "caretaker," "manipulation," "shame," "feeling not good enough," and even "self-love." Self-love was a foreign concept to me. I grew up in a very Catholic family and attended Catholic schools. Both at home and in school I was taught that self-love was bad, selfish, evil. Loving yourself was also conceited, reserved for narcissists, and oppos

Shame, guilt and addictive behaviors are all fueled by Fear. This morning I thought about all of the various ways fear has ruled my decisions, my actions, my entire sense of being. This is not an all-inclusive list. I'm sure I'll be adding more to it. But here goes... Fear led me: -to allow shame and guilt be my personal companions, 24/7. -to become alienated from my natural self. -to surrender my personal power and natural self to most everyone. “I’m your puppet.” -to please everyone in order to get their stamp of approval on my unworthy self. -to remain bound in the chains created by others so I could secure their "on-going" approval. -to shrink in shame and guilt if I said or did something to lose the approval of others. -to hide my worthless self from most everyone for fear of being ridiculed and rejected. -to manipulate anyone who offered me crumbs of attention by caretaking and people-pleasing them while neglecting my own needs. -to give up my heart's deep d

  SPEAK UP! Say what you believe! Be who you are! Forget what other people think. They have the right to live their lives as they choose, but they don't have the right to choose how YOU live your life. Only you have that right. So stop giving that right to people who think they own you. That's the lesson that exploded out of me this evening. I spent most of the day feeling deeply irrelevant and depressed. Then at dinner, I realized I have spent too many weeks recently holding myself in: passing on the things I need to say, failing to express who I really am inside, refusing to own my right to my beliefs and opinions, etc. Suddenly, as if a lightning bolt had exploded inside of me, I was done. No more engaging in self-degrading silence to keep the peace. Expressing who I am, what I believe and what I feel isn't a violation of the peace. Everyone else has that right and I refuse to deny it to myself anymore. People might not like who I really am, especially if they are used t

  Let the Love In- Sam Sparro   Do you WANT to feel loved? Do you WANT to love yourself? Do you WANT to feel the inner-warmth of being cherished for who you are? These are questions I've started asking myself. The answer to all three-- and similar questions-- is YES! But my behavior says "NO!" As addicts, we are divided against ourselves. Yes, we want to love ourselves, but then we do and say to ourselves every negative thing we possibly can. Much of the negativity  comes from our subconscious inner-tapes that keep replaying themselves, telling us “You  aren't even worthy to love yourself. Someone is going to have to come along and melt my heart— then I’ll be able to appreciate and love who I am.” I've always wanted love and I've always cringed at the idea of loving myself. Until now. Looking back, I think the COVID 19 pandemic forced me into facing myself-- after much emotional medicating-- and it forced me into facing my dark night of the soul. I've neve

    "At one point, I became sharply aware that I was largely responsible for my own alienation. Because of my extremely low sense of self-worth, I did everything in my power to keep people away." A Time to Be Free: Daily Meditations   Ten years ago, a therapist told me he had seen me at a shopping mall. He didn't approach me because he said I looked totally unapproachable. At first, I was surprised by his remark, but then I told him I was wearing my stealth face that says "I'm traumatized-- don't hurt me" mixed with my "Don't bother me" face, which is to stop store clerks from bothering me. It was my fearful way of pushing people away-- even people I'd liked to meet and know. I'm quite aware now that I wear my stealth-trauma face every time I walk out the front door. It's a face that has always projected my poor self-worth, but I feel it has now out-lived it's purpose. I still suffer from trauma but truth is no one today is