Soulshine

      “You don’t know all the beauty you possess inside, You just can’t see what I see in you… If you could see you through my eyes You’d see someone beautiful On the inside and outside, So beautiful you’d know how I feel You’d know how much you mean to me If you could see you through my eyes.” Kenny Lattimore, If You Could See You (Through My Eyes) Most everyone I know suffers from “blindness” when it comes to seeing their own personal beauty. So many of us suffer from self-persecution. We’ve made so many negative judgments against ourselves that we have long been blinded to the fact that we are wonderfully made. And, unfortunately, no one can tell us how beautiful we are inside or outside, and make us believe it. We have to choose to believe in our own beauty and value before we can accept anyone else’s positive evaluation of us. We have to look past our negative self-judgments and choose to love the REAL person that we are underneath all of ...

    It’s that time of the year again. The parties and shopping are well underway and so is the urgent need to be happy. Christmas has always been a difficult time for me mentally and emotionally. It’s the one season of the year in which everyone desperately wants to feel loved; and yet many of us who grew up in dysfunctional households don’t know how to accept love, or allow ourselves to be loved. We didn’t receive the love we needed as children and consequently we never learned to love ourselves. This is the real problem. Recovery has taught me much about me and self-love. Looking back now, I see that over the many years and Christmas seasons of my life I was in fact loved by many people. But I never acknowledged that love because I didn’t have the inner-tools to accept that love. I didn’t know how to accept it because I didn’t know how to love and accept myself. So I learned to play the victim of the holiday season. I ached inside and moaned and groaned to myself e...

Recovery has taught me the difference between codependent love and authentic love. And the difference is eye-opening. For most of my life, all I knew was a codependent love; one in which I “loved” others for the sole purpose of being loved back by them. This codependent love I experienced was filled with anxiety, neediness, insecurity, manipulation, fear, unreasonable expectations, fear of abandonment and the constant urge to cling desperately to the person I “loved.” It was horrible. And it was not love. Love and codependence cannot coexist with each other. They are polar opposites. If we reach out to others from a deep, dark needy emptiness within ourselves, it is not love we are attempting to share. It’s a desperate cry for intimacy, for a sense of belonging with another person, but it is not love. It is codependence. And codependence always has strings attached. It is strictly self-serving. Authentic love flows freely. It does not arise from a deep, dark, needy place ...

God helps those who help themselves is a very old adage, and it’s very true. No one can help us in our recovery until we are first willing—and determined—to help ourselves, not even God. Why? Because no one can do for us what we must do for ourselves. A good therapist can listen and empathize with us, and can point us in the right direction. A good sponsor can also listen and empathize and provide us with important tools to aid us in our recovery. And a good support group can provide us with a sense of belonging and with new self-awareness. But we will fail miserably if we expect that they should do more for us. Many people enter recovery and expect to be taken care of by others. They either have no understanding of self-care or they have no intentions of doing it. Instead, they think that they need only whine, cry and demand that others do their recovery for them. But recovery does not work this way. Recovery only works when we realize that we have one life to live and ...

I spent the last two weeks of October on vacation in Los Angeles. Every year I go and spend time with my roller-coaster buddy, and I was expecting to do the same this time; but it didn’t work out that way. When I arrived, I learned that he would only be available to me for a day. Before recovery, I would have gone into a terrible tailspin at this point. The fatalist in me would have been devastated and the victim in me would have taken over immediately: “Oh, woe is me! My whole vacation is ruined before it’s even started! Nobody loves me! I might as well go back home! Boo hoo, boo hoo, boo hoooooooooooooooooooo!” But it didn’t happen that way this time. Sure I was initially disappointed and I allowed that disappointment to be present. But I was also aware of my expectations and I wasn’t about to give my personal power away to them or the disappointment. Sure, I expected that my friend should be available to me. But I no longer allow such expectations to spoil my happiness. Af...

I’m currently working on a new retreat I call Creating Kindness , and in the process, I’ve realized that there’s one important character defect that keeps us from being kind—and it’s bitterness. I’ve learned that, on a subconscious level, I still have a great deal of unresolved bitterness that causes me to be resentful. And when I’m unconsciously motivated by bitterness, it’s really hard to be kind—to myself or others. Looking back, I realize that this hidden bitterness has been haunting me for a long time. I can look back 30 years to family gatherings where I wanted to be open and happy and enjoy myself, but couldn’t. Why? Because a huge wall of bitterness surged forward inside of me. It was screaming “You can’t be happy! You’re angry with these people and the hurt they’ve inflicted on you! Show them how miserable they’ve made your life!” And so I did. I moped and sat quietly at family gatherings, refusing to participate in any healthy, happy way. The bitterness was overwhelming...

Feelings can be fabulous and feelings can be a nightmare. Those of us with addictive personalities have had a lifetime of struggle with our feelings. For the most part, I’m used to allowing my feelings to walk all over me. I’ve allowed myself to be powerless against the weight of fear, anxiety, sadness, etc. But recently I learned that I have great positive power when it comes to my feelings. In July I switched my OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder) medication from Zoloft to Prozac. It was a rough transition that left me feeling frightened and anxious a good deal more than I am accustomed to feeling. The doctor and I finally worked out a proper dosage for me and I seemed to be adjusting well when one morning I woke-up and I felt extremely frightened. I got up, made some breakfast, sat down and said to myself “Enough is enough! I’m sick to death of feeling frightened and anxious! I refuse to continue to be a hostage to my feelings! I refuse to feel anxious today!” Within a mat...