We all experience pain at one time or another. Pain can be a physical sensation from a Papercut or it could be from an emotion. The pain that I am talking about today is emotional pain. The feeling that we get from the emotions that we don’t like. Emotions, for instance, powerlessness, frustration, fear, uncertainty, insecurity, humiliation, lost, are often viewed as painful and are often avoided.
These emotions and more similar to them are unpleasant to experience. Often when we feel these emotions, we want to hide from them. We want to buffer or indulge in some other activity than what we really need to be doing. It’s easier to avoid feeling these uncomfortable emotions. Nobody likes feeling lost or feeling anxious about something that they’ve never done before. Yet we’re always doing something new. We’re going to have to feel that anxiety if we want to get anything done.
Many people want to know how to you get past the emotional pain in their life. The answer is simple, but the work is not easy.
Life is 50% pain and 50% pleasure.
Life incorporates the 50/50 principle. 50% of our life is going to be a pleasure. It’s gonna be great. Those emotions are gonna be wonderful. We’re gonna be on top of the world. As we feel these emotions we are gonna be happy and fulfilled. The other 50% of the time we’re going to be in some form of emotional pain. A lot of people don’t like the fact that there is so much pain in their life So much so that they actually would rather try to bargain the ratio to be 80% happiness and 20% pain. Sadly that just shows how much we resist the thought of our life not going perfectly.
No matter how much you resist, you’re going to have pain. Then you add the fact that you’re using more energy to resist that pain which only amplifies the pain. Also, you’re doubling the experience because you worry about the pain. You can see how pain can be such a problem. If you don’t know how to manage that emotional pain it can become tremendous. you also see why so many people become overwhelmed simply because they resist and avoid the pain in their lives.
So how do you handle the painful portions of life?
The way you handle and manage the painful portions of your life is that you allow the pain to be experienced. That sounds scary. I get it. However when you allow the pain to be felt and you’re not resisting or avoiding it by buffering and feeling indulgent emotions. You realize that the pain that you’re avoiding is just a vibration. Granted that vibration may not feel the best but you’re not going to get swallowed by sorrow. You’re not gonna drown in self-pity. You’re just going to feel a slightly unpleasant vibration.
Handling and processing emotions is a skill as with everything else that we do in life. But more so with emotions because so many of us are in emotional childhood. We believe emotions just hit us upside the head out of nowhere. That is a falsity because our thoughts create our emotions.
The thought of how horrible the pain we might experience is the very reason why that pain is being avoided. Our worry and our fear are because of the thoughts we have about pain.
With practice, we find processing our emotions to get easier each time, we realize what we are feeling. What we are feeling is just the result of a thought.
Pain is what you make of it
As with everything that we avoid, the reason we avoid it is because of what we make that thought mean. We see sadness as nobody loves us. We see humiliation as potential death because we’re going to get thrown out of our village. We see a choice as limiting our opportunities instead of expanding the possibilities.
Everything we have happened to us, we take that personally. A sideways glance in our general direction could mean somebody is interested in us or somebody is disgusted with us. Which one is it? I don’t know nor do you know. We just make an assumption.
That sideways glance has as much power as the emotion that you’re avoiding in your life 
Why do we avoid pain?
The reason we avoid pain is the very reason why we avoid stepping out in front of a bus. It’s not that we’re afraid of sudden death. We’re actually afraid that we’re going to live and have to deal with all the pain because of that bus meeting our body.
Our brain has a hard time differentiating between physical pain and emotional pain to our survival part of the brain. It’s all the same thing if we do something that will get us ridiculed back when we were living in caves that might cause us to get kicked out of the cave. We might be exiled from our village if that happened. Would we be able to gather enough resources to survive? Back in prehistoric times, social approval was needed. We had to make sure we appeased the Chief. We didn’t want to step too far out of the norms because we may be viewed incorrectly.
Pain doesn’t have to feel bad.
As mentioned before pain is just the way that we classify some emotions emotions are just vibrations. They may be vibrations. We don’t want to feel yet with a 50/50 lifestyle. We don’t have the choice. We will have thoughts that create sadness, loneliness, disempowerment, and Self-pity, and we can only experience those emotions
Then you add to the layer that emotions vary on what we make them mean. Therefore you can actually make emotional pain, not be so painful if you choose. There are times when we want to be in pain. Sorrow and grief are two instances of us wanting to be in pain when our grandmother dies. We don’t wanna be happy. You want to be sad. You want to grieve for the loss of your loved one. That is you showing love for someone who will not be in your life anymore. This is a very beautiful act that we humans are capable of doing.
Therefore, being intentional with your emotions doesn’t mean painful emotions are gonna be gone. It means that we choose to fully feel them at the time they happen. That means you can take a painful emotion and wear it as a badge of honor. You can do that all thanks to the thoughts that you have.
How do you deal with emotional pain?
So how do you deal with and process your emotions? These are emotions that are both good or bad. However, most of the time we need to just process the negative emotions the fear-based emotions, and the emotions that we avoid. So let’s look into how you do this
You start by acknowledging the emotion. he can’t tackle the problem if you don’t acknowledge that it’s there and the way you acknowledge it is by naming it what is that emotion that you’re feeling? What is that uneasy feeling in your chest, in your back, in your shoulders, across your midsection that feels like a steel clamp, what is that sensation right now? Name it happiness, sadness, uncertainty, fear, anger, regret, disempowerment, forlorning, lonely, burn out, boredom. What are you feeling as of right now?
Describe it
If you could take that emotion out of your body and hold it in your hands, what would it look like? Is it heavy or light? Is it soft or hard? Is it spiky scaly or glass-smooth? Describe that emotion and as much detail as you can, is it hot? Is it cold? As you do this examination, you’ll notice that the strength of the emotion starts to fade. This is the processing that we’re talking about.
Sadly, we often try to make problems bigger than what they really are. The problem with our emotions is the same way. We think they’re too big for us to be able to handle and thoroughly process. However, when you start processing and examining the emotions that you feel, you notice that those big scary monsters are nothing more than teddy bears under a blanket.
Now most emotions will only last about 1.5 -2 minutes. Yet there are times that you will just have a very stubborn emotion that you can just process away. may time these are bigger emotions that take time to process. These emotions require you to just experience them for the amount of time they are around. You may have to just go through a day or two with that emotion as you examine why you are feeling what you are feeling. This is where a counselor can come in handy especially when you are dealing with emotions that arise from past experiences. Coaches if you are trying to get over an obstacle you can move to the next goal you are aiming for.
If you want help with this all you have to do is take the next step.
