Soulshine

I just returned from a fabulous trip to Asia. It was an all-expense paid trip to Hong Kong, Bangkok and Koh Samui. And although I thoroughly enjoyed the trip, I still suffered from some pangs of guilt, which I was acutely aware of as I was experiencing them. The guilt stemmed from the fact that I was enjoying myself at someone else’s monetary expense. It was a gift that deep-down I didn’t feel worthy of receiving. The guilt wasn’t so evident when we did things as a group, but if I was lunching on my own or taking an afternoon sight-seeing trip on my own, I felt guilty about charging things to my room; knowing that I wasn’t going to have to pay for them. I realized that all of this guilt stemmed from my deeply engrained belief that my needs and wants aren’t valid. As a child I never felt that I had the right to have wants and needs. I was brainwashed into believing it was purely selfish to want or need anything. As an adult I’ve mostly coped with that guilt by being self-suffi...

“Too many times I let my feelings hide. I act like it's all alright. You don't know how I feel inside. I act like nothing's on my mind, I act like nothing's on my mind But there's something on my mind. It's easier to hide.” Maya Jane Coles, Easier to Hide I grew-up believing I didn’t have the right to have wants or needs, thoughts or feelings. As a child, I had received the message many times that my wants and needs, thoughts and feelings didn’t count. So I learned to hold them tightly inside of me, or to outright dismiss them as invalid. When I was small, it worked for me to deny expressing myself. I was simply labeled the “shy” child and people thought it was cute. But as I grew into a young adult, being the “shy” child became a problem for me. I found that when I wanted to express myself, I couldn’t. Either I didn’t really know what I wanted or needed, or thought or felt; or I didn’t have the self-esteem to open up and express my...

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...

“Your soul can see that this moment NOW is full of gifts for you. Meanwhile, the ego is waiting for a better now.” Robert Holden Seems many of us need to learn to see life more clearly through the eyes of our souls. Robert Holden is certainly right. Our souls see the magic, the miracles, the blessings in each and every moment. But then, sadly, there’s a part of us that’s never satisfied. Whether it’s the ego or not, I can’t say. But I know I have a voice inside of me that’s rarely satisfied. That dissatisfied voice inside is always complaining about all of the things that it wants but cannot have. It complains that it wants love from this person or that person—a love that is never felt—and so the voice is miserable in its longing for what it can’t have. And in the process of its whining, I am made miserable. The disenchanted voice whines about many things. Life never seems to be what it wants life to be because this voice always wants all of the wrong things. At the ...

A life without expectations is a life lived in freedom. Expectations are nothing more than the demands we place on ourselves, others and life—and they gum-up our lives with disappointment and misery. Expectations bind us to many of the wants in our lives that can never be fulfilled. When our expectations aren’t met, when our wants don’t materialize, we are left bitter and resentful and angry. Expectations are head-games. They’re how we put our wants into motion in our minds. We expect that we should never make any mistakes at work; or we expect that our boyfriend should know that we want a certain bracelet for our birthday; or we expect that eventually we will meet the right person and live happily ever after. Sometimes we expect that people should always agree with us or that everyone should like us. And we expect all of these sorts of things because we mistakenly believe that our happiness is dependent upon them. So when our expectations fall through the floor, so does ...

“Never, ever sacrifice what you want the most For what you want the most at that moment .” James A. Owen, Drawing Out the Dragons Addicts live for the moment. We tend to be obsessive-compulsive. And we are too often anxious to get a fix for all of our needy feelings-- here and now. Unfortunately, this leads many of us to sacrifice what we want most in life for what we want most in any given anxious moment. For example, codependents often accept sex when what they truly want is love. It’s my guess that the average person, from the time that they were a small child, has wanted to love and be loved by one extremely important person in their life. Unfortunately for many codependents, finding that all important soulmate has been a nightmare; primarily because one essential ingredient has always been missing from our codependent love formula. And that missing ingredient is us. Codependents—and all addicts for that matter—want to be loved and accepted for who they are, b...