Soulshine

    Addicts typically engage in self-sabotage. This behavior is based in our dire need for chaos and drama. So many of us were raised in families where there was constant chaos, endless drama and very little—if any—stability. As we grew older and developed addictive personalities, we also developed an incessant need for self-sabotage by way of chaos and drama. As adults, we often times find ourselves split between loathing the chaos/drama and desperately needing it. We are split because we have two personalities: Our natural-born personality and our unnatural addictive personality. On a conscious level, our natural personality is tired of chaos and drama. But on a subconscious level, our addictive personality is thriving on creating as much chaos and drama as possible. We are thus often times conditioned for daily chaos and drama. And when they don’t naturally exist, we will create them for ourselves—and everyone else in our lives. There are a plethora of ways in whi...

    Nothing changes in our lives until we do. Recovery is the choice we have made in an effort to change our lives for the better. But it is an EFFORT. And it's easy to find ourselves balking at investing in that effort during the recovery process. We can say to ourselves "Why me? My friends don't have to work the 12 Steps. They don't have to go to meetings. They don't have to spend time with a sponsor. They don't have to see a therapist." Sometimes we continue with thoughts like "This isn't my fault that I'm an addict. I didn't ask for it. This is my parents' fault. Why should I have to suffer and work the 12 Steps?" When we find ourselves falling backwards into this mind set, we need to be very careful. We have the right to grieve the fact that we are addicts and that we learned the behavior as children. True we didn't know any better when we started mimicking the behaviors of our parents. It may be their fault, bu...

God helps those who help themselves is a very old adage, and it’s very true. No one can help us in our recovery until we are first willing—and determined—to help ourselves, not even God. Why? Because no one can do for us what we must do for ourselves. A good therapist can listen and empathize with us, and can point us in the right direction. A good sponsor can also listen and empathize and provide us with important tools to aid us in our recovery. And a good support group can provide us with a sense of belonging and with new self-awareness. But we will fail miserably if we expect that they should do more for us. Many people enter recovery and expect to be taken care of by others. They either have no understanding of self-care or they have no intentions of doing it. Instead, they think that they need only whine, cry and demand that others do their recovery for them. But recovery does not work this way. Recovery only works when we realize that we have one life to live and ...

I live and breathe 12 Step spirituality and I am never ashamed of it. I willingly tell people that I was raised in an alcoholic home, that I wrestle with codependency and other addictive issues and I am NOT ashamed. I acknowledge my personal baggage, I own it and I work at taking my power back from it. That is something to be proud of. I remember the first day I learned from a therapist that I suffered from an addictive personality, specifically codependency. I asked myself “Should I tell others? What if people put me down or abandon me because of it?” Then I realized that these were shame-filled, fearful thoughts. So I thought “Seems to me that shame has always been the real problem. If I am ashamed of being codependent, I will hamper my recovery, so I chose right now to be proud and grateful that I am helping myself.” And I decided to tell others. That was 1995, and I have never looked back with regret. Most every recovery group title ends with “Anonymous,” and that’s OK. B...

Ah, it’s another beautiful day in recovery! Well, until we meet someone whose neediness triggers all of our old behavioral patterns. Let’s say we’re having lunch with a friend and she has brought along a coworker. We feel an immediate attraction (attachment) to the coworker. Seems he’s just ended a bad relationship. As we listen to him speak, all of our caretaking sensibilities (or should I say nonsense-abilities) start rising from the grave within our souls. The more he speaks, the more we are convinced we can rescue him—and we aren’t even consciously aware that this is what is actually going on inside of us. As we munch on our sandwich, we begin projecting all of our old codependent neediness onto him. Suddenly he is as codependent and as needy as we want him to be. And we are convinced that we can use what we have learned in recovery to make him OK. We begin spilling out recovery jargon, telling him about the latest Melody Beattie book we’re reading, and helping hi...

A major character defect shared by most all codependents is manipulation. Engaging in manipulation is fueled by the need to control. A codependent person cannot trust life or others. Of course, life is a fact that we have limited control over. And, unfortunately for the fear-filled codependent, we all need others no matter how independent we pretend to be. This fact provides a serious dilemma for the codependent person. The all-too codependent need to manipulate others plays out magnificently in the 1950 film Harriet Craig . Harriet needs her husband Walter and her cousin Claire, and yet she mistakenly believes she can’t trust either of them. Harriet’s never sure if Walter might betray her at any moment and so she keeps a tight grip on him. She almost never lets him out of her sight, and she’s learned that she needs to keep his leash short. You see, Walter has friends—both men and women—that he ran around with before he met and married Harriet. Those friends are now a thr...

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” Anaïs Nin Your life is what you make it. No one has to be a victim who holds everything in tight like a flower trapped in the perpetual darkness of fear. Being a victim, being shut-up tight inside, is a choice. And it’s a bad choice. In recent years, through recovery, I’ve chosen to give up my victim mentality. I have learned that it is far less painful to take risks, even if I fail at times; and that it’s much more rewarding and life-affirming to blossom into the light of the real world where I gain wisdom through failure—and I grow into fully being me. Life provides many doors for us to walk through and all we have to do is make the choice to walk through those doors. We can all walk through the doors to an Alano Club and into any 12 Step meeting that fits our particular recovery needs. We can also choose to walk through any educational or career door...