Soulshine

Wouldn’t it be great if our brains had on/off switches that allowed us to turn off all negative thoughts? Great? It would be awesome. Almost all of my personal misery is produced by negative, obsessive-compulsive thoughts that I often cannot control. I realize that, as a safety mechanism, I learned as a child to live inside my head. The real world, and so many of the people in it, wasn’t safe. Living in my head seemed safer, and it probably was until I grew into adulthood. Living in my head began to work against me in my teen years. Yes, it kept out much of the cruelty of the real world, but it also created a fearful, paranoid very small world inside of me. And because I unknowingly had Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), that world became a nightmare of compulsively reliving  bad experiences and creating imagined scenarios that were equally as unpleasant (“What if” thinking). There is a reason why animals are happier than humans. It’s true that they stay in the present...

Losing our attachment to toxic people is a great feeling. But an even better feeling comes from losing our attachment to toxic thoughts about ourselves. In recovery, I’ve found it much easier to recognize and release toxic people than I have found it to recognize and release toxic internal poisons. Toxic thoughts are so entrenched and they have so many toxic suppressed feelings attached to them. Toxic thoughts are like an endless chain-gang, and each thought has a ball and chain attached to it. The ball is the bomb-of-a-negative feeling that’s constantly imploding within us every time a certain negative thought resurfaces. I’ve been working for years to recognize my toxic, self-deprecating thoughts and to face the feelings that are attached to them. Still, I struggle to be free. Every time I think I’ve dealt with the thoughts and feelings that swirl around “not being good enough” in multiple ways, I end up bitten in the butt again. Last Saturday was great. I felt free to “fe...

I’ve never, ever been in love with my life. In loathe with my life, yes. But never in love, until now. It’s amazing how life-changing a movie and music can be when we really “get” the messages underneath the surface. On the surface, the film “I Feel Pretty” seems like another tween comedy targeting female audiences. But underneath some of the raunchy humor is a very serious message: You determine your happiness based in the choices you make and the beliefs you choose to adopt as truths; especially the beliefs about yourself. Renee (played by Amy Schumer) is a young woman who hates her outer appearance. And like so many of us, she has accepted the chains that society/family/religion place upon all of us. Renee doesn’t like her face or her larger than the “norm” body. She’s allowed the world to tell her she is unacceptable as she is— and she has chosen to believe what the world around her is saying: “You have no value if you aren’t drop-dead gorgeous and thin as a rail.” Both ...

All of my life I have projected my negative, abusive thoughts about myself onto others. I’ve long been plagued by a fear of being myself because I assumed that everyone saw me the same way I saw myself: Unlovable in every way. I thought I was a mistake who had no right to even exist. And everyone I saw, saw me in the same way. They all knew my shame, my worthlessness. Is there anyone who’s meaner, or more abusive, to you than you are? If you suffer from addictive behaviors, then the answer is obvious: No. There is no one whose nastier to you than you are. I relate. The question we need to ask ourselves now, is “Why?” Why are we so ugly to ourselves when we don’t have to be. Maybe it’s habitual for us. We’re so use to beating ourselves up that the self-abuse plays constantly through our subconscious minds. But it doesn’t have to remain habitual. Self-abuse is a choice. We can choose to accept ourselves just as we are, or we can choose to continue torturing ourselves. I have m...

"I should've guessed that you would only ever hurt yourself, I should've guessed there's nothing I could do to stop you..." I Should've Guessed , RAC featuring Speak Truthfully, in life there is NOTHING we can do to stop someone else from hurting themselves, aside from prayer. We can surrender our powerlessness over the person to our Higher Power, and we can ask our Higher Power to help that person. Our Higher Power can do what we are unable to do.  Too many codependents, even after years of recovery, still feel the need to rescue other needy people. We want to stop them from hurting themselves. We want to stop their drinking, or their drugging, or their sexually acting out, but we are powerless to do so. We feel caught between a rock and a hard place: If we try to rescue them, we will be falling back into our own codependent craziness, and if we let go of the deep desire to rescue them, we feel guilty. We feel like bad people. We don...

An underlying need for the average codependent is to meet someone who will make them OK with themselves. We all want someone who will complete us by loving us into loving ourselves. Recovery teaches us that this is an impossible fantasy. In reality, there is no prince or princess to rescue us Cinderellas/Cinderfellas from our loathsome selves. Yes. In recovery we learn this truth but we are still desperate for that special someone to love us. Well, imagine this: What if we are the special someone who needs to love us first? How about we make the effort to choose to reconnect with our past, not to punish ourselves (we’re champions at that), but to better understand how we need to start loving ourselves. Our past can point out to us the many ways in which we were deprived of the love we needed. Instead of lamenting the lack of love we received from important others (and punishing ourselves over it), why can’t we begin to love ourselves in the very ways we wanted our parents, fam...

Most every addict can agree with the above quote. The vast majority of our battles are inside our heads. Even real life battles often start off in our heads. We then project them onto the people around us and create a drama that wouldn’t have existed at all if we weren’t constantly at war with ourselves. I am constantly feeling ill-at-ease with myself. I look in the mirror and see a fat man with chicken legs. Only I see it. I know in reality I’m not fat, but when I look in the mirror I see the battle that I have constantly waged against myself. I don’t see what other people see when they look at me. The good news is that most of this self-deprivation is only in my subconscious mind today. It’s dismissed by my conscious mind. That’s a step in the right direction. But I still have to face the uncomfortable feelings that arise from subconscious thoughts. My goal is to reach the day when both my conscious mind and subconscious mind are equally on my side. I know it’s going to ta...

Every single one of us is “currently under construction.” In many ways we are like ancient buildings that took centuries to construct: Each day we are in the process of becoming complete, but we are still under construction. And we won’t truly be complete until we breathe our last breath in this life. It’s easier to be patient with ourselves— as well as being kinder— if we realize and acknowledge that we are continually works in progress. So many of us demand complete perfection of ourselves as if we were created complete and whole at birth. We were NOT! Becoming complete is a lifetime growth process, and becoming perfect is a twisted fantasy. We will never be perfect. No one ever will be. The sooner we accept this fact, the sooner we gain serenity because realizing perfection is impossible allows us to finally grow comfortable in our skin. Instead of counting flaws today, how about we count the ways we have grown in recovery? Recently I’ve had to learn to stand up to bullies....