Soulshine

      “You don’t know all the beauty you possess inside, You just can’t see what I see in you… If you could see you through my eyes You’d see someone beautiful On the inside and outside, So beautiful you’d know how I feel You’d know how much you mean to me If you could see you through my eyes.” Kenny Lattimore, If You Could See You (Through My Eyes) Most everyone I know suffers from “blindness” when it comes to seeing their own personal beauty. So many of us suffer from self-persecution. We’ve made so many negative judgments against ourselves that we have long been blinded to the fact that we are wonderfully made. And, unfortunately, no one can tell us how beautiful we are inside or outside, and make us believe it. We have to choose to believe in our own beauty and value before we can accept anyone else’s positive evaluation of us. We have to look past our negative self-judgments and choose to love the REAL person that we are underneath all of those harsh ju

    It’s that time of the year again. The parties and shopping are well underway and so is the urgent need to be happy. Christmas has always been a difficult time for me mentally and emotionally. It’s the one season of the year in which everyone desperately wants to feel loved; and yet many of us who grew up in dysfunctional households don’t know how to accept love, or allow ourselves to be loved. We didn’t receive the love we needed as children and consequently we never learned to love ourselves. This is the real problem. Recovery has taught me much about me and self-love. Looking back now, I see that over the many years and Christmas seasons of my life I was in fact loved by many people. But I never acknowledged that love because I didn’t have the inner-tools to accept that love. I didn’t know how to accept it because I didn’t know how to love and accept myself. So I learned to play the victim of the holiday season. I ached inside and moaned and groaned to myself every Chri

Recovery has taught me the difference between codependent love and authentic love. And the difference is eye-opening. For most of my life, all I knew was a codependent love; one in which I “loved” others for the sole purpose of being loved back by them. This codependent love I experienced was filled with anxiety, neediness, insecurity, manipulation, fear, unreasonable expectations, fear of abandonment and the constant urge to cling desperately to the person I “loved.” It was horrible. And it was not love. Love and codependence cannot coexist with each other. They are polar opposites. If we reach out to others from a deep, dark needy emptiness within ourselves, it is not love we are attempting to share. It’s a desperate cry for intimacy, for a sense of belonging with another person, but it is not love. It is codependence. And codependence always has strings attached. It is strictly self-serving. Authentic love flows freely. It does not arise from a deep, dark, needy place

God helps those who help themselves is a very old adage, and it’s very true. No one can help us in our recovery until we are first willing—and determined—to help ourselves, not even God. Why? Because no one can do for us what we must do for ourselves. A good therapist can listen and empathize with us, and can point us in the right direction. A good sponsor can also listen and empathize and provide us with important tools to aid us in our recovery. And a good support group can provide us with a sense of belonging and with new self-awareness. But we will fail miserably if we expect that they should do more for us. Many people enter recovery and expect to be taken care of by others. They either have no understanding of self-care or they have no intentions of doing it. Instead, they think that they need only whine, cry and demand that others do their recovery for them. But recovery does not work this way. Recovery only works when we realize that we have one life to live and

I spent the last two weeks of October on vacation in Los Angeles. Every year I go and spend time with my roller-coaster buddy, and I was expecting to do the same this time; but it didn’t work out that way. When I arrived, I learned that he would only be available to me for a day. Before recovery, I would have gone into a terrible tailspin at this point. The fatalist in me would have been devastated and the victim in me would have taken over immediately: “Oh, woe is me! My whole vacation is ruined before it’s even started! Nobody loves me! I might as well go back home! Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoooooooooooooooooooo!” But it didn’t happen that way this time. Sure I was initially disappointed and I allowed that disappointment to be present. But I was also aware of my expectations and I wasn’t about to give my personal power away to them or the disappointment. Sure, I expected that my friend should be available to me. But I no longer allow such expectations to spoil my happiness. Af

I’m currently working on a new retreat I call Creating Kindness , and in the process, I’ve realized that there’s one important character defect that keeps us from being kind—and it’s bitterness. I’ve learned that, on a subconscious level, I still have a great deal of unresolved bitterness that causes me to be resentful. And when I’m unconsciously motivated by bitterness, it’s really hard to be kind—to myself or others. Looking back, I realize that this hidden bitterness has been haunting me for a long time. I can look back 30 years to family gatherings where I wanted to be open and happy and enjoy myself, but couldn’t. Why? Because a huge wall of bitterness surged forward inside of me. It was screaming “You can’t be happy! You’re angry with these people and the hurt they’ve inflicted on you! Show them how miserable they’ve made your life!” And so I did. I moped and sat quietly at family gatherings, refusing to participate in any healthy, happy way. The bitterness was overwhelming

Feelings can be fabulous and feelings can be a nightmare. Those of us with addictive personalities have had a lifetime of struggle with our feelings. For the most part, I’m used to allowing my feelings to walk all over me. I’ve allowed myself to be powerless against the weight of fear, anxiety, sadness, etc. But recently I learned that I have great positive power when it comes to my feelings. In July I switched my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) medication from Zoloft to Prozac. It was a rough transition that left me feeling frightened and anxious a good deal more than I am accustomed to feeling. The doctor and I finally worked out a proper dosage for me and I seemed to be adjusting well when one morning I woke-up and I felt extremely frightened. I got up, made some breakfast, sat down and said to myself “Enough is enough! I’m sick to death of feeling frightened and anxious! I refuse to continue to be a hostage to my feelings! I refuse to feel anxious today!” Within a mat

In her book Toxic Parents , Susan Forward says that many adult children of alcoholics “subconsciously find ways to punish themselves with various emotional and physical symptoms” like headaches, gastrointestinal problems, etc.” This certainly rings true for me. Both my codependency issues and my obsessive-compulsive disorder have caused many psychosomatic physical problems for me. Looking back over my life I can pinpoint many times when I had physical problems that made no sense. My first ever panic attack happened when I was in my early twenties. I was in our den at home watching television when suddenly I felt warm, then I started having chest pains and difficulty breathing. I thought I was having a heart attack, which made no sense to me since I was so young at the time. After I calmed down, the symptoms eased. A few months later, I went to bed one night and felt short of breath. Breathing became more and more difficult, and no matter how hard I breathed-in, I couldn’t se

Sometimes in CODA meetings we allow ourselves to be bothered by someone else who attends the same meeting. We then fixate on that person until we decide that we aren’t going to the meeting anymore because that person bothers us. This is a cop-out on our behalf. It is actually our subconscious choice to ditch recovery in favor of relapsing.                          Why? Because no one can truly bother us unless we choose to allow them to do so. The first recovery lesson we receive In Step One is that we are “powerless over other people.” It’s the addictive part of us that wants to control and change other people to please ourselves. If I am bothered by someone in a meeting it’s because I’m refusing to admit that I am powerless over them. If something about them bothers me, I am choosing to let it bother me. And if I’m thinking about leaving the meeting permanently because of them, then I am plotting my own exit because I’d really rather be at home vegging out in from of the televi

“What can you buy That lifts a heavy heart to the sky? What makes your day? What miracle of life Has come to stay? A taste of love.” New Order , Restless (2015) New Order is one of my favorite ‘80s bands. When I heard the first lines of their new song Restless (“What can you buy that lifts a heavy heart to the sky?”), it was a wake-up call for me. All of my life I have sought to lift my heavy heart through buying things. For the most part, I was trying to fill-up the spiritual emptiness I felt inside from never having good healthy relationships. Anytime a relationship was souring, I’d head to the Mall, or the record store or to Amazon.com to lift my heavy heart. And everything I purchased seemed so essential at the time. It was if I had to have all of these things or I would die. It was like taking a drug to help me escape all of the empty, horrible feelings that were driving me to destruction. But the truth is that there is NOTHING you can buy that will trul

“We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?” Book of Job As a codependent with a victim mentality, I have always focused on the bad, or evil, in my life. Everything happened to me. If something could go wrong it did. Or did it? A lesson recovery has taught me is that when we’re always expecting troubles, we will find them, or they will find their way to us. Part of my problem with bad things happening to me is that I never wanted to accept them, so I moaned and groaned or I fought them. It never occurred to me that maybe I should just accept the bad things, acknowledge that I was powerless over many of them, surrender them to my Higher Power and look for ways to move forward. It was just easier to sulk and feel sorry for myself. Of course, I also thought that playing poor pitiful me would elicit attention from others who would then comfort poor me and take care of me. Was that hope every truly realized? No. Seeking sympathy never really worked to any gre

Heaven knows that the thought process for many addicts is seriously flawed. Many of us learned to engage in negative thought patterns like “all or nothing thinking,” “overgeneralization,” “discounting the positive” and “jumping to conclusions.” Let’s examine some of these to see just how they negatively impact our lives. Most of us probably understand “all or nothing thinking” as “black and white thinking.” When we engage in this mental process, we back ourselves into very small corners. I used to trap myself into being an instant failure with this very limited way of thinking. For example, I was an English/Creative Writing major in college. My career has always involved writing. And it used to be that if I found a typo in something I had written, I was devastated. It made no difference to me how brilliant or well-written my work was, because a single typo could rend the entire work worthless due to my all or nothing thinking. Obviously, this took a serious toll on my self-worth

In his book The Power of Kindness , Piero Ferrucci speaks of “the soul wound.” Coined by Thomas Yeomans, the soul wound is “what we feel when as children we are not seen for who we are—a soul full of marvelous potential for love, intelligence and creativity—but instead perceived as a difficult, headstrong child, or a lovely showpiece, or as a great nuisance—or not seen at all.” Those of us who grew-up in addictive households known the pain of the soul wound and it is something that we have carried with us into adulthood and into the rooms of recovery. This is the primary wound that our inner-critics zero in on. It’s the wound that bleeds with the belief that we are a nuisance, or worthlessly stupid, or hopelessly unlovable. And it fuels the merciless voices of our inner-critics. I’m often amazed at how active my inner-critic is every day. When it isn’t hammering me, it is hammering someone else in the same manner in which it hammers me—shamelessly. More and more I am aware of

Kindness has become my theme for 2016—and maybe for life. Being kind is something that I have struggled with mostly because I have been so unkind to myself for as long as I can remember. No one has been meaner to me than I have. Sure, there have been many mean and hurtful people in my life, but I have only had to face one of them 24/7—and that’s me. People come to me daily with their problems and I quickly pick-up on their self-effacing language: “If only I weren’t so stupid…” “I’m such a lame-brain…” and “I can never get anything right…” are just a few of the side-comments people make while talking. I don’t think most of them even realize how much they belittle themselves with negative statements. I honestly believe that if we want to have a good relationship with others, we must start by first having a good relationship with ourselves. This means we have to start befriending ourselves through words and acts of self-kindness. We need to catch are selves when we say somet

Anyone in recovery is most likely suffering from the wounds caused by toxic parents. Toxic parents are those who shame, belittle, embarrass, humiliate and abuse their children. Abuse can include mental, emotional, physical and sexual. Many of us, when we first enter recovery, are inwardly blind to the fact that our parents were indeed toxic. We say things like “Oh, sure my Dad beat me sometimes, but it was for my own good,” or “Yeah, my Mom used the silent treatment and withheld affection to get what she wanted from me, but she was just doing it for my own good.” We use denial to minimalize the painful and damaging treatment we received from our parents. Recovery is all about getting past the denial. Pain is pain. Suffering is suffering. There’s no minimalizing it. When I first entered recovery and heard other people’s stories I often said to myself “Well, I never suffered anything that bad.” In doing so I minimalized and continued to repress my inner-pain. I lied to myself a

Recovery is never short-term. There is no vacation from recovery. It’s a minute by minute, day by day, lifetime process. If we continually think of addiction as an emotional disease, we can better monitor our recovery. Addiction is all about emotional medicating. We can be sailing along through our day and all is good. Then suddenly someone makes a comment that hits on an old unhealed emotional wound from childhood, and we nosedive into being a shamefaced five year old. The feelings we experience seem unbearable so we order a Martini, or we make a quick stop by the bakery, or we head to the shopping mall or casino, or we return to work and drown the pain in busyness. Prior to recovery, we didn’t understand that there were certain emotional triggers that sent us into addictive acting-out. Now that we know, we have to practice vigilant awareness. It helps by being able to identify our discomfort. First off, we need to acknowledge that the discomfort is emotional. Second we

I live and breathe 12 Step spirituality and I am never ashamed of it. I willingly tell people that I was raised in an alcoholic home, that I wrestle with codependency and other addictive issues and I am NOT ashamed. I acknowledge my personal baggage, I own it and I work at taking my power back from it. That is something to be proud of. I remember the first day I learned from a therapist that I suffered from an addictive personality, specifically codependency. I asked myself “Should I tell others? What if people put me down or abandon me because of it?” Then I realized that these were shame-filled, fearful thoughts. So I thought “Seems to me that shame has always been the real problem. If I am ashamed of being codependent, I will hamper my recovery, so I chose right now to be proud and grateful that I am helping myself.” And I decided to tell others. That was 1995, and I have never looked back with regret. Most every recovery group title ends with “Anonymous,” and that’s OK. B

“Your destiny is not just to find love; it is to be the most loving person you can be.” Robert Holden, Loveability As an active codependent (for most of my life), I failed miserably at being the most loving person I can be. And even as a recovering codependent over the past 20 years, I have still failed at understanding and thus knowing how to be a truly loving person. To me love has always been about giving of myself to get something back from others. Love, as it was modeled for me as a child, was something you earned. It was the great pay-off; like receiving a paycheck for doing a good job at work. I watched my mother earn the love of everyone around her by looking after all of their needs and doing, doing, doing for everyone. She only stopped doing if she didn’t get her paycheck (the love from others she thought she had earned). If someone didn’t love her for all she was doing, then she’d withhold her love (doing) until they showed some sort of remorse and renewed apprec

“Who am I to judge?” Pope Francis Codependents, like most all addicts, spend a great deal of time playing prosecutor, judge and jury. Most of our attention is focused on ourselves. This is actually one situation where we do focus our attention on us—unfortunately. When it comes to negative energy, we have an abundance of it for ourselves. We are critical, merciless and unforgiving with our every fault or failing. Of course, this pattern of negative behavior causes us eventually to be just as easily critical, merciless and unforgiving towards others. I’ve come to believe that the people in this world who are most critical of others must either be codependent/addictive thinkers, or those who are totally obsessed with following rules, or both. And I’d like to see this all change. We need to make this world a kinder place. That means that we need to focus on being kind to ourselves, first and foremost. Once we can empathize with ourselves, we will stop being so self-criti