Soulshine

I recently had someone tell me he has a hard time asking for help. He said “Every time I want to ask someone for help, I think to myself ‘they probably don’t even really like me anyway, so why would they want to help me?” When he finished his sentence, I pointed out to him “It’s not that they don’t like you; it’s that you don’t like you. And you’re projecting your own dislike of yourself onto other people, assuming that they see you the same way you see yourself.” He looked stunned for a moment, but then said “You’re right.” If we see ourselves as basically unlikeable and treat ourselves like we aren’t worthy of love, or friendship or help, we end up projecting our poor self-worth onto everyone in our lives. We reach a point where we believe that everyone sees us in the same negative light that we see ourselves. This is a primary reason why it is often so hard to ask others for help, or to believe that other people really care about us. In her book Conquering...

“Folks who have no vices have few virtues.” Abraham Lincoln We all know people who have no vices, or rather, who pretend to have no vices. These people tend to be self-righteous, overly-critical and extremely judgmental. These are their key defense mechanisms. And these defense mechanisms are necessary because they mask the fact that these Fake Saints do indeed have vices. Many addicts can identify with being a Fake Saint in one way or another because addiction causes us to cover our tracks through deceit. Codependents, especially those who are accommodators, are usually guilty of being Fake Saints. As Darlene Lancer notes in Conquering Shame and Codependency , “Because love is the highest ideal, an Accommodator strives to be a loving, lovable, charitable and selfless do-gooder—someone flawlessly noble and compassionate.” In other words, codependent accommodators project a false self-image in order to earn their highest ideal—love. Prior to recovery, and even s...

My CODA group is currently reading the book Conquer ing Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer. Recently one of the members mentioned to me that he found the book difficult to read. I believe I understand where he was coming from, although he may not yet understand that fact about what’s going on inside of himself. Often times when we find a recovery book 1) doesn’t resonate with us, or 2) is difficult to read, it is a clue as to what is really going on inside of us subconsciously. I believe in both of these instances, our denial is being unearthed and disturbed. When a recovery book doesn’t resonate with us at all, we are most likely so bound-up by our denial that the book seems totally foreign to us. We say to ourselves, “Well, this isn’t me at all” as we read about the fact that codependents engage in caretaking and other manipulative behaviors. So we put the book aside and allow it to gather dust. This has been the beginning of the story for many people who I have talked w...

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , Darlene Lancer says there are varying divisions of SELF. We are all born as our REAL selves. The REAL self is who God created us to be in all of our personal uniqueness. The REAL self is authentic and whole, acknowledges and works through all of the feelings God has blessed us with, understands its desires and needs and voices them honestly, and it is spontaneous. The REAL self knows how to allow its “Yes” to be “Yes” and its “No” to be “No.” According to Lancer the REAL self makes decisions based on “internal assessments,” not the external opinions of others, without any serious inner-conflict between thoughts and feelings. The REAL self develops in children if their parents reflect their authentic real self back to them. If parents, however, are incapable of reflecting a child’s REAL self back to the child, the child will develop a DEVALUED self . Instead of being affirmed for who they are, many children are constantly reminde...

Addiction is an emotional dis-ease. It’s all about running away from our uncomfortable emotions (shame, in particular) and thus running toward addictive acting-out to drown those emotions into a comfortable state of numbness or euphoria or a false sense of happiness. I was recently watching Sandra Bullock playing the role of “Gwen” in the film 28 Days . Gwen is either drunk or drugged-out all of the time. She’s constantly running from her shame through alcohol (or drugs), which causes her to do more shameful things, which causes her to feel worse about herself, which causes her to then drown herself in more alcohol and drugs. It’s an endless cycle of Gwen running from her feelings about herself. Unfortunately, Gwen also has a partner-in-crime: Her fiancé Jasper. Jasper is equally as trapped in addictive acting-out. As the movie progresses, we learn that Jasper is actually a substitute for Gwen’s mother. Her mother was a hopeless alcoholic who died from her disease when Gwen w...

What exactly is enabling ? Darlene Lancer, in her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , offers a solid definition. She says “The term enabling can be applied to any form of help that removes the natural consequences of someone else’s behavior.” So when we feel responsible for someone else’s behavior and choose to fix their problems for them, we take away the consequences of what they have done and we let them off the hook. They are then never held accountable for their actions and they never learn to be responsible for their self-destructive behaviors. I remember several years ago a man came to talk to me about his brother, who had a severe gambling problem. This man, we’ll call him Brendan, had been enabling his younger brother’s addiction by bailing him out every time he gambled-away more money than he had in the bank. In effect, Brendan became his brother’s personal banker; and whenever his brother—let’s call him Tom—had money-lenders at a given casino breathing down ...

“Loneliness can only be understood, never escaped or overcome—except temporarily.” Darlene Lancer , Conquering Shame and Codependency Loneliness and codependency often go hand-in-hand. For years I tried to bury my loneliness through losing myself in other people. I thought that if I could just fade into someone else, all of my emptiness, all of my loneliness would dissipate. But it never did. When fading into someone else wasn’t alleviating my inner-emptiness, I tried to escape my loneliness through other addictive behaviors. Shopping always worked best for me. Buying anything gave me that TEMPORARY respite from my loneliness and my emptiness. But it was always TEMPORARY—very temporary. The problem here is the solution we addicts so often use. We want to escape from our uncomfortable feelings. Escaping is a solution that never works. Instead of trying to escape from difficult feelings, like emptiness, loneliness or anxiety, we need to welcome these feelings. We need to...

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , Darlene Lancer says we codependents “may be drawn to drama-filled relationships to enliven us. We tend to consider stable people boring and are instead drawn to drug addicts, unavailable partners, dysfunctional work environments, excitement, abuse or conflict.” How true. Over the years I’ve hated having chaos in my life and yet, truth is, I couldn’t live without it. I always fell in love with totally unavailable people. It was my means of ensuring emotional turmoil, which guaranteed me two things: 1) It would prove that I really wasn’t good enough and 2) it would ensure I’d continue to be miserable, which I suppose was better than feeling numb. I could people-please, caretake and walk on air for any unavailable person. I would become emotionally attached, obsess over them day and night, fantasize about the great love-life we were going to eventually have, think up all sorts of ways to be near them—and then drown myself ...

“Blame aggressively shifts shame onto someone else… Making someone else the problem allows us to feel better about ourselves, while having the effect of making the other person feel the way we really feel inside.” Darlene Lancer, Conquering Shame and Codependency Addicts love to play the blame game. Most of us are pretty poor at taking responsibility for our own mistakes and dysfunctional behaviors. This resistance is rooted in our poor self-esteem, which makes it nearly impossible for many of us to admit that we were wrong in any way. As a result, it’s often subconsciously important for us to make someone else responsible for our mistakes, as well as for the guilt and shame we feel about having made those mistakes. It’s rare for a codependent to be able to honestly laugh-off his/her mistakes. We don’t know how to laugh at ourselves and we are too paranoid that people will reject us for making mistakes. Our refusal to acknowledge and take responsibility for mistake...

“Darla repeatedly phoned the man she was dating despite his objections. The rejection she received validated her preexisting feelings of abandonment, unworthiness and anger at men.” Darlene Lancer , Conquering Shame and Codependency Codependency leads many of us into self-sabotaging behaviors. I remember a time when I felt so needy inside, so unworthy to even exist, that I thought I was going to die if I didn’t have someone validate my worth to even breathe air. At that time, I had just latched-on to a new “best” friend. Sometimes I felt like his lap dog. I needed him to constantly pat me on the head, tell me I was OK and reassure me that I was a good person and that he liked me. If I got that affirmation from him in the morning, it might last me all day, maybe even a couple of days, before I needed to have a new avalanche of affirmation about my worth. I do remember days, though, where once a day wasn’t enough. I needed affirmation after breakfast, after lunch, lat...