Soulshine

Every feeling we experience is valid. And important. There are NO wrong feelings. God gave us feelings to help us process life. When we face and process our feelings we return to a balanced place inside ourselves, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Most everyone suffering from addictive behaviors is perpetuating their suffering by suppressing their feelings. We were sometimes taught as children that it was not OK or even valid to have feelings, and many of us learned to turn-off our feelings to survive in our chaotic childhood households. A major part of Recovery is learning to acknowledge and reclaim our feelings, so that we can go about processing life properly. Be aware of the fact, however, that not everyone you know may be comfortable with your learning to respect and express your feelings. For some people in our lives, this will be a new and awkward experience. If people resist our expressions of our feelings, we must also remember that ...

    "Feelings are just visitors, let them come and go." Mooji Sometimes we struggle the most with our difficult feelings at night. We feel empty, anxious, needy, even desperate inside, and these feelings drive our desire to act-out. This is when we need to remember that feelings are just visitors. They won't last. We just need to accept them and allow them to pass through us. So next time we're in that bad emotional state, instead of acting-out, let's think about how loved we are. God loves each and every one of us immensely, and we all have people in our lives who love and care about us, too. It would be better to reach out to one of those persons, as well as our Higher Power, instead of reaching for a means of self-medicating. Instead of acting-out, we can also make a list of all we are grateful for, counting up all of our blessings. And we can push past our denial and self-pity and credit ourselves for being truly good people.

      Throughout recovery, trust in love. Trust in your Higher Power. Trust means you don’t have to worry about what you are powerless over. Enjoy the good that you find in your new journey of recovery. Always look up and always move forward, just like time does. Only look back to gain wisdom. Seems much of life is filled with uncertainty. The only real certainty you can experience is in this present moment. If all is good in this moment—outside of your head—then all is good. Be certain of that. And be certain that all will be good in the bigger picture of the new life that is unfolding before you in recovery. 

      I want to be accepted and loved for who I am. I want the whole world to give me this gift. But it has yet to happen. Why? Because I must be the first person to gift myself with unconditional acceptance and love.  No one else can provide me with this gift until I first provide it to myself. Once I begin the practice of accepting and loving myself unconditionally, others will gladly wrap their arms around me and love will naturally flow forever in my favor.

      Over the past 15 years I’ve come to value the power of setting boundaries. For many a year, I’ve joked about going home for my “annual dysfunctional family Christmas.” Family gatherings, for any reason (holidays, weddings, etc.), were often painful because I either didn’t know how to set boundaries, or didn’t feel worthy of setting them, much less having them respected. But in recent years that has changed. I decided a few years back that I would no longer be party to negativity at family gatherings. Our family has long been divided by religious beliefs, political leanings and various levels of self-righteousness, as many families are; and I no longer wanted to participate. So I set the boundaries that I would no longer participate in political or religious conversations. Instead, I urged that we talk about those things that unite us and bring harmony, instead of those things that divide us. Of course I couldn’t enforce these boundaries on anyone but mysel...

    It’s that time of the year again. The parties and shopping are well underway and so is the urgent need to be happy. Christmas has always been a difficult time for me mentally and emotionally. It’s the one season of the year in which everyone desperately wants to feel loved; and yet many of us who grew up in dysfunctional households don’t know how to accept love, or allow ourselves to be loved. We didn’t receive the love we needed as children and consequently we never learned to love ourselves. This is the real problem. Recovery has taught me much about me and self-love. Looking back now, I see that over the many years and Christmas seasons of my life I was in fact loved by many people. But I never acknowledged that love because I didn’t have the inner-tools to accept that love. I didn’t know how to accept it because I didn’t know how to love and accept myself. So I learned to play the victim of the holiday season. I ached inside and moaned and groaned to myself e...

“Who am I to judge?” Pope Francis Codependents, like most all addicts, spend a great deal of time playing prosecutor, judge and jury. Most of our attention is focused on ourselves. This is actually one situation where we do focus our attention on us—unfortunately. When it comes to negative energy, we have an abundance of it for ourselves. We are critical, merciless and unforgiving with our every fault or failing. Of course, this pattern of negative behavior causes us eventually to be just as easily critical, merciless and unforgiving towards others. I’ve come to believe that the people in this world who are most critical of others must either be codependent/addictive thinkers, or those who are totally obsessed with following rules, or both. And I’d like to see this all change. We need to make this world a kinder place. That means that we need to focus on being kind to ourselves, first and foremost. Once we can empathize with ourselves, we will stop being so self-criti...

Author’s Note: The next few meditations will be from a retreat I directed recently called The Good News According to Disney . If you aren’t familiar with the films that are referenced, I’d suggest to take time to see them and to look for the deeper meaning within them. Many people today still live by the biblical adage “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” They actually believe that they will be at peace if they achieve revenge or restitution for any mishap that has befallen them at the hands of another. They believe they will reclaim their personal power once they have achieved their revenge, but this is impossible. Disney’s Cinderella (2015) reveals the true secret to owning one’s personal power and to retaining it no matter what we experience in life: “Have courage and be kind.” On the surface this motto looks a bit simple and wimpy. But in reality, it holds great power. That power comes from the heart of a person, or in this case Ella, who sees the world not a...

“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” ...

“Take a look in the mirror, look at yourself But don’t look too close ‘cause you just might see The person you hate the most.” Natalie Cole, Take A Look Sad to say, but when the average addict looks in the mirror, they more often than not see the person that they hate the most. Or so they think. Truth is that the person they think they are seeing in the mirror isn’t really THAT person at all. No, they aren’t seeing themselves. They are only seeing all of the negative, hateful judgments that they have made against themselves. I don’t know anyone who has liked looking in the mirror less than me. From the time I was a child, when I looked in a mirror, I saw all of the judgments that my parents and others had made against me. I accepted and then adopted those judgments as my own. And I used them again and again to persecute myself every time I had to face a mirror. Recovery has taught me a good lesson, though. That lesson is summed up in a further lyric from the song Ta...

“Love… cannot betray because it has nothing to do with possession.” Paulo Coelho , The Witch of Portobello Codependents easily associate love with possession. In many ways, this is understandable. Western society, certainly in the United States anyway, has come to associate “love” with the “possession” of things. We see a vase in a department store, we immediately “love” it and we must possess it to be happy. Or we see chocolate eclairs in a bakery window, we “love” eclairs and we must possess or have one or two to be happy. This concept of “love” and “possession” easily lends itself to the language of addiction. The alcoholic loves her vodka and she must have it to be happy, and the shopping addict loves things and he must have them to be happy. Likewise, we codependents love certain people and we must possess or have them to be happy. The big difference between these three addictions is that the alcoholic and shopaholic are “in love” with possessing things (i...

Freedom from shame means being “on our guard” or aware of our feelings at all times. It means being able to catch ourselves when we are being swept down a dark alley of emotional pain fueled by shame. When we are aware of our shameful feelings, we are able to make a powerful choice between addictive acting out, or facing the feelings. When we choose to face the feelings, we can challenge the ugly thoughts that fuel them, and we can take our personal power back from shame. Facing our feelings requires that we be “courageous” enough to embrace them. It also requires that we be “strong” enough to ask for the help we may need to feel safe enough to fully recover our personal power. We know that help is available to us. We can seek help through our Higher Power and we can seek help from family and friends that we are able to trust. We can also seek help through professionals, like therapist, spiritual directors or clergy, and we can seek help through support groups. If we are ...

If we did less judging and more loving the world would be a holier place. And if we want to be less judgmental and more loving of everyone, we need to begin by being kinder to ourselves. Today is the last day of 2014. Let’s take a few moments and look back over the year. How well did we love ourselves and others? Did we do a good job of choosing to be kind as opposed to being critical? Did we listen with compassion and express understanding when people needed validation? Did we place ourselves into the hearts and minds of others in order to empathize with them, even when they were difficult or even ugly with us? Or did we immediately go on the defensive, take things personally and go into attack mode? Did we make love our priority? The answers to all of these questions depend on how we treated ourselves. If we made loving ourselves a priority in 2014 then we most likely did a better job of loving others as well. The choice to love ourselves better enabled us to be less judgme...

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 ...

“God, spare me from the desire for love, approval or appreciation. Amen.” Byron Katie, A Friendly Universe On average, codependents suffer greatly from their deep-rooted desire for love, approval and appreciation from others; and it’s easy to understand why. As children we never received the love, approval (affirmation) or appreciation we needed from our parents. This left a gaping black hole in our souls; one that grew ever larger as we became adults. When a child doesn’t receive the proper love, affirmation and nurturing from parents, he/she never learns how to love, affirm and nurture him/herself. The black hole in the soul develops and it increases because the child lacks the tools to turn inside and nurture him/herself. Life then becomes an endless circle of searching outside one’s self for love, approval and appreciation. As a result, the child develops a codependency. If he/she never receives any help, he/she then becomes a codependent teenager, a codepende...