Soulshine

Disney’s Tangled places a new spin on the Grimm Fairytale Rapunzel . We meet Disney’s Rapunzel just before her 18th birthday. She has a spirit of adventure. Every year on her birthday, she has seen lanterns light-up the night sky, and her heart is telling her to follow the lanterns. She is anxious to do so. But Mother Gothel stands in Rapunzel’s way. Mother Gothel is vain, selfish and manipulative, and as a codependent I can unfortunately relate to her need to control someone to ensure her own happiness. Gothel kidnapped the infant Rapunzel because she (Gothel) is able to retain her youthful beauty by simply touching Rapunzel’s golden, radiant hair. So she is determined to keep Rapunzel a prisoner in the tower by infusing her with fear concerning the dangers of the outside world. Fear becomes the major obstacle that stands in the way of Rapunzel’s quest for adventure and freedom to live her own life. She has developed a comfort zone in the tower with Mother Gothel. Part of he...

“In the end all that matters is how well did you love, how well did you live, how well did you learn to let go.” Anonymous The addictive personality thrives on control. It is hypervigilant and aggressive about making sure that all is as it “should be.” The need to control never sleeps. When we’re in this control-life-at-all-costs mode, we run on adrenaline and fear 24 hours a day. We are constantly monitoring everyone and everything around us. We must make sure that all of life cooperates with our desires, expectations and assumptions. Whenever we discover a threat to our imagined serenity, we are quick to move into Terminator mode and stamp it out as quickly as possible. So we pull out our inner-arsenal of manipulative behaviors, like flattery, caretaking, people-pleasing and self-righteousness to beat down anyone who might be standing in the way of our perceived happiness. As a result, we “love” and “live” poorly. Notice I said “imagined” serenity and “perceived” ...

Seems most of us enter recovery with a very dire need to control life. The concept of flowing with life is totally foreign to us. We are so used to scripting every moment of every day in our heads. We decide what we think others should or should not do in order to please us. Thoughts like “No one should bother me today,” “He should have called me,” “She should want to see the movie I want to see” run through our heads second by second. These are all controlling thoughts. They are designed to ensure our personal happiness—and yet they do just the opposite: They make us miserable because we can rarely enforce them and make them reality. Every day we have a choice. We can script out our day and set ourselves up on a course of manipulation (control) and disappointment, or we can let go and ease into the flow of the day as determined by our Higher Power. I have learned to stop scripting not only my work days but also my free days and vacation days. Sure, I take time to plan what I...

“You saved Richard Callahan’s life. You can’t live it for him.” Helen Pryor, American Dreams We codependents tend to want to live other people’s lives. And it seems to be especially difficult for codependent parents who are now facing the fact that their children are no longer “kids”—they’re grown adults themselves. I gave a series of talks to mostly baby-boomers last week and a recurring theme was their need to control the lives of their adult children, in particular when it comes to God or church. Many baby-boomers are church goers. They grew-up believing that it was sinful to miss out on attending church on Sundays. Now they are faced with children and grandchildren who don’t believe it’s important to attend church. And so these baby-boomers have an intense need to rectify the situation by trying to impose their beliefs onto their adult children and grandchildren. In effect, these baby-boomers want to live their children’s lives for them and so they coerce and n...

   Initially we approach boundaries as a means of reclaiming our own personal power; and as a means of protecting ourselves in relationships. This is where we have to begin in order to understand and to start building good personal boundaries.    But boundaries are also meant to be seen as bridges. They bridge the gap between us and others. In this way, boundaries exist not only to protect us but to protect others as well. Every relationship is a two-way street and boundaries must respect both individuals in every relationship.      This means that we must learn to respect other people’s boundaries at the same time that we are asking them to respect our boundaries. And for many of us, this is just as difficult of an assignment as learning to build our own boundaries. We are used to wanting to be in CONTROL. And our sometimes insatiable need to control others has taken us down the path of manipulation of others and thus a deep lack of respect for ...

In his book Loveability , Robert Holden outlines what love is and what it is not. I find this list to be very helpful in terms of facing and calming the codependent crazies. Let’s look at the 10 points he makes below. I have placed my spin on them for the purpose of seeing these points through a codependent love lens… Is it love or is it FEAR?   When we believe “I am not loveable,” the fear is always “Love has forsaken me.” And this will cause us to look for ways in which love is failing us. We will be on-guard constantly and will likely drive a wedge between us and the person we are professing to love. This can be especially true if we have abandonment issues. Is it love or is it DEPENDENCY?   I am unable to love me and so I make someone else responsible. Dependency is the issue for us codependents. Our self-love is generally so poor that we desperately want someone else to make us OK and so we look for that person who will be responsible for all of our need...

“When you make someone your source of love, they will also be a source of pain.” Robert Holden , Loveability Most every codependent knows the horrors of attachment and dependency. An active codependent can easily attach to any person who shows the slightest bit of interest in him/her. The hope is that this is the person who is going to make me feel lovable and acceptable—FINALLY! He/she is going to love me into being OK with myself and we will live happily ever after because I’m going to meet his/her every wish and need and vice-versa! So the codependent attaches him/herself to the other person almost literally. Every thought, every hope, every dream, every moment revolves around this one person who has been thrust into the role of eternal savior. The attachment then leads to a strong dependency upon the other person. As the attachment/dependency grows, the initial fascination and joy turn into a deep aching to constantly be in contact with the other person. Fear an...