Adult children: the secrets of dysfunctional families

Glad
Do you feel glad? "Of course, I do !"
About what? "Well ... uh ...well ... I'm glad to be alive ... how's
that?"
That's a good start. What else? "Well ... I don't know ... I'm glad
that. .."
Many of us actually have trouble feeling glad. "I feel glad that I got
that promotion, but I'd better not feel too glad because it might not
work out."
"I feel glad that I got accepted to graduate school, but I'd better not
be too glad because they didn't want me to go to graduate school."

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"I feel glad that Jimmy's team won the baseball tournament, but I'd
better not feel too glad because Frank never won a tournament
when he was a kid and he's been competing with Jimmy ever since
he was born."
Sometimes it's hard to feel glad because we never saw anyone
close to us feel glad when we were growing up, leaving us with the
feeling that "glad" is awfully "bad".
Garrison Keillor (radio personality and author) has got many miles
from this midwestern stoicism theme.
Actually, it's not so much that glad is bad. Rather, it's that life is a
very serious place to be and if we're going to get through it, we'd
darned well better be serious. When those who raise us don't have
access to a certain feeling, like "gladness", we learn to fit into the
system by not having access to that feeling either. And looking at
the big picture, it seems like such a minor oversight. I feel
everything

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else except "glad". So what? Six out of seven ain't bad. True,
except for one "big picture" oversight.
When one of our emotions gets clogged, the rest have a tendency to
get clogged also, because who we are is what we feel, and when
one spontaneous human feeling that we have is not allowed, we
begin to question the appropriateness of our other human feelings.
After awhile, we're never quite sure if what is in our emotional core
is good or not. And when we start to judge the "goodness" or
"badness" of our feelings (not our actions), then we're in emotional
trouble.
Our feelings are simply our feelings and they will always be there
flowing spontaneously from within us. What we think about them
and what we do with them are another matter.
An emotionally honest person can say, "I feel glad that you have
come to visit me," and when you leave, they will say, "I'm sad to
see you go." An emotionally garbled person will say upon your
arrival, "Why don't you visit more often? You never do anything
for me! Mrs. Jones' children visit twice a month. What's the matter
with you? You never did appreciate what we did for you." Hey!
What happened to glad?
Mad
Mad. For many of us, this is the only emotion. For others, it's the
only one we don't allow ourselves. Anger is paradoxically
frightening and liberating. It can be a deceptive con, a trick to hide
all other emotions. It can get us out of a jam quicker than anything
else. It relieves us of responsibility. ("It's his fault that I ran into
him"). It can make us feel right whether we're right or wrong. But

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if your anger is covering up another emotion, do yourself a big
favor. Turn it off absolutely and completely for awhile and take the
ultimate risk see if there's another emotion underneath it that's just
dying to get out.
To know if this is true, you will have to spend some time alone
with yourself without books or television or friends or
spouses/lovers or children. You will have to let yourself be alone, if
only for a few minutes, in which you are so alone that your deepest
connection to life itself is the awareness of your own heartbeat
inside of your chest. If there are other emotions there, let yourself
feel them. If after that you still feel angry, then go ahead and let
yourself feel it. In other words, if anger is your game, try playing
by a different set of rules. If it isn't, you'd better shoot for playing
with a full deck.
In addictions circles there are those of us who can get angry and
who feel comfortable with it, and there are those of us who can't. If

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you're "good" at anger, take the plunge and try something new, like
hurt or sadness or fear. If you aren't good at "anger", why not give
it a shot? In other words, there are a lot of us human beings who
have learned so well to be "good" that we don't know how to be
ourselves.
You "typical addicts" out there don't want us to steal your thunder.
We don't stand up for ourselves and then we lean on you to stand
up for us, because you're so good at "doing anger". So we wind up
conning ourselves and conning you.
The game becomes, "Do my dirty work for me, and I'll do your
dirty work for you!" But it also becomes, "I'll be powerless for
myself, let you express my anger for me, and then resent you for
taking my power away from me."
Why not try this? "I think I need to get angry about this myself. It
doesn't mean I don't love you or need you. I just need to claim my
own power. In fact, I'll have more power to love you when I'm
done." Can you buy that?