Catchy Phrases Decoded

"Dealing With Feelings"

You hear people say it a lot, but what does it really mean?

Dealing with feelings can be an uncomfortable experience, initially. It means we stop running from our emotions, from what's really going on with us. We stand still and feel our feelings. Feelings are emotional energy; our feelings are our responsibility. We avoid blaming our emotions on others; letting our feelings control us; and trying to control others with our feelings. Usually, that's all that's required to make them go away. Ignoring our feelings doesn't make them go away; it makes them get bigger, or come out in strange, unpredictable, and often undesirable ways. Many of us learned in our families that it wasn't okay to feel. Now, we're learning differently. We're learning to accept and value the emotional part of ourselves as important and closely connected to happiness and health.

-Codependents' Guide To The Twelve Steps

I am a master at bottling things up until I explode. I've held in certain thoughts for months or even years before they finally come blurting out in the middle of a fight about something totally unrelated.

I'm not the only person in my family who does that.

The day we buried my mom, my sister and I got into a huge argument over who was taking which flower arrangements. It got so our of hand I'm surprised no one called the cops on us. I really don't think the flowers were an issue at all. We both just had too much bottled up inside us. The flowers were simply the tool we used.

We've since apologized to each other for our crazy behavior that day, but it's a perfect example of why leaving feelings buried inside is a really bad idea.