Honor Your Feelings by Processing Them Properly

Every feeling we experience is valid. And important. There are NO wrong feelings. God gave us feelings to help us process life. When we face and process our feelings we return to a balanced place inside ourselves, mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually.

Most everyone suffering from addictive behaviors is perpetuating their suffering by suppressing their feelings. We were sometimes taught as children that it was not OK or even valid to have feelings, and many of us learned to turn-off our feelings to survive in our chaotic childhood households.

A major part of Recovery is learning to acknowledge and reclaim our feelings, so that we can go about processing life properly. Be aware of the fact, however, that not everyone you know may be comfortable with your learning to respect and express your feelings. For some people in our lives, this will be a new and awkward experience.

If people resist our expressions of our feelings, we must also remember that everyone's reaction is about them and what they are emotionally comfortable with in the moment. It's about them, not about us. I told someone not long ago about how I had come to love this person like they were family. It was apparently an uncomfortable experience for him and he told me "I can't reciprocate." Surprised by his reaction I said to him In response "I never asked you to reciprocate." Suddenly, he seemed to be more at ease.

Apparently he had chosen to feel responsible for reciprocating my feelings, when I had never intended that to happen. And I can't be responsible for how someone hears, or filters the feelings I express, or the pressure they choose to place on themselves as a result of my expressing my feelings. I can only be responsible for expressing my feelings openly, honestly and kindly. My feelings are my feelings and they are valid. But I never expected that this person would be responsible for loving me back in the same way. I actually knew that he couldn't and the fact that he couldn't was fine. It didn't invalidate the fact that I had still grown to love him like a member of my own family.

Although it is always valid to express our feelings, we must also be held accountable for expressing them in "positive and harmless ways," as Louise Hay says in the above quote from her 2017 daily meditation calendar. There is nothing wrong with being angry, hurt, disappointed or sad. But how we express those feelings could be wrong. When I feel angry I sit down with God, or my Higher Power, and I work through the anger in prayer. I acknowledge that I am angry, I allow myself to feel the anger and to release it, but I do not take my anger out on other people. Feelings are only harmful when we misuse them to manipulate or hurt other people.

If we are angry with someone, we need to process it in a healthy way, move through and past our anger, and then address the issue to the other person in a calm and clear-headed way. In doing so, we can hopefully come to a peaceful reconciliation with the other person.

One last point I want to make is that we cannot be responsible for other people's feelings anymore than they can be responsible for ours. All feelings are valid. But we must own our feelings and allow others to own their personal feelings. The more we learn to deal with feelings in a healthy way, the less we will need to act out because we won't have the immediate urge to medicate away uncomfortable feelings anymore. We will learn how to face those feelings and move forward in the healthy footsteps of Recovery.