Soulshine

“We’re often not attached to the thing itself but to the idea of that thing. We have a compulsive belief that we must acquire something outside of ourselves to make us complete.” Don Miguel Ruiz Jr, Living a Life of Awareness No one wastes more time looking outside themselves for personal completion than a codependent does. Before recovery, I was vigilantly looking endlessly for the right person to complete me. I had a big empty hole inside my chest. It wasn’t visible, but I felt the unbearable emptiness of it every day. It never went away. And I had no clue how to fill it up and make myself complete—aside from finding someone else to fill the hole and complete me. Time and again, I tried foolishly to fit various people inside my empty hole. But no one ever filled it up to my satisfaction. All of them were able to calm my codependent crazies for short periods of time, but no one ever brought me lasting peace and happiness. When these various people were failing ...

Many of us grew-up having our needs denied, especially our emotional needs. We may have had warm houses to live in, food on our tables, proper clothing and toys to play with. But many of us didn’t have the kiss on the cheek, the heart-felt hug or a hand to hold ours when we were sad or hurting emotionally. As a result, we grew-up misunderstanding our emotional needs. Some of us learned to disassociate from these needs. We learned to feel so much shame about having needs or wants that we went into a complete denial about our even having such things at all. In doing so, we became extremely independent. We came to believe that we didn’t really have any emotional needs or physical wants. We became men and women of steel. To compensate for the needs we were ignoring, we subconsciously began to confuse our needs with our wants when it came to taking care of ourselves. Any time we experienced an emotional need, we learned to satisfy it by securing something we wanted. As a child...

“Oh, there’s a lull in my life It’s a void and empty space…” Alice Faye , There’s a Lull in My Life* Before recovery I more often than not felt like there was a lull in my life. Inside I felt a void and empty space that seemed to be bottomless. All of the shopping in the world failed to fill that void. And I couldn’t begin to eat enough cookies, donuts or cheesecake to fill up the empty spaces inside of me. In between shopping and sugar, I searched endlessly for that “special” person who could hopefully fill the void with love for me and replace my emptiness with happiness. But I never found that person. Or at least I never found that person until I looked in a mirror and finally realized that the only “special” person who was really missing from my life was me. Recovery has taught me that I am the one and only person who can calm the lull in my life; and that I am the only person who can fill the void or empty space inside of me—along with my Higher Power. I cre...