Soulshine

In her book Toxic Parents , Susan Forward says that many adult children of alcoholics “subconsciously find ways to punish themselves with various emotional and physical symptoms” like headaches, gastrointestinal problems, etc.” This certainly rings true for me. Both my codependency issues and my obsessive-compulsive disorder have caused many psychosomatic physical problems for me. Looking back over my life I can pinpoint many times when I had physical problems that made no sense. My first ever panic attack happened when I was in my early twenties. I was in our den at home watching television when suddenly I felt warm, then I started having chest pains and difficulty breathing. I thought I was having a heart attack, which made no sense to me since I was so young at the time. After I calmed down, the symptoms eased. A few months later, I went to bed one night and felt short of breath. Breathing became more and more difficult, and no matter how hard I breathed-in, I couldn’t se...

“In the end all that matters is how well did you love, how well did you live, how well did you learn to let go.” Anonymous The addictive personality thrives on control. It is hypervigilant and aggressive about making sure that all is as it “should be.” The need to control never sleeps. When we’re in this control-life-at-all-costs mode, we run on adrenaline and fear 24 hours a day. We are constantly monitoring everyone and everything around us. We must make sure that all of life cooperates with our desires, expectations and assumptions. Whenever we discover a threat to our imagined serenity, we are quick to move into Terminator mode and stamp it out as quickly as possible. So we pull out our inner-arsenal of manipulative behaviors, like flattery, caretaking, people-pleasing and self-righteousness to beat down anyone who might be standing in the way of our perceived happiness. As a result, we “love” and “live” poorly. Notice I said “imagined” serenity and “perceived” ...

“I don’t want to die before I live” The Ramones , Cabbies on Crack Codependents aren’t known for living their own lives. Many of us have long been focused on living someone else’s life. And some of us have been focused on living everyone’s life. Either way, our intent was to escape from ourselves by walking in the shoes of others. Yes. We walked their walk and talked their talk. We liked whatever they liked and we danced to their tunes; for within these other persons we were to find our salvation. This sounds like insanity to me now, and yet I still feel the tug, the desire, of wanting to find my fulfillment in the life of another person. I know it’s not possible. Nothing from outside of me—whether it be a person, a new car, a drug, a role of the dice or a cinnamon roll—can bring me lasting comfort. Personal fulfillment comes from within, built on the foundation of I AM who I am, of being completely me, of being spiritually one with my Higher Power. I know this is the truth...

   Learning to love ourselves by facing our feelings, embracing them and accepting them is a major step toward healthy living. Once we take that step, we will find that it is only the first of many necessary changes we will be making in our lives. These changes will all bring about positive results, but none of these changes will be easy.    One of the most difficult changes we will need to make will involve our relationships with others. Like Gwen (Sandra Bullock) in the film 28 Days , we will find that some of our old friends and lovers are toxic for us. After Gwen left treatment, there was little doubt that she’d have to let go of her old lifestyle and all of those who are still living addictively if she wanted to remain sober.    Gwen does what she has to do concerning Jasper, her fiancé. She walks away from the relationship, but she does so without animosity. In other words, Gwen detaches from Jasper with love. She’s not angry with him and she do...

I remember talking with someone who was feeling smothered in her relationship with a man. The man had moved in with her and they were even contemplating marriage. But she started feeling trapped. Every time she wanted to do something without him, like get together with friends or even go to a support group meeting, her boyfriend was upset. He felt threatened by anyone outside of the two of them, and would go so far as to say things like “Why do you need to talk with him?” or “Why do you need to hang-out with her? We only need each other. We don’t need anyone else in our lives.” In other words, this boyfriend was extremely needy, fearful and codependent. So I explained to her that his behavior and statements were huge red flags. For whatever reason, he was not giving love to himself, so he had made her his sole source of love. As a result, he was sucking every bit of love, attention and life out of her. And apparently his neediness was so great that he needed her 24/7. This great ...

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt    Fear, more than anything else, has kept us frozen and powerless to protect ourselves. From the time we were small, many of us learned incorrectly that we had no right to speak our truth, to own our emotional truth (our personal power) or to trust anyone to be truthful with us.    As a result, we learned to remain silent in the face of abuse perpetrated against us and we learned to stuff all of our feelings. We became possessed by our fears: 1) fears that we didn’t count; 2) that we deserved the abuse we received; and 3) fear that we were destined to be victims.      Today we are all here to prove to ourselves and to the world around us that we do count, that we deserve to be treated with proper respect and that we are not victims of life or anyone.    Today we are proclaiming that we will own our personal truth, that we will learn to experience and understand our ...

“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...

I’ve come to belief that there is a real difference between an anxiety attack and a panic attack. When I have an anxiety attack I feel unusually warm, almost like I’m coming down with a fever or the flu. My forehead doesn’t feel warm or feverish, however, and so I know I’m not really physically sick. I know it’s a mental/emotional discomfort that’s fueling a physical reaction. During an anxiety attack, my mind is relatively under control on a conscious level, but subconsciously, I know that I am facing some choices that mean taking a risk and possibly facing rejection or abandonment. So it’s really about learning to move past my comfort zone and to grow more into the real me, which is always frightening. A panic attack for me is like an anxiety attack times 10. My conscious brain is running on full-throttle with anxious, devastating, out-of-control thoughts that wind me up inside till I feel like I’m going to implode. There’s a sense of despair and hopelessness and there ...