Soulshine

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 ...

“For gracious and merciful is he, Slow in anger, rich in kindness, And relenting in punishment.” Book of Joel , Chapter 2 Many of us, as codependents, enter recovery bitter and angry. We feel like we have been used and abused by so many people, and these negative feelings make it hard for us to fathom working Step 4 of the 12 Steps. So we are sometimes inclined to practice self-righteousness instead of practicing mercy. When we enter this self-righteous mode we are quick to point out how everyone else in our lives sinned against us, abused us and abandoned us, and we subconsciously use are self-righteousness to hide our own sins and character defects. We become blind to them all. I know I did. The first time I looked at Step 4, I thought to myself “what did I ever do wrong? I’m not the abuser. I’m the abused.” At that point in recovery, it didn’t occur to me that I had been secretive, manipulative and controlling. Nor did it occur to me that I had lied, spied and done w...

“It’s easier for me to focus on your problems than on my own.” Reba McEntire, Reba I was watching an episode of the TV show Reba recently where the title character blurted-out the line above. It’s a line every codependent can relate to because we are all guilty of focusing our attention on other people and their problems so we can avoid our own. In this particular episode, Reba is focused on the marital problems her daughter, Cheyenne, and son-in-law, Van, are experiencing, and she’s determined to fix their problems. Sound familiar? YES!!!! Likewise, we codependents are very good at focusing on the faults and failures of everyone around us. Sometimes we find ourselves very irritated by a particular person we live with or work with, and we spend way too much time renting out negative space in our heads to this person. Every time we turn around we are dwelling on something they have said or done that has rubbed us the wrong way. We may stew all day on this person and the...

“Shit happens.” Ancient Catholic Proverb A major part of addictive recovery is getting back in touch with feelings. Many of us learned to shut-down our emotions when we were small children. It was a protection mechanism that allowed us to survive life in chaotic households. But being emotionally numbed-out doesn’t serve us well as adults. In fact, it causes us to act-out. In order to suppress the feelings we don’t want to face we drink, over-eat, compulsively shop, or busy ourselves with work, exercise, TV, etc. It’s important to me to keep track of the feelings I am learning to own. And I had a vivid experience of how well I am progressing this week. My car was at the dealership for some bumper repairs. I went on Wednesday to pick it up. As one of the dealership employees was driving my car around to me, another employee in a parked SUV didn’t see him coming and backed right into the side of my car! I couldn’t believe my eyes. I stood there in shock-- and shock was...

Yesterday was one of those days. From the get-go it seemed like the entire universe was working against me. Nothing was flowing right and so all of the slumbering, unresolved frustration and anger inside of me erupted to new volcanic heights. As I was driving along I found myself screaming at life, God and the entire world as I banged on my steering wheel. The initial frustration that surfaced was about the past few months. Over that time, I’ve invested a lot of energy into getting my life together in new, necessary ways. I’ve taken giant steps forward, which is great. But I’ve also met great resistance and there’s been practically no positive response from others that I’ve reached-out to; or at least, it isn’t coming soon enough for me. All of that frustration quickly snowballed into an avalanche of past and present frustration, hurt and anger. Terrible things that happened to me in the past came flooding back and all I could do is remember and ask “Where was God during ...