Soulshine

Setting boundaries is essential for everyone’s health. When we fail to set proper boundaries, we abuse ourselves and we abuse others by enabling them to stay stuck in unhealthy behaviors. Unhealthy codependents typically build their self-worth on their ability to do for others what those very others should be doing for themselves. This is called enabling. We do it under the guise of being helpful, but the only “help” we are giving to the other person is the “help” to stay stuck in their victimhood or addiction. Enabling results from good intentions and poor boundaries. We enmesh with others and we choose to own their problems. We then think we are justified in fixing their problems. Subconsciously, we also are eager to earn their praise and gratitude for having fixed their problems for them, so we engage in our great powers of enabling. In her book Setting Boundaries with Your Adult Children , Allison Bottke has a wonderful checklist for identifying enabling ...

“Every time we take on someone else’s responsibility, we are keeping them stuck, and in the process making a hostage of both of us. It is not easy to let the addict mature, but we must. We are harming him or her every time we step in and bring order to the chaos he or she created.” Karen Casey , Codependence And The Power of Detachment Codependents often struggle with an inner-need to rescue other people from their problems. The motivation for a codependent is simple: If I can rescue this person, he/she will need and love me. What the active codependent fails to understand is two-fold. First, no one is going to love us based in what we “do” for them. People either love us for who we are, or they don’t. Second, it’s impossible to rescue another person from him/herself and his/her problems. It’s especially impossible to rescue another addict from his/her problems. Active addicts don’t really want to be rescued from their addictions. They often do want to be rescued from t...

“If you’ll forgive you, I’ll forgive me.” Joan Blondell, We’re In the Money Actress Joan Blondell was a tough, sassy, gutsy blonde back in her film heyday of the 1930s. In the 1935 romantic comedy “We’re in the Money,” Blondell  is making amends with leading man Ross Alexander when she says “If you’ll forgive you, I’ll forgive me.” It was an interesting twist. Two people are apologizing to each other and one of them is farsighted enough to realize that true forgiveness is more than just “I’ll forgive you, if you’ll forgive me.” After all, we sometimes find it much easier to forgive someone else than we do to forgive ourselves. And it’s pretty difficult for us to really have closure with a sore spot in a relationship until we have forgiven ourselves, too. For example, Ginger (Joan Blondell) and Carter (Ross Alexander) have done some pretty dumb, manipulative and selfish things during their on-screen relationship in the film. Our hope, as we’re watching, is that they wil...

There’s a reason why the term “Angel Eyes” has been popular for many years. When you look into the eyes of another person, you see through to their soul, to the angel inside of them. As you peer into the eyes of another, you touch their divine humanness. And in doing so, you allow them to touch your own soul as you open up your inner-angel to them. It takes a great deal of honest, naked vulnerability to look someone deeply in their angel eyes. And it takes loads of courage to keep your eyes focused on theirs as they look you right back in your angel eyes. Sadly, many of us fail to have such courage or naked vulnerability. We’ve been taught to refrain from looking people in the eyes for fear that we will somehow make too much, or too deep of a connection. The supposed fear is that we will then owe the other something, but I think the real fear is that we will have to acknowledge their sacredness as a human being. It’s easier to treat a person like they are a disposable obje...