Soulshine

Dear Higher Power, Thank you for granting me awareness. I AM NOT A VICTIM! I am not a victim of my parents. I am not a victim of my family. I am not a victim of past or current relationships. I am not a victim of my employer or coworkers. I am not a victim of twisted religious teachings. I am not a victim of the world, or "friends" or life. I am only a victim of my own self-destructive thoughts. I have shot myself through the soul with my own negative thinking. I own the fact that I have done a poor job of guarding my thoughts. I have allowed negative overthinking to devour my self-love. I have allowed constant self-criticism to poison my heart and soul. And I have consistently projected my own negative thoughts about myself onto others, often falsely accusing them of victimizing me. With all humility, I acknowledge that no one has victimized me more than I have victimized myself.  I have daily destroyed myself with my victim-mentality. Today, I a...

I bought two of these Japanese ninja dolls back in July. One was for a friend’s birthday and the other for me. I made the sign he’s holding in his hand as a daily reminder that our biggest enemy in life is never outside ourselves. It’s inside of us. Our greatest enemy is our inner-critic. That small but loud constant chatter in our heads that is repeatedly telling us “you’re bad,” “you’re worthless,” “you’re so messed up,” “you’re unlovable,” “you’re ugly,” or “you’re fat.” It’s up to us, through Recovery, to learn how to conquer this inner-enemy. It takes daily effort, but what I’ve learned to do is this: When that inner-critic offers an opinion to me, I tell my inner-critic to “go F**K itself.” I’m finished with giving my personal power away to a voice in my head that represents countless years of sel-abuse. No more. I refuse to abuse myself anymore with negative thoughts about me, and I will no longer be controlled mentally, or emotionally by this nasty, negative inner-vo...

  When we realize that we have re-engaged in unhealthy relationships, we have at least two choices: We can detach, cut the other person off and play the blame game. We can make every mistake their fault and choose to dislike or even hate them. Or we can choose to realize that we are both broken inside, that we both made mistakes and we can detach with love. Detaching with love is necessary. We can't rightfully blame the other person for everything that went wrong in the relationship. It truly takes two to tango. So we have to be willing to admit to our own mistakes and to admit that under the other person's brokenness, we did see beauty in their soul. Sometimes it's also necessary to detach with love because we are making spiritual/recovery progress and the other person isn't. We can't force anyone to be willing to work at recovery and to be wiling to fix themselves. And we cannot fix them. There have been many times when I've heard friends sa...

Recovery is a partnership. It is a partnership between God (Higher Power), ourselves and other people whom we can trust. Recovery is never an act of praying to your Higher Power and then expecting your Higher Power to suddenly zap you with instant wellness, and make everything OK. That's not prayer. That's magical thinking.   We have to first be willing to do whatever work is necessary to make our lives better; to change our patterns of thinking and behavior from negative to positive. Recovery always starts with "me." Once we are willing to do our best to change our character defects into character assets, then our Higher Power can help us.  We first need to do for ourselves whatever we can do to make our lives manageable and functional. What we aren't capable of doing for ourselves, we need to surrender to our Higher Power and allow that Higher Power to handle all that is beyond our control.  We also need to be willing to reach out to others we tr...

Forever bitter, or eventually better? The choice is truly ours. When I first entered Recovery for codependency in 1995, it didn't take me long to feel very bitter and angry toward my parents and our entire nuclear family structure. It was polluted with addictive behaviors. I had learned all of these behaviors from my parents. Back in 1995, I was in my 30s and angry as hell with my parents. I was even angry with my mother, from whom I had learned all of my codependency, even though she had been deceased for two years. I said angrily at a CODA meeting "They screwed-up my entire childhood, teen years and much of my young adult life! I am so angry with them. Why should I have to pay the price of doing all of this recovery stuff for something that I'm not guilty of? It was taught to me! I didn't choose it! I didn't know I even had a choice!" Others at the meeting understood how I felt. And they congratulated me for getting in touch with my feelings and...

Before Recovery, I always attracted people who couldn't possibly love and accept me for who I am. Looking back, I realize the real reason why I attracted and was attracted to those people; because I was unable to love and accept myself for who I am. Recovery has taught me that I have to have a good, loving relationship with myself-- I have to love and accept myself warts and all-- if I want to fix my radar when it comes to relationships. The more I come to love and accept myself, despite all of my perceived/real faults and failings, the more I am attracted to people who also love and accept me for who I am. And the less I am attracted to people who don't accept and love me for who I am because they are unable to love and accept themselves for who they are. Loving and accepting people for who they are doesn't mean that we have to love or accept all of their beliefs, attitudes and behaviors; nor do they have to accept all of our beliefs, attitudes and behaviors.  W...

Every feeling we experience is valid. And important. There are NO wrong feelings. God gave us feelings to help us process life. When we face and process our feelings we return to a balanced place inside ourselves, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Most everyone suffering from addictive behaviors is perpetuating their suffering by suppressing their feelings. We were sometimes taught as children that it was not OK or even valid to have feelings, and many of us learned to turn-off our feelings to survive in our chaotic childhood households. A major part of Recovery is learning to acknowledge and reclaim our feelings, so that we can go about processing life properly. Be aware of the fact, however, that not everyone you know may be comfortable with your learning to respect and express your feelings. For some people in our lives, this will be a new and awkward experience. If people resist our expressions of our feelings, we must also remember that ...

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...

    All I ever wanted my whole life is to be loved and accepted for who I am. Isn't that what we all want? To know that we are loved and accepted despite our flaws, our failings and our personal imperfections? We've wanted unconditional love and acceptance since we were in our mother's womb. But many of us have never felt loved and accepted for who we are. And sometimes we wonder if the people who do say they love us are only loving us because of what we do for them, what we do to please them, or to get something they want from us; as opposed to loving us exactly for who we are-- for simply being our God-given selves. I want to be loved and accepted for who I am, flaws and all. I know that love and acceptance of me has to begin with me. That's what recovery is all about: reclaiming, accepting and loving our true selves. And through recovery, I have certainly learned to accept and love myself much better-- not perfectly-- but much better than I did before recov...

    "Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go." Mooji Sometimes we struggle the most with our difficult feelings at night. We feel empty, anxious, needy, even desperate inside, and these feelings drive our desire to act-out. This is when we need to remember that feelings are just visitors. They won't last. We just need to accept them and allow them to pass through us. So next time we're in that bad emotional state, instead of acting-out, let's think about how loved we are. God loves each and every one of us immensely, and we all have people in our lives who love and care about us, too. It would be better to reach out to one of those persons, as well as our Higher Power, instead of reaching for a means of self-medicating. Instead of acting-out, we can also make a list of all we are grateful for, counting up all of our blessings. And we can push past our denial and self-pity and credit ourselves for being truly good people.

It may be a recovery cliche, but it is certainly true: Codependent people do not make friends, or lovers, they take hostages. Whenever we experience that truly needy feeling, that desperate desire to cling to someone, to have ALL of their attention, we have taken them hostage in our minds and hearts. This is when we need to find our way out of the fog by surrendering to our Higher Power and by attending a CODA or Al-Anon meeting. The spirit we experience within the group will help to bring us back to mental and emotional balance, to sanity.

    Even if we have been in recovery for years, it’s still easy to fall back into the codependent crazies if we aren’t practicing strict awareness. We meet someone new and we may initially feel nothing special about this person. We like them and we enjoy seeing them. But as time passes we can suddenly catch ourselves thinking more and more about them, daydreaming about being with them, wanting to buy things for them, feeling empty and deprived when they aren’t around, wondering about what they are doing—in other words obsessing about them. When we feel the inner-turmoil of obsessing endlessly about the other person, we have fallen back into the codependent crazies and we are out of control. The painful feelings of obsessive love are a warning sign: they can lift the veil of denial and bring us back to reality. If, at this point, we truly open our inner-eyes we now have a choice: we can continue down the insane path of the codependent crazies by keeping our focus solely a...

      Throughout recovery, trust in love. Trust in your Higher Power. Trust means you don’t have to worry about what you are powerless over. Enjoy the good that you find in your new journey of recovery. Always look up and always move forward, just like time does. Only look back to gain wisdom. Seems much of life is filled with uncertainty. The only real certainty you can experience is in this present moment. If all is good in this moment—outside of your head—then all is good. Be certain of that. And be certain that all will be good in the bigger picture of the new life that is unfolding before you in recovery. 

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 ...

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...

“What can you buy That lifts a heavy heart to the sky? What makes your day? What miracle of life Has come to stay? A taste of love.” New Order , Restless (2015) New Order is one of my favorite ‘80s bands. When I heard the first lines of their new song Restless (“What can you buy that lifts a heavy heart to the sky?”), it was a wake-up call for me. All of my life I have sought to lift my heavy heart through buying things. For the most part, I was trying to fill-up the spiritual emptiness I felt inside from never having good healthy relationships. Anytime a relationship was souring, I’d head to the Mall, or the record store or to Amazon.com to lift my heavy heart. And everything I purchased seemed so essential at the time. It was if I had to have all of these things or I would die. It was like taking a drug to help me escape all of the empty, horrible feelings that were driving me to destruction. But the truth is that there is NOTHING you can buy that will trul...

In his book The Power of Kindness , Piero Ferrucci speaks of “the soul wound.” Coined by Thomas Yeomans, the soul wound is “what we feel when as children we are not seen for who we are—a soul full of marvelous potential for love, intelligence and creativity—but instead perceived as a difficult, headstrong child, or a lovely showpiece, or as a great nuisance—or not seen at all.” Those of us who grew-up in addictive households known the pain of the soul wound and it is something that we have carried with us into adulthood and into the rooms of recovery. This is the primary wound that our inner-critics zero in on. It’s the wound that bleeds with the belief that we are a nuisance, or worthlessly stupid, or hopelessly unlovable. And it fuels the merciless voices of our inner-critics. I’m often amazed at how active my inner-critic is every day. When it isn’t hammering me, it is hammering someone else in the same manner in which it hammers me—shamelessly. More and more I am aware of...

“Your destiny is not just to find love; it is to be the most loving person you can be.” Robert Holden, Loveability As an active codependent (for most of my life), I failed miserably at being the most loving person I can be. And even as a recovering codependent over the past 20 years, I have still failed at understanding and thus knowing how to be a truly loving person. To me love has always been about giving of myself to get something back from others. Love, as it was modeled for me as a child, was something you earned. It was the great pay-off; like receiving a paycheck for doing a good job at work. I watched my mother earn the love of everyone around her by looking after all of their needs and doing, doing, doing for everyone. She only stopped doing if she didn’t get her paycheck (the love from others she thought she had earned). If someone didn’t love her for all she was doing, then she’d withhold her love (doing) until they showed some sort of remorse and renewed apprec...

Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...

“Who’ll be there when your heart hits the ground?” The Bible (band), Honey Be Good (1988) As recovering codependents, we have learned that there’s one essential person who has to be present for us whenever our hearts hit the ground. And that one essential person is “me.” It’s also essential that we have a strong Higher Power there to comfort and strengthen us. Prior to recovery, the average codependent is rarely present for themselves. That’s because most of us learned to abandon ourselves as children. Our focus never looked inward after our self-abandonment. Instead, we constantly looked outward expecting that there should be someone else to rescue us when we hit the ground. Sometimes we were able to find someone sympathetic to our plight, but they were never able to satisfy the aching need inside of us, much less rescue us. Why? Because the person we really needed to rescue us was the person we never looked to: Ourselves. As long as we remained in a state of self-aba...