Emotional pain is real. Emotional pain affects us in ways that are very similar to physical pain. It hurts. And it sucks.
But whereas physical pain is relatively easy to pinpoint and fix, it’s really hard to get at the root cause of and then try to even figure out what to do about emotional pain. So we often ignore it, avoid it, or pretend it’s not there – hoping it will go away. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works.
I’m here to offer an alternative to ignoring and avoiding emotional pain. I’m here to offer solutions; solutions aimed at taking pain head on and dealing with it.
By understanding what emotions are, we can learn to live in peace alongside our emotional pain and apply practical tools to allow it to leave the body.
To help us understand what our emotions are, let’s turn to psychology and neuroscience.
How does the brain process emotional pain?
Studies indicate that the brain processes both physical and emotional pain using the same neural pathways. Professor of Psychology, Alan Fogel, PhD, describes how this plays out for us in an article on Psychology Today. This means that, as far as our brain is concerned, emotional pain hurts in the same way that physical pain does. Anyone who has had their heart broken doesn’t need a scientist to tell them that.
Fogel explains that the brain’s neural network is connected to the rest of the body; this means that the brain has a direct route to every single cell in the body. When the brain processes emotion, it transmits this information to other physical locations in the body and we feel it there. Take the heartbreak example. We use the phrase “my heart is broken” because many suffering from emotional loss or rejection feel actual pain in the chest. This is because feelings of insecurity trigger the sympathetic nervous system – the body’s threat response. The heart rate quickens and the heart and breath get out of synch, sometimes causing physical pain.
All emotions have a motor component that is unique to that emotion. When you’re happy, you may have an impulse to smile and your eyes crinkle. When you’re angry, you may have an impulse to forcibly lash out with words or actions and your eyebrows knit together. These are all natural, impulsive reactions to emotions.
So what happens when we don’t express our emotions? What happens when we hold them inside? Emotions are energy (e-motion, energy in motion). When we experience emotion in the body and don’t express it by allowing it to pass through us in a healthy way, the energy has to go somewhere. So it gets stored in the body.
Armed with this knowledge, I’d like to offer five strategies for finding peace alongside emotional pain and practical tools for eliminating emotional pain from the body. As I do with every solution I offer, I have applied each of these strategies in my own life with amazing results. This week in particular was a tough week, full of emotional pain. It brought to my attention these five strategies and inspired me to want to share them with you.
Five Ways to Deal with Emotional Pain
1. Watch it
Your attention is the most valuable thing you have.
Think about it. The world’s entire advertising system is built around getting this one resource: your attention. How much of your attention you give to something defines its value. Do you value your emotional well-being? Do you value addressing the emotional pain that you are experiencing in your body? Then pay attention to it.
The first step to eliminating emotional pain is to become aware of it. This may seem counterintuitive, but remember the brain section above? Emotional pain doesn’t actually go anywhere if you ignore it, it just gets stored in the body. The only way to actually get rid of it is to address it. The only way to address it is to give your attention to it.
A couple days this week as I was leaving work, I noticed that my emotional pain levels were very high. So my whole drive home, I just watched it. I paid attention to the pain. I noticed what was happening in my body. I became aware of where I was feeling the pain in my body.
Neuropsychiatrist Rebecca Gladding, PhD, offers four scientifically-proven steps as an alternative to medicine for her patients. The first is to relabel. I love this tactic because you can do it anywhere, even while driving. Relabeling is simply calling something by its name. In my case, as I was driving home and experiencing emotional pain in my body, I simply identified it with my thoughts as, “pain.” Or if a worried thought popped up, I simply thought, “worry.”
What this does is it immediately creates a separation between you and your pain. You suddenly shift from being the emotional pain to being the observer of the emotional pain. This distinction makes all the difference. By labeling thoughts and emotions using the names we have given them, we create some breathing room between us and the emotional pain.
2. Let it be there
Now that we’re aware of the pain, it’s NOT time to freak out and run away from it. That’s probably what you’ve been subconsciously doing all along and why you would be doing this exercise in the first place. So stay with it. Stay calm and sit with it. Allow the pain to be there. Ironically, the only way your emotional pain can kill you is if you don’t look at it and it builds up in the body and eventually into a chronic illness.
Your body is the conduit for emotions (which are just energy) to flow through. They’re not supernatural or scary. By allowing the pain to be in your body, you allow it to flow through you. Resisting pain only blocks its flow through you and it gets stored in your body.
Emotions are our greatest teachers. They are our feedback system. They let us know how our thoughts are serving us. Emotional pain is simply an indication that we have some thoughts that are not serving us. Be the space for your emotions. Let them teach you about those thoughts. Listen to what they have to say. Hold the space for your teachers to teach.
3. Stop creating “pain on pain”
Another word for this is suffering. Emotional suffering happens when we resist pain and that creates even more pain.
Stubbing your toe is a good example. There is physical pain associated with stubbing your toe. But it might not stop there. What if you get mad at yourself for stubbing your toe? This emotional pain has nothing to do with the actual act of stubbing your toe – it has to do with your negative thought about stubbing your toe. Check out this article for more on this concept, and a fun snow globe example.
One really easy way to eliminate a lot of unnecessary pain is to stop adding on extra pain to an already painful situation. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and then rumonated on it for hours after, wondering if you said the right thing? Have you ever agonized over giving a presentation for hours before it happened, only to find that the actual presentation wasn’t very painful at all?
These are examples of the “pain on pain” that I’m talking about. And it’s totally unnecessary. This kind of pain – caused by our negative thinking – literally serves no useful purpose. And it’s 100% within our control. So stop it.
4. Live in the moment
One of the things we beautiful humans do that creates so much emotional pain is we believe that things will be better at some future time. “If this thing happens, then I won’t experience this pain anymore.” No. Pain is a part of human existence. Unless you’re a zen master, you will think thoughts that will cause you pain. At no time in your life will this ever not be a thing. Not tomorrow. Not ten years from now. Not if you got handed a million dollars.
So embrace it!
Embrace the pain as a beautiful, wonderful part of being alive. We only know what heartbreak is because we have had the luxury of feeling what it’s like to be in love. It’s okay to feel pain. It’s not just okay, as we’ve learned, it’s imperative to allow yourself to feel any pain that may arise. You don’t need to stew in it, but allow yourself to feel it while it runs its course. Every moment is perfect and wonderful and exactly what you need right now – even if it’s painful.
I want to share the mantra I’ve been using to keep me grounded in the present moment.
We have arrived.
What I mean by this is that now is the most important moment. In the words of Eckhart Tolle, “This moment is primary.” We have arrived at our destination. There’s nowhere else to go but right here, right now. The present moment is it. “Tomorrow” can’t possibly be better because it doesn’t exist. Right now is it. We have arrived.
5. Share it with someone who can hold loving space for you
We are social creatures. Relationships are built into our DNA. We are also built with the ability to feel the pain of others. This enables us to empathize, form bonds, and help soothe each others’ pain. Leverage these gifts.
Find someone you trust who has the ability to hold the space for you to feel the pain that you carry. You don’t want someone who will fall to pieces when they see you upset. You want someone who can be there with you – someone who has the ability to hold a safe and loving space for you – to feel and process pain.
We all carry pain. It’s part of being human. We all also carry the ability to help each other heal. It’s as simple as holding a loving and compassionate space for the ones we love.
Peace Alongside Pain is Healing
These five strategies are all about living alongside pain in a peaceful open way. Pain is a part of life. There is a paradox here. Only when we can embrace this fact, that pain is a part of life, are we able to heal.
The process of healing emotional pain begins with you – through your thoughts and choices. You have all the tools you need to heal your own mind and body from emotional pain. These are five of my top suggestions for how to go about doing that. If they help, use them. And as always, let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear how these strategies work for you.