Soulshine

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 ...