Soulshine

Self-love is a tough one for most everyone who enters a Recovery program. So many of us as children were taught, or programmed, to loath ourselves. We were constantly criticized by our parents and rarely, if ever, received positive recognition. We were taught by them that we were not valuable, that we did not count and that we were basically unlovable.  Growing up in my own household as a child, I learned I was lovable if I did all of the right things to please my parents, but otherwise, I was NOT lovable. Love had to be earned and it could be withdrawn at any second of any day. This led to a fear of abandonment as well as self-loathing inside of me.  Life became a hell of emotional instability for me. One day I might be lovable in the morning, but by afternoon, I was getting the silent treatment or hearing words like "I'm ashamed to even call you my son!" As an adult I firmly believed I needed someone who could love me unconditionally into loving mysel...

Harriet Craig : “Please understand, Mr. Fenwick, Walter’s a fine man… but sometimes he just seems to lose all sense of responsibility.” Mr. Fenwick : “But I’ve always thought of him as being most reliable.” Harriet Craig : “So long as he’s in his present job, yes. And so long as I’m nearby to look after him.” Joan Crawford and Raymond Greenleaf , Harriet Craig (1950) Poor Harriet Craig! Her husband, Walter, has been offered a promotion. Normally that would be good news, but there’s a catch: The promotion will require Walter to work in Japan for three months—without Harriet. She’ll have to stay home and she will be unable to be the center of Walter’s universe. On hearing the “good” news, Harriet immediately feels threatened and her codependent thinking kicks into high gear. Just looking at her face, you can see every manipulative wheel within her brain spinning. She quickly hits panic mode: How will she be able to keep an eye on Walter 24/7 when he’s thousands of miles...

I used to despise it when people would ask me “How are you doing (feeling) today?” First off, I didn’t believe anyone REALLY wanted to know the answer to that question. And secondly, I often times didn’t know, or didn’t want to face, how I was feeling. Can you identify what you’re feeling today-- right now—in this moment? Are you feeling content, sad, happy, anxious, afraid, cautious, mad, bored, impatient, tired, excited or restless? Or are you feeling “fine,” which usually means numb or basically out of touch with your feelings all together? A major problem for people suffering from codependency or other forms of addictive behavior is that they are completely out of touch with their bodies and thus their feelings. They’ve grown use to living inside of their heads and out of their bodies. So they can’t tell in any given moment what they’re feeling, shy of anger, fear or frustration. I remember telling someone once about a friend who had lied to me. We were supposed to...

“Rick Von Slonecker is tall, rich, good looking, stupid, dishonest, conceited, a bully, liar, drunk and thief, an egomaniac, and probably psychotic. In short, highly attractive to women.” Nick Smith , Metropolitan Nick Smith is a character from the 1990 movie Metropolitan , and he makes a good point: Toxic people are always attractive. Why is that? Well, I think it has a lot to do with the fact that so many of us in our society are raised by toxic people; and what we know, we gravitate toward. Many of us grew up in households where addiction was a problem. Dad was an alcoholic and mom was codependent on his addiction, or vice versa. We watched and we learned. Addictive behaviors became the norm for us. We didn’t like them, but they became familiar and comfortable. The older we got, the more we learned we could hide behind addictive behaviors and we gradually developed our own addictive personalities. As we grew toward adulthood, we subconsciously recognized the signs ...