Healing the Poison of Old Feelings

When I was younger, I had an overriding feeling that I didn’t deserve to be happy. It became most noticeable to me anytime I attended a family gathering. I never felt accepted for myself, at least not by my parents. And so when we would be at family gatherings, I always had a strong emotional revulsion to showing that I could be happy in any way.

More often than not, at family gatherings, I’d sit and look sad. I rarely said a word. If someone asked me a question, I was irritated by it and would force as few words out of my mouth as possible in response to them. I otherwise refused to engage in any way.

I remember wanting to engage with other family members and wanting to allow myself to be happy, but something deep inside of me always prohibited me from doing so. It was probably because I seriously felt flawed beyond being acceptable or lovable in any way. I felt more than simply “not good enough” to be an acceptable human being. I guess it’s no wonder that inside I felt like “How could I possibly be happy in any way?”

Recently, this old “I’m not worthy of being happy” feeling has raised its ugly head again. Someone may approach me and say “Isn’t it a beautiful day?” and I want to say “Yes” and engage in being happy about the day, but something is holding me back. And that something is the feeling of being unworthy of being happy. Worse yet, it may also be an underlying feeling that no one would really care if I was happy or not.

Truthfully, I don’t know why this old feeling is back since I’ve come light years in terms of self-acceptance and self-love. I’m handling this feeling by asking it what it has to tell me and by “acting as if.” When the feeling is strong, like it wants to keep me from engaging with others and accepting that I’m worthy of happiness, I go against my gut and engage with others anyway. I talk and allow myself to be present instead of withdrawing into my head—and as a result, I begin to feel better.

I believe old feelings return because they do have something to tell us. The message may be “You need to finally feel me because you suppressed me back in April of 1980,” or it may have something to tell us about how we are subconsciously repeating a bad old pattern of behavior that is destructive to us. Or it may be saying “You aren’t quite as good at self-acceptance and self-love as you like to think! You still have work to do.”

Whatever the reason might be, we need to walk with the feeling, being aware of it but not controlled by it, and we need to ask it what it has to tell us. Ultimately, I believe all of our answers are inside of us. We need to seek them out by asking questions and allowing our Higher Power to help us discern the answers.

I hope I find out what this is about—soon! Ah, yes, the impatient Codependent!