Soulshine

    " If I have harmed anyone in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through my own confusions, I ask their forgiveness. If anyone has harmed me in any way either knowingly or unknowingly through their own confusions, I forgive them. And if there is a situation I am not yet ready to forgive, I forgive myself for that. For all the ways that I harm myself, negate, doubt, belittle myself, judge or be unkind to myself through my own confusions, I forgive myself." Anonymous I realize more and more that often when I am upset with another person, it’s not really about them or their behavior. It’s about the fact that something they said or did unintentionally hit on a wounded area inside of me. Those wounded, unhealed areas within my heart and soul are like landmines. I’m often not aware that they still exist until something happens or someone says something that sets off an explosion inside me. That explosion is all about me, however, and the areas within me that I n...

“Today I look in the mirror and say ‘I love you. I really love you. You are the joy of my life.” Louise Hay I was up early this morning and the Abbott and Costello movie Lost in a Harem was on Turner Classic Movies. In one of the scenes Abbott asks Costello “Did you ever take a good look at yourself in a mirror?” to which Costello replies “No. Why should I hurt my own feelings?” Costello’s comeback was funny and yet sad. So many of us with addictive personalities have difficulty looking at ourselves in mirrors. Before we even look, we already know that we are going to be uncomfortable with what we see, and we don’t want to hurt our already fragile feelings any further. I know that when I look in a mirror myself, I see all of my deformities and shortcomings—or at least the ones that are in my head, the ones I project onto the mirror image of myself. The deformities I see are the ones that society tells me are unacceptable, like wrinkles, lines, sagging, love-handles, ...

I recently had someone tell me he has a hard time asking for help. He said “Every time I want to ask someone for help, I think to myself ‘they probably don’t even really like me anyway, so why would they want to help me?” When he finished his sentence, I pointed out to him “It’s not that they don’t like you; it’s that you don’t like you. And you’re projecting your own dislike of yourself onto other people, assuming that they see you the same way you see yourself.” He looked stunned for a moment, but then said “You’re right.” If we see ourselves as basically unlikeable and treat ourselves like we aren’t worthy of love, or friendship or help, we end up projecting our poor self-worth onto everyone in our lives. We reach a point where we believe that everyone sees us in the same negative light that we see ourselves. This is a primary reason why it is often so hard to ask others for help, or to believe that other people really care about us. In her book Conquering...

“He doesn’t belong either in your head or in your bed. He just serves your addiction to pain... I think you’re the one who’s committed to hurting you. He’s just a screen on which you project your cruelty to yourself.” Maria Bello, Whatever… Love is Love Most every codependent I’ve ever known has been unknowingly addicted to pain. So many of us were taught to be cruel to ourselves. As small children, when adults hurled nasty, shaming words our way, we allowed ourselves to be verbally and emotionally stoned to near-death. We took their harsh criticisms very personally and we learned to endlessly repeat every ugly word we absorbed. We then beat ourselves up with these same shaming criticisms until we developed a need for them. This is how our addiction to pain began. As we grew into adulthood, we then searched-out new people who could serve our addiction to pain. We often chose friends and lovers who treated us as badly as our parents had. These new people became the screens o...

“Let people go by releasing your neediness for their love.  Love yourself instead!” David Elliott, Healing I have often wanted people to give me the love that I felt my parents did not give me. It seems it’s that maternal/paternal wound that often haunts us well into adulthood. We may be grown men or women but we still ache inside for the love we were denied as small children: We want to be told “I love you;” we want to be held and hugged; we want to feel the warmth of a mother’s or father’s love. And, unfortunately, we often project this need (or neediness) onto others. More often than not, the people we choose to project our need for maternal/paternal love onto are equally as emotionally unavailable to us as our moms and dads were. We subconsciously choose men and women whose personalities resemble those of our parents. Then we proceed in trying to secure from these people the love we were unable to receive from our parents. And nine times out of 10 our success rate ...

“I learned through weaknesses And through the web of your lies That everyday I live Another piece of me dies And in the black and white I found a need to move on To find a road of gold A throne to live upon.” Cause & Effect, It’s Over Now (1994) Sometimes we have to be careful when we feel the need to find that “road of gold.” Is it really a “need” to grow more fully into who we are, or is it a “compulsion” to escape from life—and primarily to escape from ourselves? I often feel trapped or stuck. Suddenly I’m not happy with my career, with the work I’m doing, with my surroundings or with the people in my life. I long to trash it all, to pick myself up and to travel down that road of gold. I tell myself I could flourish so much more in California ; in Los Angeles , San Diego or San Francisco . I’d be free—free to be me, free to enjoy life, free to be more fully creative. And that may all be true. Or it may be that I am simply wanting to escape fro...

O God you are my God Have mercy on me for I am a miserable worm I am guilty of being alive, brought into this world by an act of sin And I am equally as guilty of breathing the air that is not mine for the taking Forgive me for being a wretched piece of shit for I was born this way I am guilty, I am guilty, I am guilty… And if you are really a God of Love you will wipe away all of this guilt and shame That I was taught as a child by people with good intentions Who were brainwashed by people with evil intentions People who wanted to control and manipulate others To gain personal power, prestige and wealth in Your Name. Amen. This first stanza above is how I have often felt based in my religious upbringing. It’s how I feel whenever I read certain Psalms. It represents how my parents saw themselves and how they viewed sexuality. I don’t blame them for it. They were not bad people. They were simply taught the wrong things by well-intentioned people who had ...

Do we ever really see another person just the way he/she is? I doubt it because we spend so much time projecting our own inner-garbage all over everyone else. Think about all of the people you encounter, one way or another, over the course of one day. How much of your own inner-turmoil do you project onto those people? Any time we make a negative judgment against someone else, we are most likely projecting our own negative judgments against ourselves onto those people. Everyday we see people we don’t know and who we will never see again, and yet we spray all of our inner-garbage all over them. In our heads, we criticize how they are dressed, the fact they have tattoos, the way they walk, the people they are choosing to walk with, the bumper-stickers on their cars, the way they eat their French fries, and the stories they have to tell. Why? Because each of those people we choose to criticize is rubbing us the wrong way. And they are rubbing us the wrong way because they are hit...

“How people look is often the same as how they feel. Over the years your face changes to reflect your predominate emotions” Stuart Wilde, Silent Power There have been many songs written about facial expressions. “Sad Eyes,” “Can’t Smile Without You,”  “These Eyes,” “Tears of a Clown” and “Bette Davis Eyes” are just a few of the songs that immediately come to mind. Notice that most of these titles involve the eyes. Sad eyes tell the story of a sad heart, just like Bette Davis eyes tell the story of someone who is strong-willed but vulnerable.  Likewise, a face without a smile can tell the story of someone who has given his/her happiness away to a person who picked up and left; and a constant smile, or clown-like demeanor, can be hiding the truth of soul turned inside-out with grief. Sometimes facial expressions tell the truth about how people feel, and sometimes we have to dig deeper behind a person’s exterior expressions to know what’s really going on insi...