Soulshine

I’m not sure I know what it’s like to feel fully alive. It’s scary to think of experiencing a moment to the fullest; to actually 100 percent feel the pain, the ecstasy, the thrill, the turbulence of any given moment. I hadn’t been conscious of my fear of being fully alive in the moment until last Wednesday. I was at Knott’s Berry Farm in Los Angeles with a friend of mine named Richard—who we also affectionately refer to as Bubba. For those who don’t know, Knott’s Berry Farm is an amusement park in Southern California. Both Bubba and I like rollercoasters, and so the first ride we jumped on was the Silver Bullet, one of the best rollercoasters in my opinion. It scared me so much that I don’t think I had my eyes open more than a couple of seconds here and there. And this was evident in the picture that was snapped of Bubba and me on the ride. My eyes are closed tight and the expression on my face is even tighter. I look like I’m taking a really painful dump! Bubba, however, ha...

Sometimes we are the victims of emotional abuse and sometimes we are the perpetrators. Anyone who was emotionally abused by a parent learned that parent’s abusive patterns of behavior. We then learned to use the same patterns of behavior against others as a means of controlling and manipulating them in the same way that we were controlled and manipulated. Beverly Engle, in her book The Emotionally Abusive Relationship , defines emotional abuse as “any nonphysical behavior that is designed to control, intimidate, subjugate, demean, punish or isolate another person through the use of degradation, humiliation or fear.” Examples of such behavior can be judging and criticizing others, discounting or negating a person, accusing or blaming someone, placing unreasonable expectations on others or using the silent treatment. She goes on to say that emotional abuse includes negative attitudes and symbiotic violence. Negative attitudes include believing people should do whatever we say, ...