Soulshine

  ”You won't say you have a problem, But it feels like you want SOMEONE… I should've guessed that you would only ever hurt YOURSELF I should've guessed, ain't nothing that I could do would stop YOU ” RAC featuring Speak, I Should Have Guessed (2014) We often want to stop those we love from hurting themselves.   A sibling, or a friend or an adult child is hooking up with someone who is toxic for them. We see all of the red flags, but our loved one is totally clueless. So what do we do? In recovery we learn to get out of the way. We learn to separate our lives and our problems from those of others. And we learn that we can’t save anyone from themselves. If a friend is suddenly gaga—and seemingly clueless-- over a man who is recently divorced, between jobs and liking his Corona, we may feel our stomachs churning for this friend. All of the red flags are waving like crazy before our eyes, while the words coming from our friend’s lips are “I think he’...

The relationship between thoughts and feelings is interesting. Some thoughts evoke appropriate feelings and some don’t. It seems natural that negative thoughts are going to evoke negative emotions, right? I mean it’s pretty hard to be beaming with joy when we have a head filled with angry thoughts. The moment angry thoughts enter our consciousness, they are going to produce angry feelings. But it doesn’t always work this way. For example, I directed a retreat recently where I managed to give my personal power away to a negative person. The retreat was actually going smoothly. Everyone was participating and everyone seemed to be “getting it,” except for this one person. I had the sense that maybe this person was on the wrong track, and that seemed to be confirmed the next morning when he returned the book I’d recommended to our bookstore for a refund. Sometimes this happens. Occasionally, there will be a person who reads what they needed into a retreat description, instead...

“Yeah, tired of chasing old dreams, tired of wasting days Tired of waking mornings just to wait for you till late Tired of searching high, tired of getting low Tired of listening hard just to wait for you to know that I want you in everything In everything, in anything I do When will you make my phone ring And tell me I can't give you anything Anything at all now?” Deacon Blue, When Will You Make My Telephone Ring? (1988) One of the darkest days of my life involved being laid-off from a job. It was devastating, totally out of the blue. I never felt so numb in my life. Denial kicked-in, but it couldn’t mask the obvious questions that still ached through my mind: What am I gonna do? How will I pay my bills? What if I can’t find another job any time soon? I felt empty and void inside as I headed home that day. I was in a fog and felt like I was moving through each moment in slow motion. Once I got home, I flopped down into a chair and stared at my telephone...