Soulshine

I have a friend named Ted who doesn’t take good care of himself. Ted doesn’t know how to love Ted. And I think that Ted has so disassociated himself from “Ted,” that he doesn’t even realize that he’s left himself behind. Ted felt abandoned as a child. No one was there for Ted: Not mom, nor dad nor anyone. So Ted learned to abandon himself at a very young age. He left Ted behind and became whomever made “you” happy— “you” being anyone who would even acknowledge his existence. Ted became a codependent, caretaking, people-pleasing chameleon as he grew into adulthood. As an adult, Ted became very good at taking care of everyone’s needs, except his own. He’s looked after the needs of the mom and dad who were never there for him emotionally. He’s looked after the needs of friends, other family members and total strangers. But he’s never looked after Ted’s needs because he thinks the Ted he left behind isn’t worth the effort. Part of the reason why Ted has never felt worthy ...

“I spend too much time thinking and doing, I need fun, fun, fun in my life and I need life, life, life in my fun.” The Drums, I Need Fun in My Life The average codependent is seriously lacking fun in his life, much less life in his fun. Even if we’ve been in recovery for a while we can find ourselves still spending way too much time thinking and doing serious stuff that has nothing to do with our lives. After all, our lives revolved around everyone else’s life for so long. All of our focus was on the lives and problems of everyone we encountered. We searched-out drama everywhere, and when we couldn’t find any drama to fix in someone else’s life, we worked hard to create as much chaos as it took to keep us from facing ourselves and living our own lives. Where’s the fun in focusing on drama or creating chaos? Where’s the fun in focusing on everyone else’s problems 24/7? Where’s the fun in our futile attempts to fix everyone by falsely owning all of their pro...

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anaïs Nin Your life is what you make it. No one has to be a victim who holds everything in tight like a flower trapped in the perpetual darkness of fear. Being a victim, being shut-up tight inside, is a choice. And it’s a bad choice. In recent years, through recovery, I’ve chosen to give up my victim mentality. I have learned that it is far less painful to take risks, even if I fail at times; and that it’s much more rewarding and life-affirming to blossom into the light of the real world where I gain wisdom through failure—and I grow into fully being me. Life provides many doors for us to walk through and all we have to do is make the choice to walk through those doors. We can all walk through the doors to an Alano Club and into any 12 Step meeting that fits our particular recovery needs. We can also choose to walk through any educational or career door...

Codependents are very good at causing their own chaos in relationships. We love to take things the wrong way. And so we are on constant guard, waiting for everyone around us to make a misstep. We vigilantly search and wait for anyone to say something, to do something or to even look at us in a way that we can misinterpret as a personal attack on us. We’re waiting so we can scream inside—one more time—“A-ha! Another slam against me!” And we can go about our day playing martyr-- again. Why is it that we are often waiting for someone to hurt us? We say we love people and yet we are always anxiously on alert with these people we “love” just waiting to take anything they say or do in a negative way. Is this love? When we are constantly looking to judge people we say we “love” in a negative light, is this love? No it’s not. We may think we love people but we really don’t. Why? Because we really don’t love ourselves. Lack of self-love forces us to doubt that anyone else in this ...

I knew I'd see your face again. I know you have the best intentions. So I leave my heart out on the door. You knock it down just like you did before. Hold me closer than the needle. Fill the emptiness I feel. Hold me closer, I am real. I'll fill the emptiness you feel. We feel. The Lonely Wild, Closer Than the Needle No one else can “fill the emptiness I feel.” Why? Because the emptiness I feel, I created. And the same is true for everyone when it comes to inner-emptiness. We created it over many years through self-negation. Little by little we gave chunks and pieces of ourselves away through self-rejection and self-abandonment. We chewed ourselves up and spit ourselves out and left a big empty void inside of us. And NO ONE can fill up that inner-emptiness we have created—except for us. The active codependent doesn’t understand this process. First, they don’t understand that they created their own inner-emptiness. Most addicts blame others for their emp...

“If I knew how good it felt,  I would have done it a long time ago. It really felt amazing ...  It's about self-esteem and dignity at the end of the day.” Ricky Martin Pop singer Ricky Martin came out of the closet as a gay man a year or two ago. He chose to stop pretending he was someone he wasn’t. It didn’t make him any less of a man, or any less of a talented human being. It may or may not have affected his personal relationships and his career. But none of that is near as important as how it affected him in his own relationship with himself. And on a personal level he says “It really felt amazing.” He got his own self-respect back and that’s irreplaceable because no amount of success could make him happy if he wasn’t happy with himself. It makes no difference what we have been hiding from others. Maybe we’ve been keeping a secret about our sexual orientation, or our addictive habits, or a past mistake, or a personal disability. But no matter what it i...

“At least I call my soul my own. Do you?” Michael Grant, Theodora Goes Wild (1936) It’s pretty important to be able to call your soul your own. Those of us who grew up under the thumb of an overly codependent mom or dad were never allowed as children to claim our souls as our own. Our souls belonged to the parent who felt he/she had the privilege to live our lives for us by telling us who we were to be, what we were to like, what we were to believe, etc. And if we rebelled in any way, this same parent was a pro at using shame, guilt and fear to keep us in our place. I lived under my mother’s thumb until the day she died. Actually, I have still been living under her thumb to varying degrees in the 20 years since her death. She did a really good job of taking my soul away from me from the time I was born. She made it clear that I could not be who I am and that if I chose to engage in certain behaviors I was doomed to a life of misery and to eternal damnation. I understan...

“It doesn’t matter what I want. You’re telling me what’s good for me, what’s proper… You’ve been telling me since I was three years old and I’m sick of it. You’ve glared and scolded and frightened me… and now I’ll tell you something you’ll never forget: What I do is none of Lynnfield’s business. I invite the whole town to take a jump in the lake!” Theodora Lynn (Irene Dunne), Theodora Goes Wild (1936) Don’t allow anyone to judge you. Stand right up to them and retain your power by setting them straight. No one has the right to tell you who you should be, how you should live your life, what you should or shouldn’t do, what you should wear, how you should act, or who you should or shouldn’t associate with. In the film Theodora Goes Wild , Theodora Lynn (played by Irene Dunne) hits bottom with her meddling self-righteous Aunts and their equally as intrusive friends. She’s tired of dressing like a frump, acting like a dead saint and of being told who she can or...