Soulshine

    "At one point, I became sharply aware that I was largely responsible for my own alienation. Because of my extremely low sense of self-worth, I did everything in my power to keep people away." A Time to Be Free: Daily Meditations   Ten years ago, a therapist told me he had seen me at a shopping mall. He didn't approach me because he said I looked totally unapproachable. At first, I was surprised by his remark, but then I told him I was wearing my stealth face that says "I'm traumatized-- don't hurt me" mixed with my "Don't bother me" face, which is to stop store clerks from bothering me. It was my fearful way of pushing people away-- even people I'd liked to meet and know. I'm quite aware now that I wear my stealth-trauma face every time I walk out the front door. It's a face that has always projected my poor self-worth, but I feel it has now out-lived it's purpose. I still suffer from trauma but truth is no one today is ...

    "It is common folklore that a visit from a cardinal represents a sign from a loved one who has passed. While this belief cannot be traced to a single origin, birds have often symbolized heavenly visitors, messengers to the gods, or even the gods themselves in feathered form.    This belief has been part of ancient Egyptian, Celtic, Maori, Irish, and Hindu spiritualism, as well as the lore and legends of many Native American tribes, including the Ojibwe, Lakota, Odawa, Sioux and Algonquin."   -The Farmer’s Almanac     As I was walking along our side yard this afternoon, I came across two cardinal birds, a male and a female. I had been praying earlier and asked my parents in Heaven to help me work through and heal from the trauma and chaos in our household as I was growing up. They were not capable of helping when they were alive on this earth. They had no idea how to stop the trauma they felt and then spread around the house. But, now that they are ...

    Existing vs. Being Fully Alive   On a nice Autumn day, do you really feel the gentle, refreshing breeze as you walk down a sidewalk? If you stop at an outdoor cafe to eat lunch, do you really taste the food as you eat it? Do you sit and take-in, breathe-in all of the world around you? If someone comes walking by and says "Great day outside," do you respond with a "Yes, it's beautiful" or do you look away? Well, I can answer "NO" to these questions, and admit that I am not fully alive. Every day of my young adult/adult life I have lived in automatic-zombie mode. Recently, I have walked outside and thought "what a beautiful morning!" And I've imagined myself frolicking across the neighborhood greeting the day and everyone I encounter. For just a few seconds, I get a glimpse of what it must be like to be fully alive. For just a few seconds... Every time I see the Bette Davis movie, Now Voyager , I get choked up during a scene where she a...

After thinking about the above quote, I realized that I often problem solve by reacting to the problem, which is a big problem in itself. Most of my problems are created on a subconscious level of thinking.  Like the typical addict, I subconsciously create my own mistakes which then become problems, and those problems feed my need for chaos.Then, I am able to feel victimized by the chaos. Is that a perfect addictive cycle? Seems that way. And, when it comes to solving the problem/chaos after it no longer serves my needs, I usually default into reactionary behavior, which is brewing in my subconscious mind. That way, I can create more chaos. Well, now that I am aware of this cycle, I've decided I don't want to be in this rotating mouse trap anymore.  Einstein is right. To solve a problem caused by the subconscious mind, we have to use our conscious mind. Our knee-jerk decisions are all made by our subconscious mind and they tend to get us into big trouble. We may say things we ...

  One of my codependent misconceptions is that every mistake I make-- great or small-- is FATAL. I go into an immediate panic. I feel like I have an ax over my head and at any minute it's going to drop on me. I feel like a total fake and loser for having made the mistake. This subconscious belief has haunted me, making me miserable for days at a time, for many years now. It's just been recently that I have been able to fish it out of my subconscious mind. Once I realize that the consequences for the particular mistake are nowhere near as big as what my feelings are feeding me, sanity settles in and I can breathe again. Making a typo in an official document is NOT fatal. Forgetting about an appointment is NOT fatal. Dripping pizza sauce on my shirt is NOT fatal. Getting a traffic ticket is NOT fatal. Missing a payment by its due date is NOT fatal. Forgetting a friend's birthday is NOT fatal. Putting on a few extra pounds is NOT fatal. Having a bad hair day is NOT fatal. So, ...

  "You must recognize the darkness in yourself  in order to understand the darkness in others."  Carl Jung   The past few days, I've been walking through my darkness. I can't say I've enjoyed facing the fire, but it is necessary in recovery. Most of my life, I had no idea how much darkness was in me. I thought of myself as the good boy. But being wedded to good behavior--perfect behavior-- is a huge darkness in itself. No one can be perfect and no one can truly be the good boy or good girl 24/7. I have challenged myself to do things my way. Many people have held power over me for years: mother, father, clergy, friends, classmates, coworkers and complete strangers. These are the people who I have allowed to be in charge of my decisions, my actions, my beliefs, my view of myself and most every other aspect of my behavior. If they said "jump," I jumped. If they said "This is a sin," I felt dirty. If they said "You are inherently bad," I ...

    T he average addict is used to facing a great deal of chaos and drama in their daily lives. For years, one of my daily pleas was "God, can't I get through one day-- just ONE day-- without a problem that drains and exhausts me?"  I don't make that plea in the same way anymore. That plea was about life handing me a different headache every day. Truth is, life wasn't the problem. I was the instigator of all of the daily chaos and drama in my life. There was no way for Higher Power to answer my original plea until I woke up and decided to get out of the way. Initially, I found it easy to avoid creating drama in my life. But I have a tendency to create new ones when I'm really bored. Today, I got up and said "I'm tired of struggling! I'm sick of being at war with myself! And I refuse to be a victim of my own thinking anymore."  I've been trying too hard to control things about myself that I just cannot control. Hence, every day the drama o...

 As a codependent, I used to think that the chains of addiction were simple: I was addicted to other people, people I chose to be my (false) Higher Power. These were the people who were supposed to save me from myself and from all that was bad in my life.  Breaking that primary chain of codependency took a few years, but I finally found it easy, once I learned the reasons why I eagerly engaged in seeking out human Higher Powers. I uncovered the fact that I spoke an addictive language that was invisible to the human eye, or even my conscious means of understanding why I acted the way I did. And that those I was addictively attracted to also spoke a silent language that attracted me. After four years of recovery, I realized that a huge part of my problem was that I was addicted to friending the neediest people on earth. All of my false Higher Powers were actually needier than I was. At first that doesn't make sense. But I purposely-- without consciously knowing it-- chose people...

   I've learned that a "shame face" is what we addictive personalities wear around in public. It's a face that says "I'm unacceptable. I'm not allowed to be me. I'm worthless. No one will ever truly love me. Don't approach me. I can't face the pain of further rejection and shame."  My body immediately reacts when I'm in public, forcing my shame face to the surface for all to see. I've been especially aware of this recently, and this awareness is the first step in challenging the thoughts and feelings that feed my shame face. After several good days of pushing past my shame face, today was a big step backwards. I failed miserably, no matter how I tried to rescue myself from it. My guess is that I had many negative thoughts buzzing around in my subconscious mind. These thoughts, which aren't easily detectable to the conscious mind, drove my feelings to crash like a stock market disaster. Although I am not happy about this setbac...

    My Prayer for Owning My Life No one is meaner to me than I am I choose to no longer be mean to me I choose to stop blaming myself for the past I refuse to run from my bad feelings about me I will no longer project my insecurities on others and pretend they are abusing me when they are not-- I am I choose to stop hating myself I choose to stop believing the lies about myself that I absorbed as a child I choose this day to face all of my feelings I choose to grow within by taking my power back from old feelings I choose to accept that in the past I did the best that I could do I will own my personal power by dismissing negative thoughts that enter my mind I will no longer project any of my thoughts onto other people I will consciously move out of my head and into the real world I will find joy in the real world I will begin to feel like I am fully alive I will view others as people who are on my side and I will bless those who are not I choose to fully accept myself just the...

  I'm learning that being happy is more than feeling good about ourselves. It's also about taking good care of ourselves; meeting all of our personal needs because we believe we are worth the investment. And I admit this idea used to make me gag, especially when I was looking at me in a mirror. Good self-care requires a reasonable dose of self-acceptance. But that self-acceptance doesn't have to be 100% to get us into a better place. I've been in recovery since 1995. I am one of those who immediately "got it" in my head shortly after I entered recovery. But it's taken me years to "get it" emotionally. Self-acceptance, self-care, mercy, forgiveness and unconditional love all require that we face our feelings and reclaim our serenity by cleansing ourselves of our past, dark emotions-- and the fear that drove us into our addictions. Over this past week, small miracles have happened in my life. First, a chestful of dark feelings was lifted from my bo...

  Saturday morning I was in a very bad mood. I found myself just wanting to jump in my car and get away. I didn't have any idea initially of where I was going. Then, as I was driving through D.C., I decided to go to Pentagon City Center and have lunch. Problem was the route I took was backed up with an accident and I couldn't get onto I-365. This led me into a wrong way excursion across downtown with one street closed here, another street being one-way the wrong way, etc. I eventually ended up in an area of town I wasn't familiar with at all. Frustrated, as I reached a stop sign on a side street, I stopped and just sat there cursing. Suddenly, a white butterfly entered my car through the passenger window. It flew right past me and out the driver's side window. I'd never experienced anything like it before.  I watched the butterfly disappear out of sight and then continued my trek toward Pentagon City, eventually arriving.  According to the blog The Confidence HQ , t...

      It never occurred to me, at any point in my life, that God or Higher Power could love me aside from my behavior. I was raised in a Catholic Christian home where the childhood theology I learned was based in doing all the right things to please God. If I wasn't able to consistently please God, I was heading toward Hell.  The worst part of this twisted theology was the belief imposed upon me as a child that God loved me when I was good, but that he despised me and turned his back on me when I was bad. If he kept giving me the cold shoulder (mixed with the silent treatment), I was doomed to fail in life.  As an adult, I've realized that the God my parents taught me was an exact image and reflection of my parents. This God was based in human beliefs, many of them being conservative off the scale. This God had nothing to do with reality. It was the projection of addictive, neurotic thoughts— of a deep seated fear that God's mercy and forgiveness were razor-thin...

I've spent my life believing people could only love me if I met certain criteria. I learned from my mother that being liked depended on being perfect. Although I have known for many years that it's impossible to be perfect, it still haunts me and it still controls my behavior subconsciously. Being perfect, according to my mother, included always looking perfect to the outside world. I had to dress preppy-perfect. I had to be thin. I had to keep my hair neatly cut and combed. I had to smell good (To this day, I'm addicted to cologne.) And, of course, my manners and behavior always had to be gentlemanly-- perfect.  This all began to unravel when I gained a lot of weight in sixth grade. The pressure in our household became greater than I could emotionally tolerate, so I began self-medicating mostly with sugar. As a result, I was on my way toward being unacceptable.  My mother was not pleased. So, I faced an onslaught of shaming words. By the eighth grade, I was well overweight...

     It's nice to experience a feeling of "home" in another, like our Higher Power or a close friend. That feeling allows us to move forward in the right direction as we work our recovery program. Feeling at "home," we may have days when we even feel like we are soaring above the clouds of addiction. We feel amazed-- as if we are soon going to feel free.  Then suddenly, we nose dive into the very hell of being "me"-- again. We lose our sense of "home." What happened? Everything seemed so much better yesterday.  It's at this point that we realize there are still hidden places inside of us that are crying-- maybe screaming-- for healing. They are keeping us trapped. We suddenly feel like we can no longer embrace our new found joy of allowing "me to be me." Yesterday's happiness and hopefulness suddenly drain out of our hearts. Our souls deflate. We feel like we are never going to get past this hurt. How many other hidden wound...

    All throughout recovery, I've believed than no one can love me into loving myself. It seemed simple. If I don't love me, I'll never believe someone else truly loves me. That was certainly true when I was in the grips of my codependency gone wild-- before recovery. It was true because I always chose friends and lovers who were as addictively messed up as I was. No one who said "I love you" in those days was actually capable of loving anyone. So, when I tried to get one of these persons t love me into loving myself, I was asking for the impossible. They didn't have the love to give me anymore than I had the love to give them. So we failed miserably-- and so did each of those relationships.  Today it all seems very different. I actually do have friends who say they love me and they are able to prove they do through their behavior toward me. Likewise, I am better able to show them that I do love and value them, in ways I never could have before recovery. In ma...

  Each of us has a Mr. or Ms. Hyde deep inside of us. We are all too familiar with the sound of his/her voice. It's that nasty little voice that keeps telling us how worthless and inferior we are. It's the voice that persuades us to compare ourselves to everyone around us and then brutally lies to us as it screams "You are such a loser! Look how inferior you are to everyone else. You're ugly! You're overweight! You're so stupid! No one will ever love you! etc." I have listened to and accepted the lies of my Mr. Hyde for countless years. But no more. I've identified that wicked voice in my head. I know now that it's Mr. Hyde and I no longer believe the lies he spits at me. My current motto is "Bye-bye, Mr. Hyde." Every time his voice attempts to interrupt my thoughts, I interrupt his garbage with "Bye-bye, Mr. Hyde. I have no use for you." And then I laugh at him. He's the pathetic one, not me. In other words, I'm learnin...

  Sometimes people are too afraid to live their dreams. This is especially true for codependents.    So many of us, who suffer from addictive thinking, have never lived a day in our lives. Oh, we often think we are living. But we are not. We have been in a constant state of existence, trapped by our fears and addictions, which often force us to emotionally medicate ALONE.    It's not until the endless pain of being alone grows so strong that we can't tolerate it anymore that we finally hit bottom. As we wake up to the truth, we are finally able to see outside the prison of our minds. And we see a big world all around us that we've never known because we were anxiously running from it. We then realize we've spent our entire life simply existing.   It's been easy for some of us to exist in our fears. These fears were often planted by authoritative, addictive parents. They imposed who they were-- their beliefs, their lies, their paranoia and their poor self-lo...