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...

“Love… cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession.” Paulo Coelho , The Witch of Portobello Codependents easily associate love with possession. In many ways, this is understandable. Western society, certainly in the United States anyway, has come to associate “love” with the “possession” of things. We see a vase in a department store, we immediately “love” it and we must possess it to be happy. Or we see chocolate eclairs in a bakery window, we “love” eclairs and we must possess or have one or two to be happy. This concept of “love” and “possession” easily lends itself to the language of addiction. The alcoholic loves her vodka and she must have it to be happy, and the shopping addict loves things and he must have them to be happy. Likewise, we codependents love certain people and we must possess or have them to be happy. The big difference between these three addictions is that the alcoholic and shopaholic are “in love” with possessing things (i...

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...

“The most common form of despair is not being who you are.” Soren Kierkegaard Being who we are is essential to our happiness. And yet, so many codependents have no idea of who they really are. We rejected and lost our real selves years ago. We buried them under a false self; often times an “ideal” self that reflected the person that our parents or others wanted us to be. For some of us this ideal self was fueled by perfectionism. The real self underneath ached with inadequacy. It was the frog underneath the prince we were attempting to project to the world around us; or the raggedy Cinderella underneath the princess we wanted the world to see. We were two people in one and that drained a lot of energy out of us. It’s exhausting to live with two personas. First off, it takes a lot of energy to suppress our real selves. We are constantly on-guard that some part of our unacceptable real self with accidently pop-out and be seen by others. But it’s equally as exhaus...

“Let people go by releasing your neediness for their love.  Love yourself instead!” David Elliott, Healing I have often wanted people to give me the love that I felt my parents did not give me. It seems it’s that maternal/paternal wound that often haunts us well into adulthood. We may be grown men or women but we still ache inside for the love we were denied as small children: We want to be told “I love you;” we want to be held and hugged; we want to feel the warmth of a mother’s or father’s love. And, unfortunately, we often project this need (or neediness) onto others. More often than not, the people we choose to project our need for maternal/paternal love onto are equally as emotionally unavailable to us as our moms and dads were. We subconsciously choose men and women whose personalities resemble those of our parents. Then we proceed in trying to secure from these people the love we were unable to receive from our parents. And nine times out of 10 our success rate ...

“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...

“The more you love yourself, the more you are able to love others.” Robert Holden, Loveability In his book Loveability , Robert Holden points out the fact that at the beginning of every new relationship there is a grace period. During that initial phase “you feel so happy and so blessed to have met each other that any doubts about your loveability are temporarily suspended.” How true! Whether or not this grace period lasts depends on how we view ourselves. As Holden makes clear, it depends on whether we live by the basic truth “I am loveable,” or the basic fear “I am not lovable.” The average codependent lives by the basic fear “I am not lovable.” And so this means that our grace period in any new relationship is fairly short. It doesn’t take long for us to get inside our heads and to start feeling inferior, needy and clingy. This happens because, as Holden points out, the less we love ourselves:             -t...

In his book Loveability , Robert Holden outlines what love is and what it is not. I find this list to be very helpful in terms of facing and calming the codependent crazies. Let’s look at the 10 points he makes below. I have placed my spin on them for the purpose of seeing these points through a codependent love lens… Is it love or is it FEAR?   When we believe “I am not loveable,” the fear is always “Love has forsaken me.” And this will cause us to look for ways in which love is failing us. We will be on-guard constantly and will likely drive a wedge between us and the person we are professing to love. This can be especially true if we have abandonment issues. Is it love or is it DEPENDENCY?   I am unable to love me and so I make someone else responsible. Dependency is the issue for us codependents. Our self-love is generally so poor that we desperately want someone else to make us OK and so we look for that person who will be responsible for all of our need...