Soulshine

Every feeling we experience is valid. And important. There are NO wrong feelings. God gave us feelings to help us process life. When we face and process our feelings we return to a balanced place inside ourselves, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually. Most everyone suffering from addictive behaviors is perpetuating their suffering by suppressing their feelings. We were sometimes taught as children that it was not OK or even valid to have feelings, and many of us learned to turn-off our feelings to survive in our chaotic childhood households. A major part of Recovery is learning to acknowledge and reclaim our feelings, so that we can go about processing life properly. Be aware of the fact, however, that not everyone you know may be comfortable with your learning to respect and express your feelings. For some people in our lives, this will be a new and awkward experience. If people resist our expressions of our feelings, we must also remember that ...

Sometimes the aching inside is so intense that it feels like I’m drowning in sadness and despair. In that moment, I realize there’s a dagger inside that has been shredding my heart and bleeding my soul for countless years. And that dagger is a childhood experience of having my self-worth destroyed by an adult. The dagger twists relentlessly inside of me. It feels like there’s no hope. There’s nothing left to cling to, not even God. Everything has failed me. I’m gasping for inner-air, but there is none. I cry to God one more time, but I’m getting tired of this. “What is this feeling tied to?” I scream. “What happened that so destroyed my soul? I don’t remember. Help me to know what it is and to heal it!!!” Silence. I feel some relief from having expressed my feelings out-loud. But the overwhelming sadness is still haunting me. The past fades to black and I’m ready to give up on tomorrow. Still, I go about preparing for my day, knowing that if I allow these horrible feelings to...

“You are the only person who thinks in your mind! You are the power and authority in your world.” Louise Hay It’s true that we have power over our minds, although that power can sometimes be limited by brain chemistry. I suffer with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder which is caused by a lack of proper serotonin production. As a result, I sometimes am powerless to override negative thinking with positive thinking. Over the past six months I have been free of any drugs that help your brain to produce serotonin, like Zoloft or Prozac (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors). I wanted to see if I could now manage my serotonin through diet, exercise and an increased awareness of my obsessive (irrational) thinking. The first four months went really well. I got all of my feelings back and was able to cry again. One of the downsides of selective serotonin reuptake drugs is that they suppress your feelings. So I was initially happy to feel again—until some of the feelings got...

Little girl inside of me, I’m surprised you are still there, patiently waiting for me to see how much you need my care. Little girl your tears are felt, they fall across my face and all of that pain you’ve been dealt, I wish I could erase...Little girl I‘m going to hear all of the things you need from me and from now on I’ll hold you near with love eternally.                               Anonymous, Stepping Stones to Recovery Recovery is very much about learning to own your feelings. We all have emotions and every one of them is necessary. There are no good or bad feelings. Those are judgments we’ve made. Truth is every feeling you experience is essential. Feelings exist for our benefit. Every feeling is present for your benefit. Every feeling provides some form of healing. This is why it’s so important that we stop runn...

You can’t force feelings. It’s my birthday and I know I’m supposed to be happy, but I’m really feeling sad today. First of all, I’m way past the age of being happy about being another year older. And secondly, I don’t have the love and the other heart and soul necessities that I need to feel happy about facing another year. I spent the past couple of days with a really good friend, whom I love a lot, and we’ve had a really good time hitting the amusement parks in Los Angeles. I appreciate his friendship and the fun times and I am grateful for both. This friend even helped to maneuver a surprise birthday party for me yesterday. He’s a really precious person—and I’d probably be feeling even sadder today without his friendship. But I still feel a deep, deep sadness that isn’t going away. I think rationally that I shouldn’t be feeling this way and I don’t want to be feeling this way. Unfortunately, I know why I’m feeling this way:   I feel so stuck in a life that ...

What’s missing from your life? If the answer isn’t “you,” in other words, if you’ve been showing up for yourself, but there’s still a sense that something’s missing, what is it and how do you find out? A good way to start is to look to your feelings. What makes you sad? If we feel great sadness about something, it could very likely be the missing piece. For example, often times the missing piece is hidden because we aren’t being truthful with ourselves. Maybe we’re comfortable with befriending ourselves now and we’re happy spending time alone with ourselves. We’re busy at work, probably busier than we’d really like to be. We keep in touch with family and we make time to have dinner or a cup of coffee with friends here and there. Everything seems good on the surface, but now that we’re really getting in touch with our feelings, we realize that there is a deep sadness inside. It’s a sadness we’ve been ignoring because it represents a difficult truth. And that difficult truth i...

I often wonder why sadness has become taboo in our country. It didn’t use to be that way. The ancient native Americans had a wonderful proverb: “If the eyes had no tears, the soul would have no rainbow.” They understood the healing power of sadness and the need the human soul has to express and then release it’s sorrow. They knew it cleansed the soul and returned a rainbow of happiness to anyone who was willing to grieve their losses. Today, however, we are taught to almost be ashamed of feeling sad. As small children we are discouraged from crying. If we fall off our bike, adults hand us cookies and forcibly tell us   “ DON ’T CRY! You’re OK. STOP crying!” Why can’t we adults simply allow a child who, has fallen and scraped his/her knee, to cry until they feel better? Why is it that we can’t bear the idea of anyone being sad? The feeling of sadness is as necessary to the healing of the soul as the element of rain is to the healing of parched earth. Yet we rarely want to face ...

Sometimes it’s just necessary to be sad. I can’t speak to the rest of the world, but in the United States , we don’t like to be sad. We’d rather be medicated on prescription or illegal drugs, or with alcohol or sugar, or sex, or with ANYTHING that will keep us from facing the discomfort of sadness. Today I feel very sad, but I am resisting the temptation to fight it. I don’t want to chocolate my way, or shop my way to feelings of happiness. Nor do I want to kick the sadness into orbit by using a “keep the stiff upper lip” mentality, or by using a “look on the brightside” pep talk on myself. Some days there is no brightside. Some days you just need to feel the clouds, acknowledge them and experience them. I am experiencing dense soul-clouds. I can’t see them, but I can feel them. They are filled with tears that tug my heart downward, but that never reach my eyes. And that’s OK. I can’t truly control them and I no longer want to. I just want to feel the sadness. It could be about ma...