Soulshine

Self-love is a tough one for most everyone who enters a Recovery program. So many of us as children were taught, or programmed, to loath ourselves. We were constantly criticized by our parents and rarely, if ever, received positive recognition. We were taught by them that we were not valuable, that we did not count and that we were basically unlovable.  Growing up in my own household as a child, I learned I was lovable if I did all of the right things to please my parents, but otherwise, I was NOT lovable. Love had to be earned and it could be withdrawn at any second of any day. This led to a fear of abandonment as well as self-loathing inside of me.  Life became a hell of emotional instability for me. One day I might be lovable in the morning, but by afternoon, I was getting the silent treatment or hearing words like "I'm ashamed to even call you my son!" As an adult I firmly believed I needed someone who could love me unconditionally into loving mysel...

We are all the salt of the earth. But when we fail to set proper boundaries, we lose our “taste” and we are then trampled underfoot. Likewise, we are all the light of the world, unless we refuse to respect ourselves by setting proper boundaries with others. We then whimper away, lick our wounds and hide our light under a bushel basket. Boundaries allow our light to shine before others. Boundaries show that we do love, respect and value ourselves. And they allow us to fully be who we are so that our talents flourish and add value to the world around us.   Simply put a boundary is:1) something (such as a river, a fence, or an imaginary line) that shows where an area ends and another area begins (in other words, where I end and you begin); 2) a point or limit that indicates where two things become different; 3) an unofficial rule about what should not be done; limits that define acceptable behavior. The simplest boundary we can set is saying “No,” and yet it is the harde...

“I do not explain, defend or justify my life to anyone. I am my own creation, intent on being myself.” Dr. Chris Michaels Many codependents spend a lot of time explaining, defending and justifying their lives—even their existence—to others. Someone criticizes something we said or did and a panic alarm goes off inside of us. We then bend over backwards to whitewash ourselves. We back pedal on our beliefs or our values and desperately repaint ourselves in the color that this critical person wants us to be. Before recovery many of us were like chameleons. Every hour of every day often led to a change in our color or in our song and dance. It was always more important to us to sing the song someone else wanted us to sing, or to dance the dance that made other people happy. Yup, we were champions of giving our personal power away to everyone we thought was better than us. And by the time we entered recovery, many of us didn’t know our own voices anymore. We had complet...

I first posted this three years ago at Christmas. I think it’s worth re-posting this year and maybe every year as a reminder that we need to work at owning our own power at Holiday gatherings. It’s the only way we can truly enjoy them. Merry Christmas! “Christmas time is here, happiness and cheer”… OK well maybe not. I mean, yeah, it’s Christmas, but the happiness and cheer is debatable. This time of the year most everyone wants to be happy, but let’s face it, family gatherings sometimes play out like real Nightmares before Christmas. Across America most every family has an Uncle Eeyore, who makes the Winnie the Pooh character seem like the Sugar Plum Fairy; an Aunt Grinchella, who’s conniving and controlling; and a brother Ebenezer, who is bitter and angry at the world. So much for happiness and cheer-- unless we adopt a new attitude toward family and the holiday. First, we have to choose to accept Eeyore, Grinchella and Ebenezer just the way they are by empathizing wi...

“Summer's gone, winter's in your eyes I can feel the thunder storms inside I wake every morning and the cold winds cover me All I've got's a ghost of what could be… I've got a heart of stone and it's sinking deep inside I want to tell you love I'm too proud to cry If you can see the lights shine in front of me If you can see the lights shout out where you'll be.” See the Lights by Simple Minds I know what it’s like to be around someone and to feel the “thunder storms inside” of me. It makes no difference if it’s one person or a whole party filled with people. I am now very aware of the storms that crash and thunder inside of me; the nervous tension that’s screaming “Let’s get out of here! I don’t feel safe! Run, run, run back to your car, to your house and hide!” Yes, I’m aware of the inner-storms that scream for me to run for cover—and I’m learning to allow them to subside without my having to run away from anyone, including myself...

“I’m sick of people worryin’ about what I do.” Mae West, I’m No Angel It’s easy to say “Amen!” to this superb quote from Mae West. We all know what it feels like to have people watching, worrying and judging our every move. It gets tiresome when others are always overstepping their boundaries by focusing their attention on our lives and our behavior. And it doesn’t take long for us to build-up tremendous resentments over having people constantly taking our inventory. Now here’s the catch: Most of us spend just as much time focusing on other people’s lives and on taking their inventories as well. We are every bit as guilty—if not more so—of the same crime. Think about it. While we’re resenting the fact that a certain coworker keeps count of every second we’re away from our desk on a break, we are equally guilty of keeping a mental log of how often this same coworker is late for work in the morning. We do unto others what we despise having done to us, and yet we often are...