Soulshine

It seems every day now I have to choose to take a new step beyond my comfort zone. Recovery requires us to stop playing it safe; it requires us to get out of our old ways of thinking and reacting. Recovery gives us all of the tools we need to step forward into new ways of thinking, to get back in touch with our feelings, to declare our self-worth, to move forward. One of the biggest ways to move forward is to learn to act instead of react to life. Acting requires us to think and choose an option that is healthy for us and those around us. When we react to life, we are coming from a place of internal childhood conditioning. In doing so, we perpetuate the chaos and drama we experienced as children. It feels natural, comfortable and easy, but it’s toxic. Comfortable equals stuck— stuck in our old muck. I refuse to stay stuck anymore. Every day God provides a new door to new life for us. God places the key to that door in our hands. It’s up to us to open the door and walk thro...

I’m choosing to believe I am wonderfully made by God, that I’m perfectly created despite my flaws (perfectly imperfect), and that there are blessings in every moment that are mine to experience— if I choose to do so. Choosing to accept those blessings means living in the present moment, believing I’m deserving of all that is good, and knowing I can handle anything difficult if I simply rely on my Higher Power. 2018 is different from any other year of my life because I have consciously made these choices: 1) to accept myself as I am (not as I or someone else thought I should be); to live in the present moment instead of living in my head; to feed my faith in God, life and myself while starving my fear; to look for the good in every day, instead of looking for drama and chaos; and to be grateful for all that is good and bad in my life. Being grateful for the good and bad is a huge step. I used to always focus on the negative and play the victim to the point that I was never re...

I used to find it hard to define codependency in one sentence. I knew all of the characteristics and symptoms, but I couldn’t seem to boil all of that down into a few words. Today, I can. Codependency is choosing to make another person into your false higher power or god. The alcoholic makes liquor into their false god. The overeater makes food into their false god. The shopaholic makes things into their false god. The compulsive gambler makes the turn of a card, or a role of the dice into their false god, etc., etc., etc. It’s the same with every addict, we make someone, something or some activity into our false savior. Why? Because over our entire lives we have mercilessly made ourselves feel lesser than every other person on the face of this earth. We’ve been so self-critical that, through the emotional pain we create inside ourselves, we are forced to find some sort of emotional relief. And the easiest form of emotional relief from our tattered self-worth is addictio...

Your personal happiness depends on you; mine depends on me. So many of us give away our personal happiness to the inner-critic in our own heads. We allow that voice to belittle us, insult us, demean us and violate our self acceptance and worth. Then, instead of recognizing and disempowering that voice, we turn to someone or something outside of ourselves to rescue us. We make that person, object or activity into a false Higher Power, instead of acknowledging, rejecting and taking back our own personal power from the inner-critic. Well, truth is, I created my own inner-critic, and so did you. As children, when we were criticized by adults, we learned to mimic their criticism anytime we made the same mistake and they (the adults) weren’t around to verbally assault us. We chose be be like parrots and repeat the ugly words to ourselves that adults had imposed on us. Thus we created our own inner-critics, and we’ve been feeding their lies since childhood. I no longer give any res...

People-pleasing is a primary characteristic of codependency. By people-pleasing I mean being willing to do anything for someone else’s approval. True, most everyone wants the approval of other people. But an emotionally healthy person will not bend over backwards, or lose their own identity by enmeshing in another person to totally please them. Codependents will. An unhealthy codependent will tell people they love certain movies if those people they’re trying to impress love that particular genre of film— and they will attend those very movies with the people they are trying to please, even if deep down they truly hate that genre. I used to do that all the time. Seemed most of the people I made into my false Higher powers loved blood and guts movies. I can’t stand them. But I sat through many of them to gain the approval of those people, and even lied to myself and them about how great the movie was as we were leaving the theater. Before recovery, I can’t begin to name all of ...

This quote needs to become the mantra of every codependent. Actually, it should be the mantra of anyone who is in recovery for any addiction. Once we stop seeking the approval of others, we take our personal power back over our own lives. We don’t need people in our lives who want to remake us in their image and likeness, or who want to force their beliefs and opinions on us. Anymore, I’m perfectly happy to watch that type of person “move along” right out of my life. I don’t want anyone around who thinks they have the right to judge me and force me to live my life as if I was him/her. I set boundaries. I’m me and I’m good with being me now. I don’t need to pretend to be different from my true self to please anyone, not even family members. Besides, the more we stop bending and shaping ourselves to get the approval of people who want to manipulate and change us for THEIR good, the more time we’ll have to meet people who actually accept and like us just the way we are.

Codependents are especially susceptible to being abused by charming people. This doesn’t mean that all charming people are manipulators. But there are those people who know they have a certain irresistible charm, and they’ve also learned that they can use that charm to get most anything they want.  The narcissistic “charming” person is poison to a codependent, especially to a codependent who isn’t working a recovery program. The average codependent has very poor self-love and self-worth. As a result, they are immediately enticed by anyone who shows them the least bit of interest. The narcissistic charmer inherently knows this. So it’s easy for him/her to spot a gullible person with poor self-esteem, to flatter them, show interest in them and even mislead the vulnerable person into believing that the charmer loves him/her. The narcissistic charmer is a master manipulator. They know that they can use their charm to get you to do most anything that they want. All...

Codependents, and others with addictive personalities, rarely focus on the positive. We focus on what’s missing, lacking or negative about ourselves and our lives. Focus is a learned behavior. Sure, there may be people who have trouble focusing due to an imbalance in their brain chemistry. But so many of us who grew up in addictive households watched and listened to the behavior and words of our parents: behaviors and words that so often were focused on our parents poor self-love, lack, insecurity, negativity and longing for what they couldn’t have in life. I certainly grew-up ALWAYS focused on the negative— on my every personal flaw, on the flaws of others, and on the massive negativity of the world that surrounded me. Recovery has taught me to focus on the positive. And it’s really true: the more we focus on the good, the better the good gets. And, in the process, the smaller the bad becomes. The more I focus on thinking positive, even in the face of adversity, the more I ...

Actually, I think a better spin on the above quote would be “your self-respect and self-worth never depend on another person.” Why? Because codependents make another person into their Higher Power, just like alcoholics make liquor into their Higher Power. And when we are constantly choosing people— mostly toxic people— to be our false Higher Power we generally make the mistakes listed below: We hand over all of our self-worth and we’ll-being to another person, then we start manipulating, or trying to change them into making us happy (instead of being responsible for our own happiness), we forgive them over and over every time they lie to or abuse us in other ways, because we trust their words while ignoring their actions, and we go running back to them over and over because we have become so addicted to our need for their approval.  In recovery we learn that we don’t need anyone’s approval, especially a toxic person’s, except our own. Recovery teaches us to turn ou...

The more I choose to accept and feel good about my REAL self, the happier I feel. I was just walking to dinner when I thought “I love me,” and a smile rose across my face like a sunrise. That’s never happened before. Last week, I happened across an old song from 1979 called “Makin’ It.” The song was recorded by actor David Naughton ( American Werewolf in London ), and peaked at No. 5 on the Billboard Hot 100 . The lyric made me feel great inside: “Makin' it, oo makin' it I'm solid gold I've got the goods They stand when I walk Through the neighborhoods I'm makin' it I've got the chance, I'm takin' it No more, no more, Fakin' it This time in life, I'm makin' it Makin' it Hello uptown, goodbye poverty The top of the ladder is waiting for me I'm makin' it, I've got the chance, I'm takin' it No more, no more fakin' it This time in life, I'm makin' it Makin' i...

I was watching “The Five Senses” last night which intertwines the lives of five different people, living in Toronto, through the five different senses. After watching the film, I thought about the  book “The Four Agreements” by Don Miguel Ruiz. My primary focus throughout the film was on the characters played by Marco Leonardi (Roberto) and  Mary Louise Parker (Rona). Apparently, Roberto is someone Rona met in Italy, and he’s flying into Toronto. Rona is in love with him, but she doesn’t fully trust him. She has this fear that he’s only interested in her to marry her and thus gain citizenship. At first, we don’t know whether her assumption is valid or not. My spin on the relationship is that Roberto genuinely loves her. We aren’t given any reason as to why he would want to flee Italy and stay in Toronto. And he goes so far as to engage an Italian female friend to help him decorate Rona’s apartment in the most romantic of ways, complete with dozens of candles, to expres...