Soulshine

I’ve only seen Rocketman twice, so I’m sure I’ll be writing more about it after it’s released digitally. But these are my thoughts for today, and they’re focused on the ending song “I’m Still Standing.” First, I know that the lyric, which was written by Bernie Taupin, was about a failed love relationship. But I think the lyric had a two-fold double meaning for Elton John. Yes, for John, it was also about a failed relationship, but it wasn’t about another person. It was about his failed relationship with himself— with the self he had been running from for years.  It was also about the fact that he had come to peace with himself through Recovery. The song was written and released after he was sober from alcohol, drugs, etc. “I’m Still Standing” was a testament to the fact that Elton John had survived his demons and himself. He had finally accepted the fact that he was a gay man who could love and be loved in this life without having to be untrue to himself. He had surv

I can’t even begin to count how many people have told me that, as children, they were told by their mothers “I wish you’d never been born.” It’s tragic, if not criminal, that a parent should say such a thing to their own child, or should treat them as if they wished the child were dead. In this clip from “Now, Voyager,” Bette Davis, who plays Charlotte Vale, has just broken off her engagement to a very wealthy widower. It was the right thing to do. Her real self knows this. But as she’s climbing the staircase, her codependent self takes over, and she mercilessly beats herself up for breaking the engagement. “Oh, you fool!” she says to herself. “Now you’ll never have a man of your own, a home of your own, or a child of your own...” She engages in damaging self-talk. Self-talk that’s brought on by her codependent need to be loved because she was never loved by her mother. And she knows that all too well. To make matters worse, Charlotte goes into her mother’s room and tells her s

Elton John & Paul Young "I'm Your Puppet" Yesterday I was talking with someone who suffered from the same severe codependent tendencies that I used to suffer from, too. She said she used to have a dire need to melt or fade into the other person. I related totally. After I chose a toxic person to take as my codependent hostage, I simply wanted to blend into being them. I’d take on all of their likes/dislikes, beliefs and even many of their personality characteristics. I’d pick up on their mannerisms, key phrases or words they liked to use, things they liked to do, places they liked to go, etc., and I’d assume their identity (at least internally). Basically, I totally lost my self by trying hard to become their mini-me. Of course, when I say I “lost myself,” I didn’t really have a self I could identify. I’d spent so much of my life being whomever my mother, or father, or most anyone else wanted me to be, that I really didn’t know who I was anymore. I just k

Codependents play the waiting game in various ways. Probably the most notorious waiting game we play is also the one that comes most naturally. Since so many of us have damaged self love and worth from childhood, we end up playing the waiting game that goes like this: One day, someone will come walking into my life who will love and need me so much that they’ll fill up all my inner-emptiness and make me love myself. I refer to this one as the “Forever F’ed Up Waiting Game.” Why? Because without Recovery, this game is played endlessly by codependents until the day they die. To ensure it’s longevity, we (subconsciously and repeatedly) choose toxic people to rescue us. The problem here is that the very people we pick as “The Chosen One” don’t love themselves any better than we love ourselves. There’s no way they are ever going to love us into loving ourselves. Even a healthy person can’t accomplish that fete. So eventually the Chosen One becomes the devil, the relationship falls ap

I’ve decided to give one last retreat before I leave Tucson. And it’s a brand new retreat that I’ve entitled “Is There Room in Your Heart for Feelings?”  We codependents are pros at running from our feelings. We’re equally as proficient at hiding what we really think, need and want from others. We don’t know how to tell someone when they’ve overstepped our boundaries or hurt our feelings. Nor do we know how to tell someone that we’d rather go see a rock concert than go to a baseball game. And, if we’ve been busy taking care of everyone’s needs all day, we don’t know how to say “No” to one more request— even if we haven’t eaten all day. But we do know how to feel abused, put-out, mad and resentful as we continue to dismiss our wants, needs and desires for the sake of making everyone else happy. And we’re masters at burying those feelings inside of us instead of releasing them at the proper times. This retreat will focus on expressing our feelings, wants and needs in the

“Notgonnachange” by Swing Out Sister It’s pretty typical for codependents to look in the mirror and see a “reflection that isn’t me.” Some of us don’t see our true selves because all we see in the mirror are the many harsh judgments we’ve made against ourselves. Others of us look in the mirror and we’re not sure who’s really looking back at us because we’ve been life-long people-pleasers. We’ve been like chameleons, constantly bending and changes ourselves to please others. People pleasing can cause us to question who we truly are, what we truly like, what we really believe and what we really need or want. Prior to recovery, I used to sit with others, whether one on one or in groups, and listen to what the other person(s) liked, wanted and believed without saying a word until I knew who they were and what they wanted me to be. After hearing their opinions and likes, if they were different from my own, I’d lie to them. I’d tell them I believed and liked the same things they

One of my favorite 1980’s bands was Living In A Box. They only released two albums, “Living In a Box” and “Gatecrashing.” Looking back, those two titles say a lot to me. Like the character of Tina in the above clip from the Bette Davis film “Now, Voyager,” I too often felt ugly, unwanted, disliked and ultimately unlovable as a child. As a result I built walls around me to lock others out while protecting myself. I was living in a box, but it wasn’t a “cardboard box,” as is mentioned in the song “Living In a Box,” it was a steel box. Twelve year old Tina has already learned that her mother doesn’t love her or even want her around. She has also come to believe that she is an ugly duckling and she believes no one can be trusted, or is even safe to be around. So she’s spent her young life shutting everyone out, aside from her father. Fortunately for Tina, she meets Charlotte (Bette Davis), who understands her story because she has lived basically the same life story. Like Tina, Ch

Often times, family members don’t begin to realize how controlling and cruel their behavior is. The film “Now, Voyager” is one of the best studies in codependency that I’ve ever seen. Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, a young woman who has lived her whole life under her mother’s thumb. Mrs. Vale decides what clothing Charlotte wears, how she wears her hair, what books she can read, who she can associate with, what she’s allowed to feel or not feel, etc. Charlotte has no life of her own because she allows her mother to live her life for her. In this clip above, we also she that Charlotte has a very unintentionally cruel niece named June. I say “unintentionally” because I think June is too self absorbed and immature to understand that her supposedly ragging Aunt Charlotte for fun is anything but kind. Between her mother and her niece, Charlotte ends up having a nervous breakdown. The real Charlotte wants to be her real self, make her own choices, live her own life, but she’s l

Another scene from Steel Magnolias that really hit home HARD with me as a recovering codependent was this one. To this point, Sally Field has tried to be strong concerning the premature death of her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts). Like so many codependents, she has buried her true feelings for years and years, and, unfortunately, she taught Shelby to do the same. Codependent behavior is easily passed down from generation to generation. Each one of us learned our codependent/addictive behavioral patterns by observing/hearing the behavior of our parents and we copied what we learned from them.  If it was unacceptable to express, or even have, feelings in the household; if that was an unspoken rule of our parents, then we learned to abide by it. We shut down our feelings and we zipped our lips.It then became habitual for us to hold every deep, dark, devastating feeling deep inside our souls. And we did so until our souls were so overloaded with pain and emotional sickness

Yesterday, I was watching the 1989 film “Steel Magnolias.” In my 20+ years of recovery, I’ve always heard that codependency can kill you, like alcoholism, but I never really believed it until this scene above sank-in. In this scene, we witness the graveside service for Shelby (Julia Roberts). Shelby had a severe form of diabetes that led to insulin shock. Yet, Shelby never learned to focus first on taking care of herself. Instead, she spends her young life taking care of everyone else’s needs and feelings. Everyone else comes first. This is dramatically shown in a scene where Shelby is about to leave work and take a Halloween costume home to her toddler. She has a slight spell and knows her insulin level is too high. She knows all she needs to do is drink some orange juice and her insulin level will return to normal, but she doesn’t do it. She thinks it’s more important to get the costume home to Jack Jr. It’s imperative to make her toddler happy. She returns home, dresses Ja

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

Even after years of recovery, we may have a problem with realizing that EVERYTHING is temporary, including thoughts and emotions. Today I got up feeling overwhelmed by the fact that I’m moving to Washington, D.C. at the end of August. I can’t believe how many things I’ve accumulated over 16 years of living on the West coast; from clothes, to dvds to Disneyland memorabilia. Looking through my office and home over the past few days filled me with an overwhelming sense of anxiety, shame and sadness.  I feel anxious because I have to sift through so much stuff and decide what to keep and what to get rid of. I’m also anxious over hiring a moving company. I’ve contacted five 4-5 Star rated moving companies. Afterwards, I went to a federal government website and learned that four of the five had multiple complaints lodged against them. That may make my choice easier, but it also makes me feel uneasy in general. I feel shame over the fact that I have accumulated so much stuff,

Last night at my CODA meeting, one personal flaw— or character defect— that kept surfacing was the inability of codependents to own their personal power. This is a common flaw for codependents because so many of us were robbed of our personal power as children. We weren’t allowed to be ourselves— or in some cases to even be children— so we ended up being whomever mom or dad wanted us to be. We may have also had to parent our own parents because they drove us to feel responsible for all of their unhappiness. As a child I gave all my personal power away to my mother. I became whomever she wanted me to be by bending and twisting to constantly please her. If she was upset about something, I always felt responsible for her feelings— and for owning her feelings and making her happy. As I grew into adulthood, this need to feel responsible for her problems expanded into a need to be responsible for EVERYONE’S problems. As a result, everyone else came first. I came last. I gave all my