Soulshine

“You read something so sad Some lonely boy just went mad.” Luke Temple, Love Won’t Receive Many codependents suffer from loneliness. It’s often a self-imposed loneliness that comes primarily from self-alienation. After all, most of us abandoned ourselves when we were very young. That same loneliness is also due partly to our sometimes fierce independence. We may often enmesh in others, but at the opposite end of the spectrum we like to pretend like we don’t have any wants or needs of our own. In other words, we won’t allow anyone to help us. In between codependent relationships, many codependents are loners. We can be very independent while we’re licking our emotional wounds, and this can lead us to being lonely as well. A few years ago, while I was in the throes of loneliness, I asked my Higher Power to help me. Then I discovered a book that had a chapter on loneliness. It suggested that we ask loneliness what it has to teach us about ourselves, so I did: “Loneliness...

“Loneliness can only be understood, never escaped or overcome—except temporarily.” Darlene Lancer , Conquering Shame and Codependency Loneliness and codependency often go hand-in-hand. For years I tried to bury my loneliness through losing myself in other people. I thought that if I could just fade into someone else, all of my emptiness, all of my loneliness would dissipate. But it never did. When fading into someone else wasn’t alleviating my inner-emptiness, I tried to escape my loneliness through other addictive behaviors. Shopping always worked best for me. Buying anything gave me that TEMPORARY respite from my loneliness and my emptiness. But it was always TEMPORARY—very temporary. The problem here is the solution we addicts so often use. We want to escape from our uncomfortable feelings. Escaping is a solution that never works. Instead of trying to escape from difficult feelings, like emptiness, loneliness or anxiety, we need to welcome these feelings. We need to...