Soulshine

    Addicts typically engage in self-sabotage. This behavior is based in our dire need for chaos and drama. So many of us were raised in families where there was constant chaos, endless drama and very little—if any—stability. As we grew older and developed addictive personalities, we also developed an incessant need for self-sabotage by way of chaos and drama. As adults, we often times find ourselves split between loathing the chaos/drama and desperately needing it. We are split because we have two personalities: Our natural-born personality and our unnatural addictive personality. On a conscious level, our natural personality is tired of chaos and drama. But on a subconscious level, our addictive personality is thriving on creating as much chaos and drama as possible. We are thus often times conditioned for daily chaos and drama. And when they don’t naturally exist, we will create them for ourselves—and everyone else in our lives. There are a plethora of ways in whi...

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 ...

“We have a tendency to make assumptions about everything. The problem with making assumptions is that we believe they are the truth.” Don Miguel Ruiz , The Four Agreements Codependents love drama. We create endless dramas in our heads every day. And most of these dramas are based in false assumptions we make about others and unreasonable expectations that we love to impose on everyone we know. Rarely are our dramas favorable ones. They usually entail us being the victim of someone else’s behavior; and, of course, we always imagine that behavior as being detrimental toward us. Unfortunately, because we believe our assumptions are the truth and our expectations are legitimate, we make terrible judgments against innocent people. We get angry with them, we pout, we accuse them of things they have never said or done, and we layer them with guilt or shame for not being who we wanted them to be. In other words, we screw-up our relationships based in the very messed-up drama...

“I spend too much time thinking and doing, I need fun, fun, fun in my life and I need life, life, life in my fun.” The Drums, I Need Fun in My Life The average codependent is seriously lacking fun in his life, much less life in his fun. Even if we’ve been in recovery for a while we can find ourselves still spending way too much time thinking and doing serious stuff that has nothing to do with our lives. After all, our lives revolved around everyone else’s life for so long. All of our focus was on the lives and problems of everyone we encountered. We searched-out drama everywhere, and when we couldn’t find any drama to fix in someone else’s life, we worked hard to create as much chaos as it took to keep us from facing ourselves and living our own lives. Where’s the fun in focusing on drama or creating chaos? Where’s the fun in focusing on everyone else’s problems 24/7? Where’s the fun in our futile attempts to fix everyone by falsely owning all of their pro...