Soulshine

I don’t have a green thumb and have never gardened. But I’ve certainly heard enough about how plants actually do grow when people speak kindly to them. So I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that plants also die when people say ugly things to them. It’s about time that we codependents stop talking ugly to ourselves. It’s impossible to be happy or grow in any positive way when we are consistently hard on ourselves with our words and in our thoughts. Harsh thoughts affect our bodies and thus our physical health as well as our mental and emotional health. I know this is true because anytime I’m being hard on myself with ugly thoughts, my digestion problems go through the roof. When I start speaking kindly to myself, my whole body calms down and I feel fine. My digestion problems diminish and my blood pressure returns to normal. It makes no sense to choose to punish ourselves with ugly self-thoughts. We want others to speak kindly to us, right? Then we need to be the first to do so...

It’s pretty easy for me to recognize and avoid other people’s drama today. I now know when something is not my circus and not my monkeys. But managing and avoiding my OWN circus and my own monkeys is a different story. I was watching a tv show last night and immediately recognized how the lead character was creating his own drama. The frightening thing was that I saw myself in him TOTALLY! The dramas he created for himself, and inflicted on his friends, were the exact same ones that I get entranced in: relationship issues, make believe health problems, workplace drama, etc. I sat basically watching myself on tv and I was horrified. The past two weeks my OCD has been overactive and has had me acting out all sorts of health-related dramas. I’ve magnified little things and turned them into gut-churning fears and traumas—all at my own expense. And, even though I’ve kept it all pretty much to myself, after watching tv last night, I realize how much I’ve gushed my little health dram...

In his book “I Am,” Howard Falco does a masterful job of pointing out how powerful internalized “I Am” statements are. Negative “I Am” statements filter through our conscious minds and embed themselves in the subconscious mind. As a result, they become tapes that play repeatedly through our heads. No wonder we often feel so bad about ourselves. This process is made even worse for addictive persons who also have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). OCD makes intrusive, negative thoughts almost impossible to control. The thoughts rob victims of their personal power over not only the snowballing thoughts but the emotions that accompany them. Life becomes a nightmare of horrible “I Am” thoughts and desperate feelings. When my OCD kicks in uncontrollably, I get knots in my stomach, shooting pains in my chest and my indigestion goes off the scale. If panic sets in, I get nauseous and start hyperventilating. I’ve had a bad bout with the OCD over the last week, but I think I made it o...

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...