Soulshine

      Throughout recovery, trust in love. Trust in your Higher Power. Trust means you don’t have to worry about what you are powerless over. Enjoy the good that you find in your new journey of recovery. Always look up and always move forward, just like time does. Only look back to gain wisdom. Seems much of life is filled with uncertainty. The only real certainty you can experience is in this present moment. If all is good in this moment—outside of your head—then all is good. Be certain of that. And be certain that all will be good in the bigger picture of the new life that is unfolding before you in recovery. 

“The more you love yourself, the more you are able to love others.” Robert Holden, Loveability In his book Loveability , Robert Holden points out the fact that at the beginning of every new relationship there is a grace period. During that initial phase “you feel so happy and so blessed to have met each other that any doubts about your loveability are temporarily suspended.” How true! Whether or not this grace period lasts depends on how we view ourselves. As Holden makes clear, it depends on whether we live by the basic truth “I am loveable,” or the basic fear “I am not lovable.” The average codependent lives by the basic fear “I am not lovable.” And so this means that our grace period in any new relationship is fairly short. It doesn’t take long for us to get inside our heads and to start feeling inferior, needy and clingy. This happens because, as Holden points out, the less we love ourselves:             -t...

I’ve referenced Harriet Craig before. Harriet (played by Joan Crawford) is the title character in a 1950 movie. And she is an interesting study in severe codependency. As a child, Harriet walked into her father’s office at work, expecting to surprise him. She never anticipated the surprise (or rather shock) that she was about to receive: Harriet found her father in the arms of “another” woman. No doubt in that moment Harriet felt shock, betrayal, disgust, shame and fear. Later her father came clean about his affair and divorced Harriet’s mother. He then abandoned the family. As a result, Harriet developed a belief as a young girl. That belief was “No man can ever be trusted.” And she carried that belief into adulthood. Attached to that belief were all of the nasty, messy feelings that Harriet had never fully faced concerning her father’s infidelity and her abandonment by him. It isn’t surprising then that Harriet isn’t willing to allow herself to be vulnerable with me...

You stare at me in disbelief You say for you there's no relieve But I swear I'll prove you wrong. Don't stay in your lonely room Just staring back in silent gloom. That's not where you belong Come with me I'll take you where the taste of life is green And everyday holds wonders to be seen. Come with me, leave yesterday behind And take a giant step outside your mind. Gerry Goffin and Carole King, Take a Giant Step  In reality, there’s only one world. Yet nearly all of us have created parallel universes inside our heads. Addicts, in particular, seem to spend way too much time inside their head-worlds. I suppose this is because the real outer-world didn’t feel safe to us when we were children. So we chose to escape from it by withdrawing into a little dream world inside our childhood heads. Unfortunately, with each passing year, our childhood dream worlds slowly eroded into adult nightmare worlds; probably because we became more and more reliant up...

Most addictive personalities have difficulty with trust. We grew-up in families where trust was discouraged, or simply not possible to maintain. As a result we now struggle with the very concept of being able to trust anyone or anything. In recovery the first person we need to learn to trust is ourselves. That’s a hefty assignment for most of us, but an extremely necessary one. We can start by beginning to believe in our own personal value. Everyone has value in this world. There are no exceptions to that one fact. Once we start seeing ourselves as lovable, valuable and unique individuals, we can choose to move forward by trusting ourselves to make life-giving decisions. We will see that we are equal with everyone in this world in that we all have a purpose for being here. We will see that we all share the same purpose of fully growing into being the persons we were created to be. And, as we begin to grow mentally, emotionally and spiritually through our recovery programs...