The last time I came back to the States for vacation while living in Iran, I got together with some old friends and regaled them with my latest in-law stories.

I recounted the one about my mother-in-law, who, when staying with us in our tiny dorm room for months on end, would encourage her son and me, as she lay at the foot of our bed, to “go make a boy.”

Then there was the one about the cousin on the lam from the law, who nearly got us arrested because he got caught buggering the upstairs neighbor girl.

And the niece who stole my favorite cashmere sweater and tried to pass it off as a souvenir from Mecca, the knitwear capital of the Middle East.

But, instead of being entertained, as I had assumed they would be, my friends looked at me with abject horror.  “I don’t think you can keep living like that,” one of them said.

For weeks after, I began to bump into the cloying sense that I was desperately unhappy. No matter how hard I tried to pass my life off as funny, stand-up comedienne that I was, my delivery suddenly fell flat.

Soon the migraines started.

For days I would lie in a darkened room at my mother’s condo and reel with the pain. I was due to return to Iran with the children after Halloween, and I couldn’t help feeling like a horse in a burning barn. I’d been detached from my frustration and rage for so long, but, like it or not, there they were.

I could hear the clock tick.  Tick, tick, tick.  If I didn’t face my tamped down emotions and act, I’d be headed back to a place where I had ZERO control.

When raised in an alcoholic household, one learns pretty quickly that feelings are, on a good day, something that will be ignored; on a bad day, the catalyst for World War III.  And the not so funny thing is, when our feelings aren’t listened to, we quit listening to them, too. We figure, why take the time to feel? What would it change?

To distance ourselves from our emotions even further, we start:

Smiling when we feel like crying
Looking away so people can’t read our eyes
Tacking LOL onto statements, such as, “I got gang raped. LOL”
Following our ugly comments with the expression, “just kidding”.
Blanking out
Putting on a non-stop dog and pony show

Here’s what scares us:

To acknowledge how we really feel demands a decision—action or change—on our part.

Face to face with reality, we’d become aware of what we’re thinking, what we want, and what we need to do.

Most of us have to circle the neighborhood a while before we’re ready to do that. Most of the time, we’ve got to have our backs right up against the wall before we’re willing to go there.

There is a reason we humans are hard-wired to experience pain—both physical and emotional. Pain tells us there’s a problem.  Something—inside us or externally—is going wrong.

Press our hands against a hot stove, and our skin visibly blisters.  Ignore that dysfunctional relationship, and those feelings don’t go away, they come out sideways. Suddenly, we’re doing something we never intended to do. Like shoplifting, or having an affair.

If we don’t feel our feelings and deal with them responsibly, they will control us. Which would be tantamount to turning the wheel of your car over to an enraged preschooler.

When we keep repressing (and/or suppressing), we lose the ability to feel.  We lose touch with our instincts. We lose the ability to feel close to people, otherwise known as intimacy. (Don’t forget, if we want an intimate relationship with someone, we need to discuss our persistent feelings with him or her.  This is called emotional honesty.)

That’s just great, you say, but what the hell do I do when I have no clue how else to be in this world?

Lord, do I understand. I continue to work on this stuff EVERY day.

Here are some useful steps, which I’m borrowing from one of my Bibles, Codependent No More:

If a feeling comes your way, feel it.  It won’t kill you.
Take a few moments, acknowledge the sensation. Don’t censor, judge, or block it.
Deal with your feelings; respond to your emotions.
Examine the thoughts that go with it, and accept them.
Decide if there is a next step. Decide what, if anything, you want to do about the feeling and the accompanying thought.
This is where you do your judging.  Evaluate the situation, then choose a behavior in line with your moral code and your ideal of self care.  Is there a problem you need to solve?  Is your thinking off base?
Remember that feelings are indicators and motivators.
Get quiet.  When you’re upset and you don’t know why, grab some paper and journal it out.  It’s in there.  All you have to do is shine the light.

Some thing’s just aren’t funny; they’re really, really sad.