Attention All Codependents: We Need to Stop Burying Our Feelings!

Another scene from Steel Magnolias that really hit home HARD with me as a recovering codependent was this one. To this point, Sally Field has tried to be strong concerning the premature death of her daughter Shelby (Julia Roberts).

Like so many codependents, she has buried her true feelings for years and years, and, unfortunately, she taught Shelby to do the same. Codependent behavior is easily passed down from generation to generation. Each one of us learned our codependent/addictive behavioral patterns by observing/hearing the behavior of our parents and we copied what we learned from them. 

If it was unacceptable to express, or even have, feelings in the household; if that was an unspoken rule of our parents, then we learned to abide by it. We shut down our feelings and we zipped our lips.It then became habitual for us to hold every deep, dark, devastating feeling deep inside our souls. And we did so until our souls were so overloaded with pain and emotional sickness that we needed an addictive fix to medicate away those bad feelings-- even when we knew the fix would only be temporary; that it would never solve our problems.

In the scene above, Sally Field's character finally encounters the "straw that broke the camel's back." She's done holding in her hurt, anger and rage. As I watched her emotionally explode, I realized that I needed to do the same thing. I've had honest, emotional outbursts in the past, but it's been a long time.

Like so many codependents, I'm just too darn good at hiding my feelings; to my detriment. It's a pattern of behavior that's hard to break and I think it swallows up more people in this world than those of us who recognize our codependency issues. I'd be willing to bet that most of America's population is emotionally hanging on by a thread, and sooner or later that thread is going to break.

I don't know when my thread is going to snap. But I know I'm tired of being overly responsible for everything and everyone. Just one more encounter with a disrespectful person may be enough to set me off, or just one more major disappointment may have me back down on my knees screaming at my Higher Power in a desperate cry for help as I release all of my pent up feelings before I drown in them physically and spiritually.

In recovery, we need to eventually learn to face all of our feelings in the moment. If someone has said something or done something hurtful we need to bring it to their attention immediately. We need to say "I felt hurt when you said/did ________." We need to get it out of our gut and we need immediate resolution to the problem, whether it's real or just a misunderstanding on our behalf (codependents are very good at taking things the wrong way when no harm was intended by the other person). 

In addition to learning to honor and deal with our feelings in the moment, we need that deeper emotional release of pent-up OLD feelings, like the one shown above. We need to stop punishing ourselves by holding in miserable feelings from the past. We need to cleanse our souls of the past.Once we do, the first feeling is always this one: RELIEF.

It may be followed by a little embarrassment or guilt because so many of us were taught that it was not OK to express anger, but that was a lie. It's necessary to face our anger and to release it properly without hurting anyone in the process, including ourselves. Doing so is a huge step toward lasting recovery and better relationships.