Pain is an inevitable aspect of our lives, yet it continues to undermine our optimism and outlook on life since it is so often unnecessary and uncalled for.
Pain is an inevitable aspect of our lives, yet it continues to undermine our optimism and outlook on life since it is so often unnecessary and uncalled for. How do you cope with pain and embrace it as an integral part of your life?
Pain makes you question life and your very own existence. It’s that huge snowball rolling down the hill that just smashed into you and left you wondering “Is this it? Is life just a string of maneuverers in an effort to avoid the snowball crashing you down?”
If it were not for painful events in our lives, we would never seek to see what is there beyond the stars, and we would continue to live in a certain state of status quo quite content with the way things are. Pain induces progress.
Childhood traumas, losing someone close, physical or emotional abuse are all pain causing situations that we’ve all gone through at one point in our lives. Unfortunately, not many can say that they have overcome their pain. For the majority of us, we just want to forget the painful event and move on. But there is no moving on if we’re shoving the pain under the carpet.
Like any other emotion or experience, the pain too just wants to be acknowledged. It yearns to be felt and lived through. But our coping mechanism is doing just the opposite by suppressing the very same pain.
How it all works?
Resistance to any part of ourselves, to any of our emotions or memories, creates judgement that those resisted parts of ourselves are “bad” and “wrong”. Once we see them as bad and wrong we do our best to suppress or hide them, creating a division in our psyche (“shadows” and “light” i.e. “good me” and “bad me”).
Hiding those “shadow” parts of ourselves creates a resistance on their part, which in turn causes depression, anxiety, anger, and other similar emotions. Not to mention that we spend a substantial amount of energy suppressing all painful memories and feelings and might end up investing more energy into “hiding” them than we do into living our daily lives. Also, one blow after another if we are suppressing our pain, may end up with an emotional time-bomb.
Since our mind does not know the difference between what is real now and the past experiences, once some event triggers our past painful memory, our emotional body goes back to the past event and reacts from the once inflicted wound and our body correlates, reacting as if everything is taking place in the present moment. Therefore, suppressed and unprocessed emotions from the past are ruining our present.
Let your pain out
The first thing we have to become aware of is that those repressed emotions and memories just want to come out into light, to be addressed and accepted.
Let your pain out, be aware of it, feel it, but don’t judge it. Give yourself permission to grieve and embrace your pain. Only then will you be able to let it go. Only then you can really be free.
It is important to become aware of these life facts before something bad happens since our minds can more easily think of embracing pain while we are in a state of joy and bliss because the moment we experience pain we lose perspective and the old defense mechanism takes the stage. It is then that we have to apply this knowledge.
Instead of fighting the experiences life throws at you, embrace them and accept whatever life has to offer.