Soulshine

“The thought ‘so-and-so has betrayed me’ protects us from the more painful thought ‘no one thinks about me.” Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life Most everyone has created dramas in their heads from time to time. Some of these paranoid dramas are based in assumptions we make which are rooted in irrational thinking. It’s easy, when we are feeling especially bad about ourselves, to make an assumption about someone else’s behavior and to connect that behavior to us in derogatory ways. For example, have you ever been walking down a busy street and seen someone coming your direction who is laughing? Just as your eyes focus on this person, their eyes meet yours and suddenly you’ve made the assumption that they are laughing at you for some unknown reason. You shift your eyes to the sidewalk and question yourself “Is it my face? My body size? My clothing? Do I look like a dork?” Then as this person passes you, you look back up and notice she is still laughing and she is on he...

“Many of us have come down with a case of lovesickness… In severe cases, lovesickness can lead to delusional behaviors (stalking, for example) or sexual obsession… Many psychoanalysts think that lovesickness is a form of regression, that in longing for intense closeness, we are like infants craving our mother’s embrace.” Stephen Grosz, The Examined Life Lovesickness and codependency go hand in hand. The primary focus of every codependent is to find love and fulfillment through another person. The active codependent sees all of life through one filter: “I NEED you, whoever you are, to fill me up with love and make me OK. You exist only to rescue me from all of my self-loathing and emotional pain. Come, save me NOW!” Seeing life through this filter means that the active codependent is constantly on the prowl, day after day, for that Prince or Princess who is their divinely appointed savior. The codependent is constantly on alert for fear that they might miss ou...