If our needs and feelings never seemed to matter as a child having them met can make us sad as a reminder of all we never got before.. this reading from the Al Anon book Hope For Today really rang true when I read it again a moment ago about how receiving help today made me feel so sad.
One of the oddest things I learned in recovery was to develop tolerance and even desire for feeling good. At first I didn’t connect much with other people. I didn’t let anything like approximating intimacy occur.. Later, I noticed a paradox. When someone accepted or cared for me, I felt pleasure and pain. I was perplexed. Why would I feel pain at the same time as happiness? I asked an Al Anon friend about this.. She wondered if experiencing the good feelings I yearned for as a child might stir up some pain. She said the ‘receiving’ might, for a short time, bring up the ‘not receiving.’
Her words proved to be true for me. I did go through a recovery phase, during which receiving others’ love, approval, and respect almost instantly recalled deeply buried sadness at not having received those things from my parents while I was growing up.. In fact, I often didn’t know such pain was inside me until someone was nice to me. Then I would pour it out into my sponsor’s loving ears and arms. Eventually I learned that my parents couldn’t give what they didn’t have, and I was able to feel compassion for them.
Practicing Easy Does It helped me. I sometimes chose to leave meetings before they ended. I had received enough as much of the good stuff as I could handle on that particular day. Sometimes I had to limit the number of hugs I accepted.. I’d share my thoughts and feelings afterward with my sponsor.. Gradually I began to like, and even love, getting the good stuff that leaves me feeling serene and happy.
This makes sense of why someone may pull away if we hug them too and show them love, maybe it becomes hard for them too, to receive.. There is another reading about this in the same reader.. How tough for kindness to hurt us or to awaken old hurt, but how necessary too, its in tolerating the painful feelings that we may therefore be creating space to tolerate even more of the good ones too.
Emerging From The Dark Night 