Soulshine

I’ve been living in Washington, D.C. for nearly two months now. And I just realized something’s missing from my life. I felt an interior void. What’s missing? I asked myself several times— and then I realized what was missing: My daily dose of self-created DRAMA! It felt weird to no longer be creating needless drama, but I also realized I had a choice now. I could either adjust to my oddly uncomfortable drama-free days, or I could go back to the “old familiar” and return to creating drama for myself. Seems like an easy choice, but it’s really not when something— even something negative and self-destructive—  becomes familiar and oddly comfortable. Then I stopped to differentiate between drama and being busy. Yes, with the cross-country move and the struggles of learning a new job, I’ve been busy, but there’s been no self-created chaos, and I’ve not chosen to create a drama with anyone. Busy is just a fact of life. Drama doesn’t have to accompany it, unless we choose to add ...

For years, many of us have stayed stuck in the addictive behaviors we learned as children because we were unwilling to change. To be fair, we first had to gain awareness of the fact that we had a problem in order to be willing to face it and change. But even after entering Recovery programs like Alcoholics Anonymous or Codependents Anonymous, many of us chose to stay stuck, even though are eyes had been opened. Why? Because initially we were unwilling to change our old patterns of behavior. They felt familiar and comfortable, even if they made us miserable. As Gary John Bishop says, it wasn't until we became unwilling to be manipulated, verbally abused or emotionally frustrated that we finally said "we're done with this!" It was then that we became unwilling to accept abuse from anyone anymore, including from ourselves.  And that is when we finally became willing to change our ways of thinking, acting and being. We became unwilling to exist any lon...

Actually, through Recovery, I’ve learned you can’t save anyone from themselves. I am one of those people who grew up feeling overly responsible for everyone and everything. My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) complicated matters. That obsession/compulsion was complicated by the codependent care-taking skills I learned from my mother. Inside my head, and thus my gut, I became responsible for making everyone happy, for solving everyone’s problems and for taking the blame when others refused to help themselves (no matter how hard I had tried to fix them or their problems). I know now that I can’t fix anyone but me; nor can I solve anyone’s problems, aside from my own. But that doesn’t keep me from still feeling overly responsible for others, or from feeling like a bad person when I’m unable to help someone. Still, in my head, I know I’m not responsible for other people or the mess they may have made out of their lives. They are the ones who are responsible for their ...

This statement above is so true and it is the root cause of addiction and fear abandonment. Children love themselves just the way God has created them. When they are verbally, emotionally or physically abused by parents, older siblings or other adults that they trust, they begin the process of imploding from the inside.  Harsh criticism of children causes them to doubt themselves. They begin to doubt their lovability, their self-worth and their personal value. As the criticism mounts, they learn to turn off their feelings to survive, and they stop loving themselves. As a result, their self-esteem plummets to unhealthy levels to the point that they question their right to even exist. Some develop an existence shame. A child plagued with shame, guilt and a strong sense of worthlessness is unable to love him/herself. This then makes it impossible to believe that anyone else could love, or even like, them. Fear of being abandoned by critical parents develops and the child ...

I’ve been in the process of moving to Washington,DC, all week and I have also been in the Rock band Foreigner’s “Urgent, urgent, emergency” mode. It’s come to my attention that many of us who deal with codependency issues suffer from the need to do everything urgently. Most likely it’s caused by our obsessive need to control the world around us. I thought the movers were coming Wednesday, but I received a call late Monday afternoon that they were coming Tuesday. Immediately I went into “urgent, urgent, emergency” mode. I suddenly had to get done everything I thought I was going to have Tuesday to do. Tuesday comes and by afternoon, it’s obvious that the moving company’s sales rep underestimated how long it was going to take to pack up my office and house. The moving men only finished the office by the end of the day, which meant the house would have to be packed on Wednesday: Urgent, Urgent, emergency was rushing through my head. Wednesday morning I received a call ...

I immediately loved this song, “No More I Love You’s,” on first hearing it in the summer of 1995. The melancholy tune, the beautiful background vocals and orchestral arrangements, and the very sad words completely appealed to my long-suffering heart. I was one year away from recovery from codependency. Actually, it was kind of ironic, because at that time I’m not sure I’d even ever heard anyone say to me,”I love you,” least of all me, myself. Maybe others had said those words, but they weren’t believable to me because I didn’t love myself; and that made it impossible for me to allow anyone else to love me. Hearing this song again today has made me realize that the “monsters” that are mentioned in the above quote are desire and despair: Two emotions that go hand in hand. One (desire) leads to the other (despair). That’s a point that Buddha certainly got right: Desire leads to suffering.  It’s especially true when we desire things outside of ourselves, like love. L...

I like this quote above, but I’d change the words to read like this: “Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow your THOUGHTS to control your emotions.”  Everyday, I encounter people who are emotionally ruled by their negative thinking and their demeaning self-talk. Thoughts are just thoughts. They have no power of their own. They only have the power we choose to attach to them. If we are feeling depressed or emotionally overwhelmed by our personal thoughts, it’s because we are choosing to punish ourselves. No one is forcing us to think badly about ourselves— aside from us. The grand question we all need to ask ourselves is “Why?” Why are we purposely choosing to be mean to ourselves? We could just as easily choose to be kind to ourselves. We can choose any and every moment to reject negative self-thoughts/talk and to replace it with self-affirming thoughts/self-talk. Because we actually do have a choice, it makes no sense for us to continue to be mean ...