Soulshine

Actually, through Recovery, I’ve learned you can’t save anyone from themselves. I am one of those people who grew up feeling overly responsible for everyone and everything. My Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) complicated matters. That obsession/compulsion was complicated by the codependent care-taking skills I learned from my mother. Inside my head, and thus my gut, I became responsible for making everyone happy, for solving everyone’s problems and for taking the blame when others refused to help themselves (no matter how hard I had tried to fix them or their problems). I know now that I can’t fix anyone but me; nor can I solve anyone’s problems, aside from my own. But that doesn’t keep me from still feeling overly responsible for others, or from feeling like a bad person when I’m unable to help someone. Still, in my head, I know I’m not responsible for other people or the mess they may have made out of their lives. They are the ones who are responsible for their ...

This statement above is so true and it is the root cause of addiction and fear abandonment. Children love themselves just the way God has created them. When they are verbally, emotionally or physically abused by parents, older siblings or other adults that they trust, they begin the process of imploding from the inside.  Harsh criticism of children causes them to doubt themselves. They begin to doubt their lovability, their self-worth and their personal value. As the criticism mounts, they learn to turn off their feelings to survive, and they stop loving themselves. As a result, their self-esteem plummets to unhealthy levels to the point that they question their right to even exist. Some develop an existence shame. A child plagued with shame, guilt and a strong sense of worthlessness is unable to love him/herself. This then makes it impossible to believe that anyone else could love, or even like, them. Fear of being abandoned by critical parents develops and the child ...

I’ve been in the process of moving to Washington,DC, all week and I have also been in the Rock band Foreigner’s “Urgent, urgent, emergency” mode. It’s come to my attention that many of us who deal with codependency issues suffer from the need to do everything urgently. Most likely it’s caused by our obsessive need to control the world around us. I thought the movers were coming Wednesday, but I received a call late Monday afternoon that they were coming Tuesday. Immediately I went into “urgent, urgent, emergency” mode. I suddenly had to get done everything I thought I was going to have Tuesday to do. Tuesday comes and by afternoon, it’s obvious that the moving company’s sales rep underestimated how long it was going to take to pack up my office and house. The moving men only finished the office by the end of the day, which meant the house would have to be packed on Wednesday: Urgent, Urgent, emergency was rushing through my head. Wednesday morning I received a call ...

I immediately loved this song, “No More I Love You’s,” on first hearing it in the summer of 1995. The melancholy tune, the beautiful background vocals and orchestral arrangements, and the very sad words completely appealed to my long-suffering heart. I was one year away from recovery from codependency. Actually, it was kind of ironic, because at that time I’m not sure I’d even ever heard anyone say to me,”I love you,” least of all me, myself. Maybe others had said those words, but they weren’t believable to me because I didn’t love myself; and that made it impossible for me to allow anyone else to love me. Hearing this song again today has made me realize that the “monsters” that are mentioned in the above quote are desire and despair: Two emotions that go hand in hand. One (desire) leads to the other (despair). That’s a point that Buddha certainly got right: Desire leads to suffering.  It’s especially true when we desire things outside of ourselves, like love. L...

I like this quote above, but I’d change the words to read like this: “Inner peace begins the moment you choose not to allow your THOUGHTS to control your emotions.”  Everyday, I encounter people who are emotionally ruled by their negative thinking and their demeaning self-talk. Thoughts are just thoughts. They have no power of their own. They only have the power we choose to attach to them. If we are feeling depressed or emotionally overwhelmed by our personal thoughts, it’s because we are choosing to punish ourselves. No one is forcing us to think badly about ourselves— aside from us. The grand question we all need to ask ourselves is “Why?” Why are we purposely choosing to be mean to ourselves? We could just as easily choose to be kind to ourselves. We can choose any and every moment to reject negative self-thoughts/talk and to replace it with self-affirming thoughts/self-talk. Because we actually do have a choice, it makes no sense for us to continue to be mean ...

“I spent the best years of my life Trying to decide what’s wrong from right When I had no one to turn to Told a few lies to get me by...” Swing Out Sister, Time Tracks You Down Most everyone is familiar with Shakespeare’s quote “To thine own self be true.” But very few of us honestly live by it; especially codependents/addicts. Every time we’ve busied ourselves with people pleasing, we have been untrue to ourselves as well as those we’re trying to impress with lies.  We can all relate to the line above from Swing Out Sister, “told a few lies to get me by,” but we most likely have told a “few” too many. Every time we tell someone what they want to hear, instead of what we truly believe, feel or need, we lie to them and to ourselves. In fact, we totally dishonor ourselves by disavowing who we honestly are. I totally disavowed who I was at a very young age. By the time I reached High School, I was a chameleon. I had long before given up on ever liking the real ...

When I first heard this song from the film “ Rocketman ,” my first thought was maybe the title should just be “I’m Gonna Love Me.” But then I realized that so many of us who suffer from Codependency, mistakenly think we’ve never loved ourselves. That’s not true. Each and everyone of us loved ourselves as babies and toddlers until we were old enough to understand body language and the native tongue that we were taught to speak. Prior to having our minds, emotions and bodies polluted by the bad behavior of the adults around us, we did love ourselves. So, suddenly, the “again” at the end of the song title seemed appropriate. It was also a good reminder. There was a time, when I was small, that I loved life and I loved being me. That natural God-given self-love didn’t begin to die until my parents began taking out their own shame and lack of self-love on me. The final backbreaking moment of my self-love and self-worth came the day one of my grandmothers burst the bubble of th...