Soulshine

I’m currently working on a new retreat I call Creating Kindness , and in the process, I’ve realized that there’s one important character defect that keeps us from being kind—and it’s bitterness. I’ve learned that, on a subconscious level, I still have a great deal of unresolved bitterness that causes me to be resentful. And when I’m unconsciously motivated by bitterness, it’s really hard to be kind—to myself or others. Looking back, I realize that this hidden bitterness has been haunting me for a long time. I can look back 30 years to family gatherings where I wanted to be open and happy and enjoy myself, but couldn’t. Why? Because a huge wall of bitterness surged forward inside of me. It was screaming “You can’t be happy! You’re angry with these people and the hurt they’ve inflicted on you! Show them how miserable they’ve made your life!” And so I did. I moped and sat quietly at family gatherings, refusing to participate in any healthy, happy way. The bitterness was overwhelming...

Feelings can be fabulous and feelings can be a nightmare. Those of us with addictive personalities have had a lifetime of struggle with our feelings. For the most part, I’m used to allowing my feelings to walk all over me. I’ve allowed myself to be powerless against the weight of fear, anxiety, sadness, etc. But recently I learned that I have great positive power when it comes to my feelings. In July I switched my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) medication from Zoloft to Prozac. It was a rough transition that left me feeling frightened and anxious a good deal more than I am accustomed to feeling. The doctor and I finally worked out a proper dosage for me and I seemed to be adjusting well when one morning I woke-up and I felt extremely frightened. I got up, made some breakfast, sat down and said to myself “Enough is enough! I’m sick to death of feeling frightened and anxious! I refuse to continue to be a hostage to my feelings! I refuse to feel anxious today!” Within a mat...

In her book Toxic Parents , Susan Forward says that many adult children of alcoholics “subconsciously find ways to punish themselves with various emotional and physical symptoms” like headaches, gastrointestinal problems, etc.” This certainly rings true for me. Both my codependency issues and my obsessive-compulsive disorder have caused many psychosomatic physical problems for me. Looking back over my life I can pinpoint many times when I had physical problems that made no sense. My first ever panic attack happened when I was in my early twenties. I was in our den at home watching television when suddenly I felt warm, then I started having chest pains and difficulty breathing. I thought I was having a heart attack, which made no sense to me since I was so young at the time. After I calmed down, the symptoms eased. A few months later, I went to bed one night and felt short of breath. Breathing became more and more difficult, and no matter how hard I breathed-in, I couldn’t se...

Sometimes in CODA meetings we allow ourselves to be bothered by someone else who attends the same meeting. We then fixate on that person until we decide that we aren’t going to the meeting anymore because that person bothers us. This is a cop-out on our behalf. It is actually our subconscious choice to ditch recovery in favor of relapsing.                          Why? Because no one can truly bother us unless we choose to allow them to do so. The first recovery lesson we receive In Step One is that we are “powerless over other people.” It’s the addictive part of us that wants to control and change other people to please ourselves. If I am bothered by someone in a meeting it’s because I’m refusing to admit that I am powerless over them. If something about them bothers me, I am choosing to let it bother me. And if I’m thinking about leaving the meeting permanently...

“What can you buy That lifts a heavy heart to the sky? What makes your day? What miracle of life Has come to stay? A taste of love.” New Order , Restless (2015) New Order is one of my favorite ‘80s bands. When I heard the first lines of their new song Restless (“What can you buy that lifts a heavy heart to the sky?”), it was a wake-up call for me. All of my life I have sought to lift my heavy heart through buying things. For the most part, I was trying to fill-up the spiritual emptiness I felt inside from never having good healthy relationships. Anytime a relationship was souring, I’d head to the Mall, or the record store or to Amazon.com to lift my heavy heart. And everything I purchased seemed so essential at the time. It was if I had to have all of these things or I would die. It was like taking a drug to help me escape all of the empty, horrible feelings that were driving me to destruction. But the truth is that there is NOTHING you can buy that will trul...

“We accept good things from God; and should we not accept evil?” Book of Job As a codependent with a victim mentality, I have always focused on the bad, or evil, in my life. Everything happened to me. If something could go wrong it did. Or did it? A lesson recovery has taught me is that when we’re always expecting troubles, we will find them, or they will find their way to us. Part of my problem with bad things happening to me is that I never wanted to accept them, so I moaned and groaned or I fought them. It never occurred to me that maybe I should just accept the bad things, acknowledge that I was powerless over many of them, surrender them to my Higher Power and look for ways to move forward. It was just easier to sulk and feel sorry for myself. Of course, I also thought that playing poor pitiful me would elicit attention from others who would then comfort poor me and take care of me. Was that hope every truly realized? No. Seeking sympathy never really worked to any gre...

Heaven knows that the thought process for many addicts is seriously flawed. Many of us learned to engage in negative thought patterns like “all or nothing thinking,” “overgeneralization,” “discounting the positive” and “jumping to conclusions.” Let’s examine some of these to see just how they negatively impact our lives. Most of us probably understand “all or nothing thinking” as “black and white thinking.” When we engage in this mental process, we back ourselves into very small corners. I used to trap myself into being an instant failure with this very limited way of thinking. For example, I was an English/Creative Writing major in college. My career has always involved writing. And it used to be that if I found a typo in something I had written, I was devastated. It made no difference to me how brilliant or well-written my work was, because a single typo could rend the entire work worthless due to my all or nothing thinking. Obviously, this took a serious toll on my self-worth ...