Soulshine

Across the Western world, many people are preparing for Christmas. We are busy about looking for the perfect gift to give. And what we lose sight of is the fact that we ourselves are the perfect gift. First, there’s no better gift you can give yourself this Christmas than the gift of self-acceptance and self-love. You are enough. You don’t need any “thing” or anyone to complete you or make you OK. God has already taken care of that through the very fact that God created you and made you a gift to yourself and the world around you. The problem for so many people is that they don’t believe that they are good enough, and that all of their wholeness and happiness is resting inside of them. No matter how many times I emphasize this to people, I still find many of them searching for someone or something outside of themselves to validate them and make them OK. And these are the very people who are miserable at this time of the year because they haven’t been able to find that special...

“I don’t want to die before I live” The Ramones , Cabbies on Crack Codependents aren’t known for living their own lives. Many of us have long been focused on living someone else’s life. And some of us have been focused on living everyone’s life. Either way, our intent was to escape from ourselves by walking in the shoes of others. Yes. We walked their walk and talked their talk. We liked whatever they liked and we danced to their tunes; for within these other persons we were to find our salvation. This sounds like insanity to me now, and yet I still feel the tug, the desire, of wanting to find my fulfillment in the life of another person. I know it’s not possible. Nothing from outside of me—whether it be a person, a new car, a drug, a role of the dice or a cinnamon roll—can bring me lasting comfort. Personal fulfillment comes from within, built on the foundation of I AM who I am, of being completely me, of being spiritually one with my Higher Power. I know this is the truth...

“No day is the same as any other, and every morning holds its own special miracle, its magic moment in which old universes are destroyed and new stars created.” Paulo Coelho , Love (Selected Quotations) 2015 Codependents can be notorious for judging themselves—and others—harshly. We look in the mirror and we don’t see our authentic selves; we see all of the mean judgments we’ve made against ourselves. Then we go about our day projecting our harsh self-judgments onto most everyone else we encounter. Sometimes we can be like the Pharisees in the Gospel story about Zacchaeus. The Pharisees have already judged Zacchaeus to be a “sinner” because of his profession as tax collector for the Romans. Yet, what do they really know about Zacchaeus? Do they really know the workings of his heart? No. But more often than not, neither do we know the workings of another’s heart when we judge them harshly. Jesus Christ comes along and instead of judging Zacchaeus, he reaches out to him...

“You read something so sad Some lonely boy just went mad.” Luke Temple, Love Won’t Receive Many codependents suffer from loneliness. It’s often a self-imposed loneliness that comes primarily from self-alienation. After all, most of us abandoned ourselves when we were very young. That same loneliness is also due partly to our sometimes fierce independence. We may often enmesh in others, but at the opposite end of the spectrum we like to pretend like we don’t have any wants or needs of our own. In other words, we won’t allow anyone to help us. In between codependent relationships, many codependents are loners. We can be very independent while we’re licking our emotional wounds, and this can lead us to being lonely as well. A few years ago, while I was in the throes of loneliness, I asked my Higher Power to help me. Then I discovered a book that had a chapter on loneliness. It suggested that we ask loneliness what it has to teach us about ourselves, so I did: “Loneliness...

“I disappear into the person I love. If I love you, you can have it all: My money, my time, my body. I will assume your debts; and I will project upon you all sorts of nifty qualities you’ve never actually cultivated in yourself. I will give you all of this and more until I am so exhausted and so depleted the only way I can recover is by becoming infatuated with someone else.” From Eat, Pray, Love (Columbia Pictures, 2010) This is the best description of codependent behavior that I have ever witnessed. Many authors have attempted to define codependency, but it’s extremely difficult because codependency is so multi-faceted. But this description of codependent behavioral patterns describes my own codependency perfectly, prior to recovery, and so I’m going to dissect the quote. At the height of my codependency, I always found myself disappearing into the person I was in “love” with, or rather, that I was infatuated with. Looking back, I realize now that it w...

“Love… cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession.” Paulo Coelho , The Witch of Portobello Codependents easily associate love with possession. In many ways, this is understandable. Western society, certainly in the United States anyway, has come to associate “love” with the “possession” of things. We see a vase in a department store, we immediately “love” it and we must possess it to be happy. Or we see chocolate eclairs in a bakery window, we “love” eclairs and we must possess or have one or two to be happy. This concept of “love” and “possession” easily lends itself to the language of addiction. The alcoholic loves her vodka and she must have it to be happy, and the shopping addict loves things and he must have them to be happy. Likewise, we codependents love certain people and we must possess or have them to be happy. The big difference between these three addictions is that the alcoholic and shopaholic are “in love” with possessing things (i...

“Say you'll share with   me one   love, one lifetime...   Lead me, save me   from my solitude... Say you want me   with you,   here beside you...   Anywhere you go   let me go too -   Christine   that's all I ask of you” The Phantom , Phantom of the Opera I saw the new Broadway rendition of Phantom of the Opera last night. I always find myself initially pulling for Raoul, while empathizing with the Phantom. And it’s my empathy for the Phantom that eventually leads me to pull for him toward the end, even though I already know what the outcome will be. I realized last night that my primary reason for empathizing with the Phantom is that his story parallels my own. Since my teenage years, I’ve always seen myself as hideous to look at. This started when I developed a horrible case of teen acne that literally ravaged my face and left it terribly scarred. Coupled with my ever-growing codependency, I had little hope...

“Folks who have no vices have few virtues.” Abraham Lincoln We all know people who have no vices, or rather, who pretend to have no vices. These people tend to be self-righteous, overly-critical and extremely judgmental. These are their key defense mechanisms. And these defense mechanisms are necessary because they mask the fact that these Fake Saints do indeed have vices. Many addicts can identify with being a Fake Saint in one way or another because addiction causes us to cover our tracks through deceit. Codependents, especially those who are accommodators, are usually guilty of being Fake Saints. As Darlene Lancer notes in Conquering Shame and Codependency , “Because love is the highest ideal, an Accommodator strives to be a loving, lovable, charitable and selfless do-gooder—someone flawlessly noble and compassionate.” In other words, codependent accommodators project a false self-image in order to earn their highest ideal—love. Prior to recovery, and even s...

Last night I was watching Scared Shrekless . The first “horror” story in this Halloween movie is called “The Bride of Gingy.” And Gingy’s bride is nothing short of an overly-clingy codependent nightmare. If you are familiar with the Shrek movies, you know that Gingy is the gingerbread man. In “The Bride of Gingy,” Gingy goes to see the village baker because he is lonely and wants a sweetheart of his own. So the village baker agrees to make a gingerbread girl for Gingy. As the baker begins to mix-in the proper amount of sugar, according to his recipe, Gingy insists that the baker include 10 times more sugar than the recipe calls for using. He wants his bride to be truly sweet. Within a short time, Gingy meets his dream girl, Sugar. Suddenly we see them skipping hand in hand through flower-filled fields while the song “Happy Together” by The Turtles plays in the background. But “happily ever after” is not how this story ends. Next we see Gingy and Sugar together in his gin...

My CODA group is currently reading the book Conquer ing Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer. Recently one of the members mentioned to me that he found the book difficult to read. I believe I understand where he was coming from, although he may not yet understand that fact about what’s going on inside of himself. Often times when we find a recovery book 1) doesn’t resonate with us, or 2) is difficult to read, it is a clue as to what is really going on inside of us subconsciously. I believe in both of these instances, our denial is being unearthed and disturbed. When a recovery book doesn’t resonate with us at all, we are most likely so bound-up by our denial that the book seems totally foreign to us. We say to ourselves, “Well, this isn’t me at all” as we read about the fact that codependents engage in caretaking and other manipulative behaviors. So we put the book aside and allow it to gather dust. This has been the beginning of the story for many people who I have talked w...

Be-You-tiful: It’s the only way to be. I was watching an episode of Will & Grace last night. It was set at Thanksgiving. Will is hosting Thanksgiving dinner and he’s invited Grace, Karen and Jack. He also has a surprise dinner-guest: Jack’s mother. When Jack finds out his mother is coming to dinner, he freaks. Afterwards, Will and Grace learn that Jack has never told his mother he’s gay. For 30 years, Jack’s mom has been living in a fantasy-like world where she simply ignored all of the obvious clues that her son is gay. And Jack played along with her. Why? Because Jack believed he couldn’t be beautiful in her eyes as a gay man. He was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by her if she knew the truth. And so, as a result, Jack was never able to be “be-You-tiful,” or his true beautiful self, around his mother. Many of us have lived our lives for way too long with the same sort of terrible fear that plagues Jack in this episode of Will & Grace . We’ve exhausted o...

“I’m sorry I met someone because I know how much you hate it when I’m happy… You’re happiest when I’m miserable ‘cause then you don’t have to look at how miserable you are.” Grace Adler, Will & Grace (2002) Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and Grace Adler (Debra Messing) bounced back and forth within a love/hate friendship for eight seasons on the TV series Will & Grace . Both characters were codependently needy, and they spent many an episode trying to control or fix each other. As I was watching an episode from Season Five, the above quote really made my ears perk up. It made me think back over my life and of how I, too, was often happiest when someone I’d grown close to was miserable. It doesn’t make sense on the surface unless you understand codependent caretaking. Before recovery, I was a professional codependent caretaker. In other words, I came alive in a relationship when the other person was suffering through something they were powerless over. It gave me the ...

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , Darlene Lancer says there are varying divisions of SELF. We are all born as our REAL selves. The REAL self is who God created us to be in all of our personal uniqueness. The REAL self is authentic and whole, acknowledges and works through all of the feelings God has blessed us with, understands its desires and needs and voices them honestly, and it is spontaneous. The REAL self knows how to allow its “Yes” to be “Yes” and its “No” to be “No.” According to Lancer the REAL self makes decisions based on “internal assessments,” not the external opinions of others, without any serious inner-conflict between thoughts and feelings. The REAL self develops in children if their parents reflect their authentic real self back to them. If parents, however, are incapable of reflecting a child’s REAL self back to the child, the child will develop a DEVALUED self . Instead of being affirmed for who they are, many children are constantly reminde...

“A good scare is worth more to a man than good advice.” E.W. Howe I had a very big scare over the past week that was like hitting bottom harder than hard. My father had heart disease, so I had a calcium scan to make sure I don’t have heart issues. The calcium numbers themselves came back great, but the scan indicated a potential mass in my chest. When those words were spoken to me over the phone, my heart sank through the floor. I never expected to hear anything like this. Then my OCD went on a tear: “Oh, my God! What does “a mass” mean? Is it huge? Is it cancer? Am I going to have to have surgery? Radiation? Lose my hair? Die before I ever even truly live my life to the fullest? I never in my life have seriously thought about dying. I’ve always been amazingly healthy for an often wacked-out OCD codependent crazy (!), but now I was faced with the true reality of life and death. I turned to my Higher Power and said “Enough is enough. I’ve wasted too many years hating myself....

Codependents are infamous for engaging in enabling behaviors. These behaviors are always more about us (the codependent) than they are about the other person. We feel inferior and insecure and so we engage in caretaking—a serious form of enabling—in order to feel loved and needed by the other person. We rarely recognize the fact that our caretaking/enabling behavior hurts both us and the other person. We drain ourselves by constantly being “on call” to meet every possible need or to solve every problem of the other person. We also inhibit that person’s ability to be responsible for him/herself, and we allow them to escape all possible consequences for their own behavior or poor choices. How do we know if we are enablers? I have paraphrased a list of enabling characteristics offered by Tom Ferry in his book Life by Design . We are an enabler if we do any of the following: 1.  We worry that someone else can’t handle life situations without our help. 2. ...

“Remember, if you think something is missing in your life, it’s probably you.” Robert Holden , Shift Happens In his book The True Source of Healing , Tenzin Wangyal says “Recognizing depletion is the first step in soul retrieval—you need to know what is missing before you can retrieve it.” Most everyone who enters into a recovery program knows that there is something missing from their soul and from their life. We’ve known this, at least subconsciously, for many, many years. The problem for so many of us is that we never bothered to try and figure out what was really missing, and so we were never able to retrieve it. We mistakenly thought love from outside ourselves was missing, so we searched high and low for someone outside of ourselves to love us. We tried to squeeze love out of parents and other family members—the love we believed we deserved but never received. We bent over backwards to please them and to be their perfect little angel. When that failed to work, we soug...

“If these Christians want me to believe in their god, they’ll have to sing me better songs; they’ll have to look more like people who have been saved; they’ll have to wear on their countenance the joy of the beatitudes. I could only believe in a god who dances.” Friedrich Nietzsche In recovery it’s important to know a Higher Power, or God, who dances. We need a Higher Power who smiles when we rise in the morning, who understands when we’re frustrated, who offers empathy when we hurt inside, and who loves us no matter how bad our behavior has been throughout the day. And we need a Higher Power who will love us to sleep each night no matter how bad we may feel deep down inside about ourselves. In other words, we need a Higher Power who is ON OUR SIDE. Too many of us grew-up in households where God was a tyrant, a hanging judge; and some of us grew-up in households where there was no God at all. Either way, we never knew a God who danced with us. We never experienced an...