Soulshine

Feelings can be fabulous and feelings can be a nightmare. Those of us with addictive personalities have had a lifetime of struggle with our feelings. For the most part, I’m used to allowing my feelings to walk all over me. I’ve allowed myself to be powerless against the weight of fear, anxiety, sadness, etc. But recently I learned that I have great positive power when it comes to my feelings. In July I switched my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) medication from Zoloft to Prozac. It was a rough transition that left me feeling frightened and anxious a good deal more than I am accustomed to feeling. The doctor and I finally worked out a proper dosage for me and I seemed to be adjusting well when one morning I woke-up and I felt extremely frightened. I got up, made some breakfast, sat down and said to myself “Enough is enough! I’m sick to death of feeling frightened and anxious! I refuse to continue to be a hostage to my feelings! I refuse to feel anxious today!” Within a mat...

Oscar Wilde said it perfectly: “be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” We were created by God to be ourselves: The unique individuals that God empowered with a specific purpose for the betterment of our generation on this earth. So “rejoice” in who you are by choosing to see yourself in a favorable light, by retaining the personal power God blessed you with at birth and by using that power to bless humanity. No one can take our personal power away from us. Even our parents weren’t able to do so when we were children. We freely chose to give our personal power away to Mom and Dad because we believed they had to be right and we had to be wrong. As disempowered children, we developed victim mentalities that caused us to give our power away to most everyone. As a result, we never learned to build good boundaries. When other children bullied us, we ran instead of standing our ground; when people insulted us, we took it on the chin while we quietly died inside ourselves; and whe...

“There is nothing to fear but fear itself.” Franklin Roosevelt    Fear, more than anything else, has kept us frozen and powerless to protect ourselves. From the time we were small, many of us learned incorrectly that we had no right to speak our truth, to own our emotional truth (our personal power) or to trust anyone to be truthful with us.    As a result, we learned to remain silent in the face of abuse perpetrated against us and we learned to stuff all of our feelings. We became possessed by our fears: 1) fears that we didn’t count; 2) that we deserved the abuse we received; and 3) fear that we were destined to be victims.      Today we are all here to prove to ourselves and to the world around us that we do count, that we deserve to be treated with proper respect and that we are not victims of life or anyone.    Today we are proclaiming that we will own our personal truth, that we will learn to experience and understand our ...

“You will never be happy until you are happy with yourself.” Robert Holden, Happiness Now    Our personal happiness is not about people, places or things. No one on this earth has true power over our own happiness but us. No one on this earth is responsible for our happiness but us. No thing can make us truly happy. No place will bring us lasting happiness. And no trip or lottery winnings will ever make us happy forever.    Authentic happiness is found only in accepting and loving ourselves unconditionally. It is found in befriending ourselves and becoming the best thing that has ever happened to us. It is found in gratitude for our very lives.    In recovery we learn that no one else can MAKE us happy. And we learn that we cannot MAKE anyone else happy. Happiness is not e arned through caretaking or people-pleasing. We also learn that happiness cannot be achieved through accomplishments, or bestowed upon us as a reward for good behavi...

Codependency robs us of our personal power. When we are shamed as children into believing that we aren’t good enough, we begin the process of giving our personal power away to others. We make others who are “good enough” into our false higher powers, and we mistakenly think that only they can rescue us from our lovelessness. As a result, we lose all sense of ownership over our lives and we fail to develop proper boundaries with others. As soon as our focus centers on pleasing people to gain approval, we give all of our personal power away to others. We also give them complete power over our feelings about ourselves. If they offer us crumbs of approval we may feel some value or self-worth. But if they withhold their approval, or worse yet, slap us with disapproval, we may feel like we are worthless and completely unlovable. Personal empowerment is all about learning to take responsibility for loving ourselves. It’s about making the conscious choice to declare “I am lovable...

Do you give your power away to your “God”? Many people do. Many people still associate with a God or a Higher Power that goes back to their childhood. And often times, this “God” is a false “God” that was taught to them by well-intentioned people who held horrible theological beliefs. It’s also a “God” who has never really been on their side. My parents taught me about God in more ways than one. Sure I heard their verbal stories about God, but I also witnessed their own actions which further illustrated their beliefs about God to me. For example, my mother told me on various occasions “I may not always know what you’re doing, but GOD KNOWS.” In other words, God was a big invisible spy. The “God” I came to know as a child was 007 to the ump-degree, but he really wasn’t on my side. He was out to catch me—and get me—if I did something bad, or made a mistake. There were many times as a child when I also caught my mother spying on me. She was a control freak in that way. And b...

There’s only one essential ingredient to being successful in life: Self-love. That’s the primary ingredient to succeeding in anything, including recovery. Since most of us with addictive personalities grew-up with little to no self-love, we often don’t know how to begin to love ourselves. And yes, it’s easier to say than do, but we can do it. We just have to choose to start rebuilding our self-love. I’ve chosen to begin the process of reclaiming my self-love by identifying my shame. Why begin with shame? Because shame is the one feeling that thoroughly destroys self-love. Shame is so devastating because it centers its warheads on who we are inherently. Shame says “you were born a mistake.” It points its nasty finger in our faces and says “you cannot be lovable because you are gay, or female, or the wrong skin-color, or born out-of-wedlock, or stupid, or ___________.” And we can all fill in the blanks with the many, many other ways in which shame has been telling us we are una...

“A persecution was started against Paul and Barnabas, who were then expelled from the territory. They shook the dust from their feet in protest. They knew only how to be filled with joy and the Holy Spirit.” The Christian Bible, Acts of the Apostles Why is it that when bad things happen to us we are far from being filled with joy and the Holy Spirit? Maybe it’s because we are rarely filled with joy even when good things are happening to us. And why would that be? Well, because we fail to recognize that the Kingdom of Heaven is within us, and that we have the power to cultivate that heaven and to live it. Instead, as life-long addictive victims, we have chosen to give away our personal power over our inner-lives and to create our own internal-hells. Many of us have been guilty of giving away our inner-personal-power since we were small children. We gave away the heaven inside of us to Mom and Dad and many, many others. We were born believing we were beautiful, bu...

Anytime I’m having a problem with someone else, I need to ask myself this question: “Who has the problem?” Obviously the answer is “I do.” This practice brings me back to reality. The problem is really with me, not the other person. And so I need to ask myself “What’s going on with me? What is it about me that’s being rubbed the wrong way by this person?” As I was giving some talks recently, someone raised their hand and asked “What do you do about people who are narcissistic?” I asked this person to elaborate. “Well,” she said, “There’s this lady in our bridge group and she’s always talking about herself and she’s just so narcissistic that I can’t stand to be around her.” I asked the woman speaking “Who has the problem here?” She looked puzzled and thought for a moment. Then she said hesitantly “I do.” I said “Bingo!” Then I asked “So who is it who has to change?” She said “I do.” I don’t think that was the realization that this woman wanted to arrive at. Most of us don’t like the ...

As a film buff, I’ve come to really love Mae West. She was someone who really knew how to own her personal power and no one—absolutely no one—could take it away from her. In her 1935 film Goin’ to Town , West exclaims “ Yeah, for a long time I was ashamed of the way I lived.” When questioned about whether she changed herself to please others she says “No, I got over being ashamed.” Seems many of us could take a good lesson or two from Mae West in learning how to get over being ashamed of who we are. No one can shame us unless we allow them to do so. No one can make us feel worthless unless we believe deep down inside that we are worthless. And no one can make a doormat out of us unless we voluntarily lay down for them. It’s time we all learned to get over being ashamed. We can start by realizing that we’re good enough just the way we are. Let’s focus on the inside instead of the outside: Affirm our own goodness. Let’s also care only about what we think of ourselves, an...

I haven’t written anything recently because I honestly haven’t had anything to say that hasn’t already been said. If I could sum up everything I’ve ever said, it would come down to this: Living a harmonious life, one in which you maintain an overall sense of well-being, is as simple as “live and let live.” In other words, own the power that is yours to own and let go of your need to usurp power that is not yours to own. If you love yourself enough to own your personal power, to set proper boundaries with others, to love and treat yourself with kindness, to respect yourself by speaking up for your needs and honoring yourself, then you will be half way to happiness. Likewise, if you love others enough to allow them to own their personal power, to set their own boundaries, to allow them to be who they are and not who you want them to be, if you treat them with love, kindness and proper respect, then your happiness—and theirs—will be complete. These are two sides of the sa...