Soulshine

Most addictive personalities have difficulty with trust. We grew-up in families where trust was discouraged, or simply not possible to maintain. As a result we now struggle with the very concept of being able to trust anyone or anything. In recovery the first person we need to learn to trust is ourselves. That’s a hefty assignment for most of us, but an extremely necessary one. We can start by beginning to believe in our own personal value. Everyone has value in this world. There are no exceptions to that one fact. Once we start seeing ourselves as lovable, valuable and unique individuals, we can choose to move forward by trusting ourselves to make life-giving decisions. We will see that we are equal with everyone in this world in that we all have a purpose for being here. We will see that we all share the same purpose of fully growing into being the persons we were created to be. And, as we begin to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually through our recovery programs...

“Well, what happens is while you’re projecting who you want to be, this gap opens up between who you want to be and who you are. And in that gap it shows you what’s stopping you from becoming who you want to be.” Glen, Weekend There is great tension between who we are and who we want to be. For the most part, I believe who we really want to be—to the absolute fullest extent—is exactly who we are. Yet few of us understand or know that being our real selves is what we truly want most in life. We’ve spent so many years running from that real self that we’ve gotten completely confused about who we want to be. All we’ve known is that, as children, we didn’t want to be the “not good enough” person that others told us we were. And since we decided we couldn’t be ourselves, we were faced with trying to emulate and be like someone else. In school, we wanted to be a “cool kid.” We sometimes tried and we certainly failed. As we became adults, we wanted to be like certain actors...