Soulshine

“In order to protect our emotional wounds, and because of our fear of being hurt, humans create something very sophisticated in the mind: a big denial system… We put up these barriers for protection, to keep other people away.” Don Miguel Ruiz , The Mastery of Love We can be in recovery for many years and wonder if we are ever going to get relationships right. Most of us have been so emotionally stunted and unavailable for so long that we have developed an intense drive for intimacy NOW. We are deflated inside and desperate to be touched, cuddled and passionate to the 100 th degree. We bounce between being depressed and being anxious about our inability to have intimacy with another person. So let’s honestly look at ourselves for a moment. If we did indeed emotionally shutdown as children, we long ago lost touch with our vast realm of God-given emotions. We have most likely spent our entire lives in-touch with two feelings: numbness and anger. If feelings of real int

“I do not want to go through life like my mother… Afraid that I am not really loved.” Cassandra Mortmain, I Capture the Castle Codependents fear never being loved. We have never loved ourselves and we have never allowed anyone else to love us. We have tried to bargain with others for love, we have tried to earn love through caretaking and we have tried to win love through people-pleasing. And we have usually done these things with all of the wrong people; with those who were totally unavailable to give us what we so deeply, desperately longed for—Love. In recovery, we must learn to take responsibility for the inner-emptiness we have created; the loveless void we have nursed in every wrong way. We begin taking that responsibility by admitting we are powerless over our own self-hatred, over our inability to love ourselves. We surrender that inability to our support group, the universe or a Higher Power. But we can’t simply stop there and expect that now everything i

“If you were raised in a family where closeness was not a reality, you are much more prone to form an addictive relationship for two reasons: first, you were taught to distance yourself from people, not connect with them; second, growing up in this type of family left you with a deep, lonely emptiness that you’ve wanted to have filled.” Craig Nakken , The Addictive Personality I grew up in a family that was emotionally and physically distant. In many ways we were like six separate people living in the same house. We were more like strangers than a family. We greeted each other in passing, but we rarely made attempts to do much with each other. Sure, we knew each other’s temperaments, and we definitely knew how to push each other’s buttons, how to evoke drama and invent chaos. We also knew how to hide from each other. We only talked when necessary and we shared—on an emotional level-- no more than we had to, mostly out of fear of abandonment. I was too afraid to reveal t