Soulshine

“Say you'll share with   me one   love, one lifetime...   Lead me, save me   from my solitude... Say you want me   with you,   here beside you...   Anywhere you go   let me go too -   Christine   that's all I ask of you” The Phantom , Phantom of the Opera I saw the new Broadway rendition of Phantom of the Opera last night. I always find myself initially pulling for Raoul, while empathizing with the Phantom. And it’s my empathy for the Phantom that eventually leads me to pull for him toward the end, even though I already know what the outcome will be. I realized last night that my primary reason for empathizing with the Phantom is that his story parallels my own. Since my teenage years, I’ve always seen myself as hideous to look at. This started when I developed a horrible case of teen acne that literally ravaged my face and left it terribly scarred. Coupled with my ever-growing codependency, I had little hope...

My CODA group is currently reading the book Conquer ing Shame and Codependency by Darlene Lancer. Recently one of the members mentioned to me that he found the book difficult to read. I believe I understand where he was coming from, although he may not yet understand that fact about what’s going on inside of himself. Often times when we find a recovery book 1) doesn’t resonate with us, or 2) is difficult to read, it is a clue as to what is really going on inside of us subconsciously. I believe in both of these instances, our denial is being unearthed and disturbed. When a recovery book doesn’t resonate with us at all, we are most likely so bound-up by our denial that the book seems totally foreign to us. We say to ourselves, “Well, this isn’t me at all” as we read about the fact that codependents engage in caretaking and other manipulative behaviors. So we put the book aside and allow it to gather dust. This has been the beginning of the story for many people who I have talked w...

Be-You-tiful: It’s the only way to be. I was watching an episode of Will & Grace last night. It was set at Thanksgiving. Will is hosting Thanksgiving dinner and he’s invited Grace, Karen and Jack. He also has a surprise dinner-guest: Jack’s mother. When Jack finds out his mother is coming to dinner, he freaks. Afterwards, Will and Grace learn that Jack has never told his mother he’s gay. For 30 years, Jack’s mom has been living in a fantasy-like world where she simply ignored all of the obvious clues that her son is gay. And Jack played along with her. Why? Because Jack believed he couldn’t be beautiful in her eyes as a gay man. He was afraid of being rejected and abandoned by her if she knew the truth. And so, as a result, Jack was never able to be “be-You-tiful,” or his true beautiful self, around his mother. Many of us have lived our lives for way too long with the same sort of terrible fear that plagues Jack in this episode of Will & Grace . We’ve exhausted o...

“I’m sorry I met someone because I know how much you hate it when I’m happy… You’re happiest when I’m miserable ‘cause then you don’t have to look at how miserable you are.” Grace Adler, Will & Grace (2002) Will Truman (Eric McCormack) and Grace Adler (Debra Messing) bounced back and forth within a love/hate friendship for eight seasons on the TV series Will & Grace . Both characters were codependently needy, and they spent many an episode trying to control or fix each other. As I was watching an episode from Season Five, the above quote really made my ears perk up. It made me think back over my life and of how I, too, was often happiest when someone I’d grown close to was miserable. It doesn’t make sense on the surface unless you understand codependent caretaking. Before recovery, I was a professional codependent caretaker. In other words, I came alive in a relationship when the other person was suffering through something they were powerless over. It gave me the ...

Codependents are infamous for engaging in enabling behaviors. These behaviors are always more about us (the codependent) than they are about the other person. We feel inferior and insecure and so we engage in caretaking—a serious form of enabling—in order to feel loved and needed by the other person. We rarely recognize the fact that our caretaking/enabling behavior hurts both us and the other person. We drain ourselves by constantly being “on call” to meet every possible need or to solve every problem of the other person. We also inhibit that person’s ability to be responsible for him/herself, and we allow them to escape all possible consequences for their own behavior or poor choices. How do we know if we are enablers? I have paraphrased a list of enabling characteristics offered by Tom Ferry in his book Life by Design . We are an enabler if we do any of the following: 1.  We worry that someone else can’t handle life situations without our help. 2. ...

“Remember, if you think something is missing in your life, it’s probably you.” Robert Holden , Shift Happens In his book The True Source of Healing , Tenzin Wangyal says “Recognizing depletion is the first step in soul retrieval—you need to know what is missing before you can retrieve it.” Most everyone who enters into a recovery program knows that there is something missing from their soul and from their life. We’ve known this, at least subconsciously, for many, many years. The problem for so many of us is that we never bothered to try and figure out what was really missing, and so we were never able to retrieve it. We mistakenly thought love from outside ourselves was missing, so we searched high and low for someone outside of ourselves to love us. We tried to squeeze love out of parents and other family members—the love we believed we deserved but never received. We bent over backwards to please them and to be their perfect little angel. When that failed to work, we soug...

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , Darlene Lancer says we codependents “may be drawn to drama-filled relationships to enliven us. We tend to consider stable people boring and are instead drawn to drug addicts, unavailable partners, dysfunctional work environments, excitement, abuse or conflict.” How true. Over the years I’ve hated having chaos in my life and yet, truth is, I couldn’t live without it. I always fell in love with totally unavailable people. It was my means of ensuring emotional turmoil, which guaranteed me two things: 1) It would prove that I really wasn’t good enough and 2) it would ensure I’d continue to be miserable, which I suppose was better than feeling numb. I could people-please, caretake and walk on air for any unavailable person. I would become emotionally attached, obsess over them day and night, fantasize about the great love-life we were going to eventually have, think up all sorts of ways to be near them—and then drown myself ...

“God, spare me from the desire for love, approval or appreciation. Amen.” Byron Katie, A Friendly Universe On average, codependents suffer greatly from their deep-rooted desire for love, approval and appreciation from others; and it’s easy to understand why. As children we never received the love, approval (affirmation) or appreciation we needed from our parents. This left a gaping black hole in our souls; one that grew ever larger as we became adults. When a child doesn’t receive the proper love, affirmation and nurturing from parents, he/she never learns how to love, affirm and nurture him/herself. The black hole in the soul develops and it increases because the child lacks the tools to turn inside and nurture him/herself. Life then becomes an endless circle of searching outside one’s self for love, approval and appreciation. As a result, the child develops a codependency. If he/she never receives any help, he/she then becomes a codependent teenager, a codepende...

“God grant me serenity to ACCEPT the things I cannot change…” Reinhold Niebuhr, The Serenity Prayer Acceptance can be hard for many codependents to swallow. Some of us are so tuned-in to the idea that we can make another person love us; that we can somehow earn love and acceptance. And we are especially adept at falling in love with people who are totally unavailable to us. At first our efforts at earning love seem to reap rewards. We people-please the other person or we caretake his/her every need; and they respond positively to us. As a result, we begin to dream of spending the rest of our lives with this person and we quickly build a Disney-style fantasy in our heads and hearts. We invest a great deal of time and effort into getting the love we want from this person of our choosing, but we rarely experience the reciprocal love from them that we so desperately want. Over time the beautiful dream begins to become a nightmare. We feel our grip on the other perso...