Today I wanted to talk about pain, emotional pain.
We hear it time and again: Pain is a normal part of being a human being. We are designed to process pain.
Yet every time we experience pain, we think something isn’t normal. We think it’s normal to be happy, and then when pain and problems come, that’s not normal. We think it needs to be fixed quickly.
A lot of times, we want to get rid of pain because we’re afraid of it. And so, we attack it from all these different angles, trying to get rid of it, trying to avoid it, trying to prevent it so we don’t actually have to feel it.
And what if instead of ever being afraid of it, we embraced it, we opened ourselves up to it, we allowed it to be there, and we let ourselves know that pain is not dangerous?
Pain, when we think of it, is actually very useful. Pain (be it physical, or emotional) is actually an indicator of something that we need to pay attention to.
The problem is that when we’re afraid to acknowledge it or afraid to experience it, we push it away, we don’t actually solve the cause of it. And when we don’t solve the cause of it, we keep perpetuating it.
The brain can get locked into a neuro-pathway of pain, but in a way “lying to us”, telling us we’re in pain when we’re actually not in danger of any physical / harm. That signal is not useful to us.
It doesn’t mean that the pain we are experiencing is not real. If you are feeling pain, if your brain is sending you a pain signal, you are definitely experiencing real pain, coming from the brain.
But this pain (& signal) is not serving the purpose that pain was intended to serve…
In that way, pain can sometimes become a “habit”, a brain pathway that gets triggered and just repeats it.
And once we pay attention we can see this very clearly with many people with emotional pain, is the emotional pain becomes a habit, a brain pathway gets triggered, and then we start repeating thoughts in a habitual way that perpetuates pain that we end up buffering and not experiencing because we’re so afraid.
Logically one of the things that we try and do is create emotional safety for ourselves.
The unintended result if that because of the fear of pain, we try to insulate ourselves from it and we end up constricting our lives.
But if we’re constricting our lives and immobilizing ourselves because of pain that isn’t actually serving a purpose, it isn’t protecting us physically or emotionally, the question is: how much of our life aren’t we living because of the fear of pain?
Now it is time to ask yourself:
- What do you spend a lot of time trying to avoid? And what if you didn’t?
- What if you allowed yourself to be brave enough to experience the pain that is part of your amazing and beautiful life?
If you want more help in learning how to process pain, if you want more help in trying to figure out how to observe the pain in your body without being afraid of it, I want to get in touch with me. I am an emotional intelligence and leadership coach.
Learning to understand and process your emotions including your pain is one of the most important skills you can develop to change your life.
I look forward to hearing from you 😊
Sincerely yours,
Dr Sophie
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