Soulshine

Freedom from shame means being “on our guard” or aware of our feelings at all times. It means being able to catch ourselves when we are being swept down a dark alley of emotional pain fueled by shame. When we are aware of our shameful feelings, we are able to make a powerful choice between addictive acting out, or facing the feelings. When we choose to face the feelings, we can challenge the ugly thoughts that fuel them, and we can take our personal power back from shame. Facing our feelings requires that we be “courageous” enough to embrace them. It also requires that we be “strong” enough to ask for the help we may need to feel safe enough to fully recover our personal power. We know that help is available to us. We can seek help through our Higher Power and we can seek help from family and friends that we are able to trust. We can also seek help through professionals, like therapist, spiritual directors or clergy, and we can seek help through support groups. If we are ...

As I’ve emphasized before, addiction is an emotional dis-ease, and the primary emotion that fuels addictive behaviors is shame. So let’s define shame. According to Webster’s Dictionary shame is a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or impropriety. Merle Fossum and Marilyn Mason say in their book  Facing Shame  that "While guilt is a painful feeling of regret and responsibility for one's actions, shame is a painful feeling about oneself as a person." I agree with Fossum and Mason. Guilt is an emotional that arises when we realize we have said or done something hurtful or wrong. Guilt is primarily about our behavior, which we can change. It’s true that we can be ashamed of something we’ve said or done, or failed to say or do, but guilt is the primary feeling that motivates us to be responsible for our bad behavior. Shame, on the other hand, is a devastating feeling about our own defectiveness or inadequacy as a person. Shame is ...

“When true love is lost, life can bleed of all meaning. We are left blank, but the possibility of destiny remains. What we are meant for may yet be discovered.  And…that journey to find our destiny may defeat even time itself.” From the film Winter’s Tale (2014) Life without love certainly does bleed of all meaning. I’ve often thought about the words of St. Paul in 1 Corinthians “If I have faith so as to move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.” Life without love is pure nothingness. And this is why life is often so painful and devastating for people who suffer from codependency and other addictions. Early in life, addicts lose all perspective of self-love. They thus completely lose their grounding in life. They lose the roots of who they are: Love itself. And they gradually become a living, breathing form of nothingness (the sense of being left blank). And in their nothingness, they look desperately outside themselves for validation, for love, for approval and...