Soulshine

“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...

“The purpose of your life isn’t to arrive safely at your death.” Anonymous Codependents usually don’t like to take risks. If we did, we wouldn’t need to rely on manipulation as much as we do before recovery. We would instead ask for what we want and need. We would take the risk of facing a “No” from someone. But many of us believe we aren’t worthy of what we want or need and we are too afraid of rejection to ask. So we avoid risk-taking by relying on manipulation. As a result, life becomes a series of playing it safe day after day. And playing it safe often means continual reliance on ourselves to meet our every want and need without the help of anyone. Some of us become fortresses made of flesh. We become so self-reliant that it no longer even occurs to us to ask for help from anyone. Total self-reliance is a problem with many facets, however. For one thing, we are in a state of denial when we believe we can march through life without being vulnerable or relying on...

“I do not want to go through life like my mother… Afraid that I am not really loved.” Cassandra Mortmain, I Capture the Castle Codependents fear never being loved. We have never loved ourselves and we have never allowed anyone else to love us. We have tried to bargain with others for love, we have tried to earn love through caretaking and we have tried to win love through people-pleasing. And we have usually done these things with all of the wrong people; with those who were totally unavailable to give us what we so deeply, desperately longed for—Love. In recovery, we must learn to take responsibility for the inner-emptiness we have created; the loveless void we have nursed in every wrong way. We begin taking that responsibility by admitting we are powerless over our own self-hatred, over our inability to love ourselves. We surrender that inability to our support group, the universe or a Higher Power. But we can’t simply stop there and expect that now everything i...

“Come on. Why don’t you release those brakes?” Mae West , Goin’ to Town I’ve had the brakes-on in terms of concealing who I am for most of my life. Even if I'd let-up on the foot-pedal just enough to allow some of my real self out, I could still rely on the emergency brake to keep people at arms-length—and to keep me safe from them, supposedly. Anyone who has seen the film Goin’ to Town knows that it primarily involves Mae West’s pursuit of a British gentleman who is too well-groomed, and maybe too afraid, to be vulnerable. She’s hot after him and he’s as cool, or rather as frigid, as ice. He isn’t about to let his guard down, reveal any of his true self or allow his honest bubbling-to-the-surface feelings for her to be expressed in any way. He plays it completely safe to the point of losing her to another man—for a time. Too often we are afraid of expressing how we honestly feel about someone. Likewise, we are too often afraid of loosening-up and allowing ours...

Now that song comes again and I still remember you saying ”Young boy afraid to risk for love to take a chance No light, no love will ever grow Inside your house of stone.” Now that song comes again (Oh, no, no) I still remember you saying ”Young boy who could not ask for love Your chance has passed No light, no love will ever grow.” I will build a house of stone. House of Stone by Roaring Boys I remember first hearing the song House of Stone back in the early 1980s. The melody wrapped its way around my stony little heart and tugged me down to my knees as the lyrics hit me like a brick upside my head. I knew I had built a house of stone around my heart, but I didn’t know what to do about it. On the one hand, my house of stone protected me-- to some degree-- from the pain of the outside world. But, on the other hand, it kept me from being vulnerable and from connecting with other people. It’s stealth protection meant that I couldn’t let any love in—not even ...