Soulshine

In her book Conquering Shame and Codependency , Darlene Lancer says there are varying divisions of SELF. We are all born as our REAL selves. The REAL self is who God created us to be in all of our personal uniqueness. The REAL self is authentic and whole, acknowledges and works through all of the feelings God has blessed us with, understands its desires and needs and voices them honestly, and it is spontaneous. The REAL self knows how to allow its “Yes” to be “Yes” and its “No” to be “No.” According to Lancer the REAL self makes decisions based on “internal assessments,” not the external opinions of others, without any serious inner-conflict between thoughts and feelings. The REAL self develops in children if their parents reflect their authentic real self back to them. If parents, however, are incapable of reflecting a child’s REAL self back to the child, the child will develop a DEVALUED self . Instead of being affirmed for who they are, many children are constantly reminde...

“Well, what happens is while you’re projecting who you want to be, this gap opens up between who you want to be and who you are. And in that gap it shows you what’s stopping you from becoming who you want to be.” Glen, Weekend There is great tension between who we are and who we want to be. For the most part, I believe who we really want to be—to the absolute fullest extent—is exactly who we are. Yet few of us understand or know that being our real selves is what we truly want most in life. We’ve spent so many years running from that real self that we’ve gotten completely confused about who we want to be. All we’ve known is that, as children, we didn’t want to be the “not good enough” person that others told us we were. And since we decided we couldn’t be ourselves, we were faced with trying to emulate and be like someone else. In school, we wanted to be a “cool kid.” We sometimes tried and we certainly failed. As we became adults, we wanted to be like certain actors...