Our modern lifestyle provides us with many opportunities to avoid and distract ourselves from emotional pain 💔 and hurt. Think: social media 📱, alcohol 🍾, sex 😏, food 🍔, overworking 📧, overexercising 🏃♀️... just to name a few. While these things are often fine when our intention is not to avoid, but the accessibility and normalcy of these things makes it easier than ever to avoid what's going on inside. When we avoid the pain, we also avoid the healing!
I get it, pain is... painful, it hurts! Why would you want to sit with it, experience it?! Well, I'm suggesting that not only do we need to sit with it, if we do so, we will find GRATITUDE for the pain. WHAT?! Well... The purpose of the pain is not to hurt us. Emotional pain is here to teach us a lesson or reveal a gift to us . Once we have received this gift, the pain will leave. If we avoid the hurt, we avoid the lesson, AND the pain stays!
How do we sit with the pain and learn the lesson it has to teach us? There are many tools available to help guide us through pain; for example, therapists, programs, support groups, friends, family, medical support, alternative therapies, essential oils, time spent alone reflecting, journalling and meditation. All of these things are valuable and can help guide you through the difficult experience of emotional trauma and hurt. The idea is to not avoid the pain, to experience it, to honour it , so we can learn the valuable lesson and it can be released: to let go of it 🌬️☁️.
Often times, when the emotional hurt comes to mind, through habit we jump on social media, have a drink, overeat or learn to “cope” through some kind of avoidance mechanism and technique. This is a short term numbing or avoidance, and the effects are short lived. The pain returns... and the longer we suppress or avoid, often the more painful or complex the pain becomes.
If you are able to sit with the pain, receive your gift of the lesson, you will find gratitude for the experience. Once we have reached a state of pure gratitude for this, the pain will begin to dissipate. So, next time you go to avoid, or you end up on social media... think, why am I doing this? Am I avoiding something?
Meditation has played a huge role in helping me through emotional trauma. If you would like some tips on meditation, I made a post a few days ago and will pop the link in the comments!
Illustration by @henn_kim