Soulshine

It’s best to choose to leave the resentments of 2017 behind us today, on this final day of the year. Some of us have been through difficult relationships this year that didn’t end well. Some of us are still holding on to resentments from past years that have become grudges. And often times we are stuck because we are still expecting apologies we never received. I’ve heard many people say “I’ll never forgive him (her) until they beg me for forgiveness.” I used to say the same thing, but Recovery has taught me that holding on to a resentment, in hopes of receiving an apology, is detrimental to no one aside from myself. I would often like to receive an apology from someone who was rude, abusive or who betrayed me in some way. But I no longer EXPECT to receive one; nor do I place limits on my ability to forgive by accepting what I cannot change. If someone has no intentions of apologizing, or is simply unable to do so because they are too wounded inside themselves, I can’t force t

“God grant me serenity to accept the things I cannot change.” These are among the most essential words in Recovery. For years, those of us with addictive or compulsive personalities have fought reality. We wanted whatever we couldn’t have. We wanted it, or him/her, and we wanted it NOW. It made no difference if reality was telling us we could not have what we so desperately wanted. It made no difference if reality was telling us we were powerless to change the unchangable. We were determined to have it our way— and we were just as determined to be miserable every time we hit our heads against reality’s impenetrable wall. We told ourselves “I can’t (or won’t) be happy until I have Mr or Ms Right, or a new job, or more money, or complete freedom from anxiety, or my kids living their lives the way I think they should be.” We placed our demands on life and set limitations on our own happiness. We created almost every second of misery we experienced. When we refused to face reali

As the Holiday Season continues and we prepare to enter the New Year, we all have a choice: We can focus on all of our fears and disappointments over the past year, or we can focus on all we have to be grateful for over the past year. We can also choose to focus on the good in every moment that leads up to 2018– or we can focus on all that is negative in the moment and on our unfulfilled expectations. The choice is truly ours. And it’s absolutely true that we get what we focus on. Negative thoughts produce more negative thoughts, and all of those negative thoughts produce negative emotions, including depression. Every day I focus more and more on finding the positive in every moment, which keeps me from ruminating in my head and remaining stuck in my lifetime pattern of negative thinking. The more I focus on the positive, the more I change my habitual default into negative thoughts. As a result, I have never felt so content in my whole life. My negative feelings are daily lo

This quote is so true. All of my life I’ve struggled because I wanted what I wanted and I wanted it NOW. I never really appreciated what I did have, and so I always wanted more. And I wanted things to be my way— or else. There was no alternative. If I really wanted something, from a new sleek figure to a new stereo to a lifetime lover, I had to have it. No was not an option and neither was happiness— until I got what I wanted. Recovery’s first lesson to me was Step One: I am powerless over (fill in anything here) and my life has become unmanageable. And the Serenity Prayer continued to build on the lesson: God grant me serenity to ACCEPT the things I cannot change. For the first time in my life I realized that I wasn’t solely in charge. God, or my Higher Power, was in control and so I needed to relinquish my insistence on being in control by admitting I was truly powerless over much of life— and over every other person. Thanks to my Recovery work (therapy, spiritual self-hel

It’s the Holiday Season; a time when those who celebrate Christmas are supposed to be happy, happy, happy. But many people aren’t happy. This can especially be true for those of us with addictive personalities. Too often, our inner-emptiness gets in the way of being happy like we’re supposed to be. Over my life, I’ve spent many a Christmas focusing on what was missing from my life: a romantic partner (one who could love me into being happy, of course), friends, parents who could love me for who I am, a better job, not being thin enough, not being handsome enough, not being personable enough, etc. So, I spent those Christmas holidays being miserable over what I DIDN’T have. I CHOSE to moan and groan and play poor miserable me. But not anymore. This year I’m choosing to focus on the positives. I’m loving myself better, being more the REAL me (and learning that the right people like the real me), being grateful for how generous people are to me, being grateful for friends, for f

Be who you are. This is a primary lesson of Recovery programs. Most of us with addictive personalities have been running from who we are since childhood, when we first got the message that being ourselves wasn't "good enough." Well, Recovery teaches us we are good enough just as we are. And that we need to accept ourselves, faults and all, instead of trying to be false, shiny, plastic images of our true selves. Owning our true identities means we have to reprogram our thoughts about ourselves. Recovery helps us to weed-out the lies we learned to believe about ourselves and to nourish the flowers that are waiting to grow in our souls. It also means that we have to face and accept all of our feelings. As Stephen C. Paul says in his book Illuminations , "Emotions pass like clouds across the sky. They're to be noticed, accepted, acknowledged and allowed to flow on."  Accepting our difficult feelings is essential to accepting our true selves. Som

As a codependent I’ve spent much of my life WAITING for someone else to bring me flowers, or rather, to MAKE me happy. I had decided I couldn’t be happy being me, so there was no way for me to make me happy. So my happiness became someone else’s responsibility. I wanted someone to rescue me from horrible me. Sounds like an old Disney movie, doesn’t it? From Snow White to Cinderella, the story line is basically the same: Helpless person, who can’t ensure their own happiness, needs a prince or princess to rescue them, to MAKE them happy— ever after! Recovery has taught me real life doesn’t work that way. It works like this: I have to relinquish all of my reasons for feeling inferior and hating myself. I have to work at accepting me just as I am. Self-acceptance leads to self-love over time. When I’m having difficulties in accepting and loving myself— in tending the garden of my own soul— I need to place what I can’t do for myself into the hands of a Higher Power. My Higher Pow

I am constantly telling people “practice being kind to yourself. The kinder, and less critical, you are to yourself, the kinder and less critical you will be of others.” And it’s so true. We addicts/codependents can be very critical people and very judgmental. It becomes a pattern of thinking we use against ourselves and eventually it spills out onto everyone around us. Through Recovery I’ve learned that my thoughts and beliefs create my reality. Reality rarely creates my thoughts or beliefs. When I live in my head, instead of living in the present moment, I create my own “reality,” a false one. Miserable thought builds on miserable thought until I am an anxious, frustrated, sad, miserable mess emotionally. That used to be my only way of life. Recently, I’ve trained myself to become more focused on the actual, true reality around me. Now, if I turn on some favorite music, I actually listen to the songs and enjoy them. In the past, I’d turn on some favorite music and barely hea

Codependents tend to be rescuers. At some point we developed the idea that we are the savior of most everyone in our lives. Certainly in my own codependency, I have been a master of care taking other people, attempting to fix all of their problems, doing difficult things for them that they should have been doing for themselves, and ultimately attempting my best to save them from themselves and their own addictive behaviors. Even after 22 years of recovery work, I can still fall into the “I am the Savior trap.” So I am learning to draw a fine line between helping someone vs. attempting to save them. First off, I know for fact that I can’t save, or even help someone who refuses to first help him or herself. When someone isn’t acknowledging their addiction, or they are balking at working their Recovery program, I see their behavior as a big red flag. The same is true if someone is constantly blaming other people for all of their problems or for the fact that they have addiction pro

Want to scare an addict to death? Offer them true, unconditional love. Every addictive person longs to be loved, and yet everyone of us is terrified of real love. We didn't experience it as children, and so when we meet someone who offers authentic love to us, we're terrified. We don't have the ability to believe or trust that it's authentic. This reality is captured wonderfully in a new song by The Neighbourhood called Scary Love : "Don't wanna be alone, (but) you're too pretty for me. Baby, I know it's true, yeah... Your love is scaring me. No one has ever cared for me as much as you do." Before Recovery, whenever someone offered me the real love that I so desperately wanted, I was terrified and subconsciously found ways to push the person away. I always managed to force them to abandon me because I was too broken inside to believe or trust that anyone could actually love me. After all, I DIDN'T love me, so why would anyone else

Perfectionism is a big problem for many people, especially for addicts. So many of us are hard on ourselves because we can't be perfect. We spend our whole lives wearing masks: make-up, latest hairstyles, designer clothes, etc. We also wear the masks of being on our best behavior, of hiding our fears behind achievements at work, or of trying our best to be popular at social events. Our entire lives are wrapped-up in jumping through hoops to please others and make ourselves acceptable. As a child, I was told by my mother that I had to be perfect or people wouldn't accept or like me. It became a mandate in my childhood mind that grew into a mental/emotional monster as I grew into adulthood. Rachel Platten has a new song, Perfect for You , that truly hits the nail on the head. Here are some of the lyrics:   “I'm flawed, I'm flawed, I know this,  You like me in small doses,  What am I supposed to do with that?  Yeah, yeah, oh oh…A nd it's true,  I can'

Many of us suffer from frozen hearts. We are insensitive to ourselves and to others. We talk about the fact that we never seem to experience the presence of God, or our Higher Power, and that we rarely feel truly loved by God, or others. But the problem is not with our Higher Power, or with other people. The problem lies within us. As children, so many of us froze our hearts to survive in our chaotic toxic home environments. And we grew into adults without realizing that we had long ago frozen our own hearts. Recovery has made me aware of how frozen my heart has been since age four or five. And I still suffer from a frozen heart, in many ways. Rarely do I actually feel the authentic love of God for me. Intellectually I know God loves me, and everyone, but emotionally, I don’t FEEL that love. So I’ve started praying for God to thaw my heart in ways that I have not been able to do myself. In the film Frozen, the troll king tells Anna “Only an act of true love can thaw a frozen

I have a hard time forgiving myself. Part of the problem may have to do with my codependency and the fact that, as a child, I was led to believe that I was fundamentally bad. My parents didn’t make a distinction between the person and the behavior. It was never a matter of you’ve done something bad, but I still love you. It was simply you are bad. It was never simply a matter of you’ve made a mistake. It was all about you are a mistake. My Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) undoubtably contributes to the problem of often feeling like a bad person to this very day. When I make a mistake, or am lax about doing something by the rules, or am tired of dealing with everyone else’s problems and place them on the back burner, I feel bad and guilty— obsessively. It’s a horrible feeling in my gut. It feels like death wrapping its boney fingers around my heart and squashing me from within. It’s actually how I feel today. And the difficult thing is that, although I’m guilty of negative t

Ever find yourself in a good mood and then had one bad thought pop into your head that became a raging river of bad thoughts? I have. At any moment I can go from feeling peaceful or happy to feeling miserable— All because of one negative, fearful, self-degrading thought that snowballed. Critical self-thoughts and self-judgments account for most of our “over-thinking” misery. Over-thinking seems to be the new buzz phrase. For codependents and other addicts over-thinking leads to endless negative self-talk. Combined, the two (over-thinking and negative self-talk) are the perfect combination for emotional misery. And, of course, emotional misery is the trigger for addictive behaviors. We engage in our addictive behaviors, we “act-out” when we are in desperate need for a mood enhancer: Something that can help us escape the emotional misery our negative thoughts and self-talk have evoked. The problem with this form of escapism is that it’s false. Acting-out with alcohol, people

Recovery is all about choosing to “DO SOMETHING” about our lives when we don’t like them. It’s about deciding we are responsible for our own happiness. It’s about choosing to be responsible enough for ourselves to make the necessary changes to make our lives better. Recovery is about doing, letting go of what we can’t do, and trusting that others can help us, including our Higher Power. Life is always a partnership. We can only do so much to make our lives worth living. And what we can’t do for ourselves, we have to entrust to God or our personal Higher Power. I remember back in the 1980s when I was wanting a new job. I prayed and prayed and nothing happened. Then I realized 1) that I didn’t really believe God wanted to help me (I wasn’t worth God’s concern); and 2) that I wasn’t hustling to get every job interview that I possibly could. Part of me didn’t expect God to help me, and the other part of me thought God should just magically drop the right job out of the sky for me!

Codependents primarily hurt others through the codependent’s insatiable need to control other people’s lives. A codependent thinks that someone else, aside from themselves, should be responsible for the codependent’s happiness. The primary means of control for a codependent is manipulation of the other person. Manipulation can take on many faces, like people-pleasing, caretaking, shaming, withdrawal of affection, or using guilt. Sometimes codependents control others by using phrases like “I’m only doing this for your own good,” which actually means “I’m only doing this for MY own good.” Or “If you really loved me, you’d do this or that for me,” which actually translates into “If I really loved myself, I’d do this or that for myself, instead of trying to manipulate you into being responsible for MY happiness.” The codependent person is an emotionally hurting person. And it’s really true that hurting people hurt other people; often times without realizing that they are doing so.

Functional communication is essential to every relationship. I grew up in an alcoholic household where we never really learned to communicate with each other. It wasn't OK for me, as a child or a teenager, to speak my own truth, have my own opinions or voice anything unless it echoed my parents. I also learned to make assumptions instead of inquiries. For example, someone in the family aimed a comment toward me, and instead of learning to ask "What did you mean by that?", I learned to assume they meant the worst and to quietly take it shame-faced on the chin. I also learned to have unrealistic expectations of others without voicing them. People were supposed to somehow know (mind reading?) that I had these expectations, and when or if they didn't live up to my expectations, I learned to give them the cold shoulder, or silent treatment. There was no possible hope of actually understanding anyone in my family, much less coming to positive terms over our mi

Here is a recent photo of me at Disneyland, talking with Captain America. In the United States, we have had a longtime fascination with Super Heroes. In many ways, I think these heroes have become representations of the God (Higher Power) that none of us can visually see.  Many people claim to live by faith in a God, or Higher Power that they cannot visually see or verbally talk with in their daily lives. We, as recovering addicts, claim that we believe in a "Power greater than ourselves who can restore us to sanity." And yet we often want that Higher Power to rescue or save us from ourselves and all of the chaos in our lives. And we want that without having to do our part in making our lives manageable. Certainly, as a recovering codependent, I always looked to someone, some other person, to be my savior, or Higher Power. I wanted that person to be my Captain America, or Thor, or Wonder Woman. I wanted someone tangible that I could talk to, touch, hear and in

There may be two types of pain in this world: the type that hurts and the type that changes, but I don't think it's possible to separate the two and be mentally, emotionally and spiritually healthy. When someone betrays us, says ugly things to us, or treats us as if we don't count in this world, we experience emotional pain. Of course, these are just a few of the ways in which we may experience emotional pain. But the important lesson I've learned recently lies in what we do with that hurt. We can 1) allow it to fester into anger, resentment and bitterness. We can become the perpetual victim of another person. Or we can 2) allow ourselves to grow through that hurt and suffering. We can face all of the emotional pain it has caused and we can be transformed within by facing that pain, surrendering it to our Higher Power, talking about it  with trusted individuals and allowing ourselves to be taken to a higher spiritual level. If we choose the first option,

In the United States, today is considered Thanksgiving Day. This day is set aside every year as a day to reflect on our lives and to realize all that we have to be grateful for, and then to offer thanksgiving to God, or our Higher Power, and to the people who have blessed our lives. Often when we think about the people who have blessed our lives, we are only grateful for those people who have blessed us with enlightenment, happiness or genuine caring. On this Thanksgiving Day, I choose to also be grateful for the people who, over the past year, have taught me very difficult, pain-filled lessons. These lessons are sometimes our greatest blessings in disguise.  This is especially true if we have hurt or been hurt by someone we truly love deeply. Over the course of the past year, I realize today that some of the people I have loved the most, and have dedicated the most attention and caring toward, have hurt me the most during 2017. But, I also acknowledge that every rela

There are times when I catch myself renting out too much space in my mind to my disappointment and hurt concerning another person. It's necessary to grieve when we have been rejected, deceived or hurt by someone. We need to allow the various healing feelings (from betrayal, to a sense of loss, to hurt, to anger, to sadness) to work their ways through us so we can reach a point of attaining wisdom from what happened, acceptance of what happened, the ability to forgive what happened and move on with life. Proper grieving requires that we seek help. We need to be able to talk with trusted persons  (including therapists) about our disappointment and hurt, and we need to be able to surrender the entire situation to our Higher Power. We may also need to have a conciliatory talk with the person who hurt us and attempt to work-out our differences, or at least bring the relationship to proper closure.  Once we've reached a place of being at peace with what happened, we shou

As a recovering codependent, I’ve begun to notice the difference between people who love you for who you are and people who love you for what you do for them. Truth is we shouldn’t have to do anything to be loved by another person, aside from simply being our true selves. Whenever we feel the need to change ourselves, or to do things to please another person, we are witnessing red flags. If we notice ourselves giving up the things we really love, and taking on the interests of someone we are attracted to, this is a major red flag. These red flags have an important message for us: We have re-engaged in addictive attraction to a person who is not healthy for us. Something about this person is subconsciously reminding us of our mother or father, or some other toxic person from our past. And we are feeling the same need to please this new person that we experienced when our parents or other significant adults insisted we do the same for them when we were children. We are jumping t

Anyone who suffers from fear of abandonment doesn't even have to understand all of the lyrics to this song by Majid Jordan, "Gave Your Love Away." We can hear the chorus, feel the pain in the melody and feel the pain that it matches in our hearts. Most codependents I know, and probably a majority of addicts, suffer from fear of abandonment. Some of us were emotionally abandoned as children, and some of us were both emotionally and physically abandoned as children by significant adults in our lives-- namely our parents, or caregivers. Since that time, every relationship we have attempted to build with significant others has been subconsciously haunted by our deeply wounded inner-child; the one who suffers daily from fear of abandonment. This is one of the reasons why many of us people-please, care-take or put up with abuse from others: We are too subconsciously fearful of losing the toxic people we are now attracted to who remind us on a deep subconscious le

Many codependent relationships are built on the shaky ground of people-pleasing. We codependents find it hard to say "No" to people because we are so anxious about winning, or earning, their love and appreciation. People-pleasing often leads us into care-taking others, or doing for them what they should be doing for themselves. We start living the other person's life, instead of living our own life. I first learned the power of saying "No" back in 1998. A friend, who I was blindly people-pleasing and care-taking, finally made a fatal mistake. He had asked me to pick him up at the airport, missed his flight, and failed to call me and notify me. So I showed up at the airport to be his chauffeur, only to learn from an airline rep that he had missed his flight and was scheduled to return to Chicago on the next available flight.  Suddenly, the codependent scales fell off my eyes and I realized that I had been taking care of all of his issues, bending ov