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...

“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 ...