Soulshine

“Who’ll be there when your heart hits the ground?” The Bible (band), Honey Be Good (1988) As recovering codependents, we have learned that there’s one essential person who has to be present for us whenever our hearts hit the ground. And that one essential person is “me.” It’s also essential that we have a strong Higher Power there to comfort and strengthen us. Prior to recovery, the average codependent is rarely present for themselves. That’s because most of us learned to abandon ourselves as children. Our focus never looked inward after our self-abandonment. Instead, we constantly looked outward expecting that there should be someone else to rescue us when we hit the ground. Sometimes we were able to find someone sympathetic to our plight, but they were never able to satisfy the aching need inside of us, much less rescue us. Why? Because the person we really needed to rescue us was the person we never looked to: Ourselves. As long as we remained in a state of self-aba...

“You read something so sad Some lonely boy just went mad.” Luke Temple, Love Won’t Receive Many codependents suffer from loneliness. It’s often a self-imposed loneliness that comes primarily from self-alienation. After all, most of us abandoned ourselves when we were very young. That same loneliness is also due partly to our sometimes fierce independence. We may often enmesh in others, but at the opposite end of the spectrum we like to pretend like we don’t have any wants or needs of our own. In other words, we won’t allow anyone to help us. In between codependent relationships, many codependents are loners. We can be very independent while we’re licking our emotional wounds, and this can lead us to being lonely as well. A few years ago, while I was in the throes of loneliness, I asked my Higher Power to help me. Then I discovered a book that had a chapter on loneliness. It suggested that we ask loneliness what it has to teach us about ourselves, so I did: “Loneliness...

“Do whatever you want with me, anything you want with me, fill me up with your memory.” Foxy, Lady of the Streets (1979) I believe love and sex addiction are derived from codependency. Some people have such a giant void inside themselves that nothing can seemingly fill it up aside from physical touch. In the same way that a sugar addict needs a donut or a shopping addict needs a new pair of shoes when they are ultimately feeling bad about themselves, a sex addict needs physical fulfillment. The root cause of this addiction can be complex. Some sex addiction is rooted in the fact that a person was sexually abused as a child. But much of it derives from the fact that all addictive thinking is rooted in a deep sense of self-worthlessness. Addicts believe that they are inherently unlovable and that they have to earn love. For some addicts, sex becomes a viable way of earning love—or some form of validation of their worth from others that they actually mistake for lo...

I have a friend named Ted who doesn’t take good care of himself. Ted doesn’t know how to love Ted. And I think that Ted has so disassociated himself from “Ted,” that he doesn’t even realize that he’s left himself behind. Ted felt abandoned as a child. No one was there for Ted: Not mom, nor dad nor anyone. So Ted learned to abandon himself at a very young age. He left Ted behind and became whomever made “you” happy— “you” being anyone who would even acknowledge his existence. Ted became a codependent, caretaking, people-pleasing chameleon as he grew into adulthood. As an adult, Ted became very good at taking care of everyone’s needs, except his own. He’s looked after the needs of the mom and dad who were never there for him emotionally. He’s looked after the needs of friends, other family members and total strangers. But he’s never looked after Ted’s needs because he thinks the Ted he left behind isn’t worth the effort. Part of the reason why Ted has never felt worthy ...

Let’s look a little deeper into the character of Jimmy Seymour from the film Broadway Serenade . Once Jimmy realizes that he never lost Mary Hale, his many attempts at self-sabotage unfold before his eyes. Jimmy is able to see clearly for the first time that it wasn’t Mary who had stopped loving him. It was Jimmy. He had stopped loving himself many years ago; he had abandoned himself, lost himself. He then acted-out in ways that forced Mary and others to abandon him as well. Jimmy had accused Mary of being unfaithful to him, when deep down he really knew that she was true to him. The real problem was that Jimmy was never true to Jimmy. And as a result, Jimmy was filled with self-loathing and many personal insecurities about himself. He couldn’t trust in Jimmy and so he couldn’t trust in Mary or anyone else. He was overly critical of himself and this had made him into a very angry young man. His anger then spilled over onto Mary and others, alienating them further from Jimmy. ...

“You never lost Mary Hale. You lost yourself.” Herman to Jimmy , Broadway Serenade Many of us think we know what it’s like to “lose” someone else from our lives. Someone stops calling us, or someone de-friends us on Facebook, or someone simply picks up and walks out of our lives. Then there are those situations where someone is simply tolerating us, and we know it. What we may not know, however, is that they are tolerating us despite ourselves. We never “lost” them, but we did a heck of a good job of alienating them and forcing them as far out of our lives as possible—much to our own regret. In the 1939 film Broadway Serenade , Jeanette MacDonald plays Mary Hale. She’s an up-and-coming singer who’s teamed with her piano playing/composer husband, Jimmy Seymour (played by Lew Ayres). Both are talented. Mary has a great voice and Jimmy has real song-writing skills. But Mary is on her way up because she believes in herself. She’s grounded in good self-love and appreciation,...

“You can’t lose someone who truly loves you, and you can’t hold captive someone who doesn’t.” Anonymous If we are uncomfortable in our skin, we will often be fearful of losing people we “think” we love. I say “think” for a reason. When we are uncomfortable with ourselves we are often attracted to toxic people. We mistake the toxic-- usually addictive-- attraction for love. When we make this mistake we are actually fearful of losing the poison that has nearly killed us.  We become anxious and we search for ways to manipulate and control the other person so we can keep a tighter hold on our prisoner. I believe our grip tightens because we mistakenly believe that if we lose this person, we will lose ourselves, our chance for happiness and our lives. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We can’t lose ourselves by losing another person unless we have long ago abandoned ourselves by fading into the other. We can’t lose our chance for happiness either, because we never had a c...