Soulshine

    " If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions, I ask their forgiveness. If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions, I forgive them. And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive, I forgive myself for that. For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions, I forgive myself." Anonymous I realize more and more that often when I am upset with another person, it’s not really about them or their behavior. It’s about the fact that something they said or did unintentionally hit on a wounded area inside of me. Those wounded, unhealed areas within my heart and soul are like landmines. I’m often not aware that they still exist until something happens or someone says something that sets off an explosion inside me. That explosion is all about me, however, and the areas within me that I n...

According to author Rita Mae Brown “a controller doesn’t trust his/her ability to live through the pain and chaos of life.” Brown then goes on to say that “there is no life without pain just as there is no art without submitting to chaos.” Anyone who has ever suffered from codependency knows the fear of facing pain and chaos. And we codependents certainly do a masterful job of trying to control life in regards to emotional pain and daily chaos. My question, however, is this: Do we try to control life to avoid chaos and the pain it causes, or do we try to control life to ensure chaos and the pain it causes? I think we are often trapped between both the need to avoid and the need to create chaos and pain. After all, many codependents willfully choose to engage in relationships with people who are toxic for them. We invite chaos and pain into our lives based in our need to repeat the childhood patterns of chaos and pain that we are so familiar with. And yet once we have...

“Children think egocentrically, which is manifested in their personalizing everything. If Dad has no time for me, it must mean that I’m not okay, that something is wrong with me. Children interpret most abuse in this way.” John Bradshaw, Homecoming The average addict enters recovery still thinking egocentrically like a child. We interpret everything to be about us. Children think they are the center of the Universe and that everything revolves around them—and so do addicts. So we interpret every comment, every form of body language and every glare that comes our way to be all about us. In other words, addictive personalities take everything very personally. Anything someone else says or does is about us. We feel responsible for the ways in which other people think and we most certainly are good at believing that we are somehow responsible for how everyone else feels. If a spouse, lover or friend seems to have no time for us (or not as much as we may compulsively wan...

“I didn’t know I was broken until I wanted to change.” Bleachers, I Wanna Get Better (2014) No one suffering from codependency, or any other addictive personality defect, knows that they are “broken” until one day they decide they need to change. That day happened to me in early October of 1995. Prior to that day, I had no idea that I was the one with the problem. I knew I was rarely happy and I knew that most all of my relationships had a pattern of falling apart. But I thought it was always the fault of the other person and that fact that they refused to change in the many ways that I insisted that they change. It never once had occurred to me that I was the one who truly needed to change because my patterns of behavior were dysfunctional and extremely broken. The only change I was willing to engage in was a false sense of change known was people-pleasing. Yes, I would pretend to be whomever someone else wanted me to be; meaning I would pretend to like what they ...

“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...