Self-Acceptance is the Doorway to Self-Love


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If You’re Unhappy, This May Be Why

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I’ve spent most of my life trying to make other people happy because I felt responsible for their feelings. And the above quote is spot-on true. I’m the one person who’s not been happy, as a result. We are not responsible for other people’s feelings. We aren’t their savior. They are responsible for their feelings and we are responsible for ours. Yes, we can express empathy and compassion for others, but we need to stop taking on their feelings and problems as if they are our own. They aren’t. Another person’s problems and feelings affect us indirectly. Our own problems and feelings affect us directly. If we are feeling directly responsible for another person’s feeling/problems, there is something wrong with us. In other words, if a friend is going through a divorce, that is their problem; not ours. If we feel responsible for solving their problem, or for owning their feelings to the point of neglecting our own problems and feelings, we are trapped in codependent caretaki...
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No One Can Calm Your Codependent Crazies, But You

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Ah, the codependent crazies. Those needy, needy feelings. I remember well the deep emotional pain in the pit of my stomach: The throbbing sting of shame, fear, loneliness and anxious desperation. Those feelings that are like fingernails on the blackboard of your soul. They eat you alive from within as they dig deeper and deeper into the black hole of your inner-emptiness. Yes, I remember them well. And I remember evenings of mental and emotional insanity-- squirming with a magazine, pacing back and forth, indulging in chocolate, chasing up and down the stairs hoping the doorbell would ring, and staring endlessly at the telephone for a sign of hope. All I needed was a call from my false higher power; a call that would help me to know that I was OK, that I was needed, that I was worth thinking about in some good way. I was dying to be emotionally caressed on the head like a poodle desperate for the attention of his master. And certainly I had made that other person into my mas...
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Ghosting is Cowardly, Cruel and Dysfunctional

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Ghosting is a new concept to me. Growing up, it was referred to as “the silent treatment.” I learned from my mother that if I was upset with someone, I simply cut them off by refusing to talk to them or even acknowledge their presence. I didn’t return phone calls, or answer my door if they came knocking. Recovery taught me that this was truly dysfunctional behavior. I think that ghosting is basically dysfunctional too. First, if we realize that a relationship is toxic for us, we need to bring it to a proper closure. We need to have the guts to tell the person in a kind way that things just aren’t working out, but that we still care about them and wish them well. In doing so we show respect both for them and for ourselves. Once we have had proper closure, it’s OK to become absent from that person’s life. At least now there is an understanding between us. To simply disappear from someone’s life because they “failed to appreciate my presence,” is simply revenge. It’s ending the r...
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Toxic People Are Attractive Until We Understand the Language of Addiction

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“Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.” Nick Smith , Metropolitan Nick Smith is a character from the 1990 movie Metropolitan , and he makes a good point: Toxic people are always attractive. Why is that? Well, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that so many of us in our society are raised by toxic people; and what we know, we gravitate toward. Many of us grew up in households where addiction was a problem. Dad was an alcoholic and mom was codependent on his addiction, or vice versa. We watched and we learned. Addictive behaviors became the norm for us. We didn’t like them, but they became familiar and comfortable. The older we got, the more we learned we could hide behind addictive behaviors and we gradually developed our own addictive personalities. As we grew toward adulthood, we subconsciously recognized the signs ...
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