3 Healthy Ways to Deal With Pain and Get to The Bottom of the Problem

Your pain is not the problem. It is merely the alert to check the actual problem

1. Sit With Your Pain

People are afraid of themselves. They are afraid of their own reality. Their feelings most of all. Feelings are disturbing and painful and so we run far away from them, thinking they will somewhat magically disappear. It doesn't and so we use distractions to cope.

We try to avoid any emotional pain by ignoring it. We fight it and push it away and we distract ourselves. We numb the pain with a new relationship. A glass of wine. Drugs. We isolate ourselves. But it doesn’t help at all. It makes it worse.

We end up getting trapped in a cycle that only ends up with us holding onto negative emotions for longer than necessary. While we think we’re minimizing the pain with our behavior, we’re really only making it big and causing emotional stagnation.

Distractions help us ignore and dismiss what we feel, but it does not go away. It does not heal. Instead, it slowly works itself to the surface in a negative way to be dealt with.

For instance, a man gets out of a relationship that ended badly, and instead of him taking the time to evaluate his situation, learn where he went wrong, and heal the pain, he gets into a new relationship right away hoping the new relationship will make his pain go away. In the short term, the new relationship makes him feel good and all, but the pain is not gone — just buried somewhere deep within him. He takes all of his old issues into the new relationship and ends up hurting the new person he is with. He ran from his pain only to cause more pain for himself and his new partner.

As difficult as it can be, there is importance to facing your current reality and just sitting and being present with how you are feeling. Sitting with your pain means allowing them, resisting the urge to distract yourself, not ignoring or avoiding them, and not judging yourself for the part you played in causing the pain. This allows you to observe and reflect on the pain.

Sitting with your pain means allowing them to be there and resisting the urge to distract yourself or avoid them.

2. Accept Your Pain

Think about your role in the situation you are in. How it came to be. When it started. What makes it feel worse? What eases it? Avoid the need to play the victim or point fingers at others. It does nothing to help.

Look at all the ways you could have done things differently. Think about how you can change your behavior and how you will approach a similar situation differently.

Don't numb your pain. Numbing the pain for a while will make it worse when you finally feel it.

Avoid pretending the pain is not real and do not minimize how you feel. The pain you feel is real and so you must validate it. The things that happened to you are real and valid.

See the pain for what it is. For what it is trying to teach you. Validating the pain means accepting the pain. Stop feeling that you shouldn’t be feeling the pain.

Acceptance is a much higher vibration than desperation to change. Acceptance is necessary and as much as it is to believe it, you chose your pain before coming to the earth so learn to accept and then feel it.

Avoid pretending the pain is not real and do not minimize how you feel. The pain you feel is real and so you must validate it.

3. Feel Your Pain

We all have our reasons for burying our pain. People are taught that pain is bad but it comes down to one thing. Fear. Fear of facing the truth of what we’ve done. Fear of facing our current reality.

The pain you feel is real and you have to make time to feel it. All of it. Allow the pain to take over. Feel everything there is to feel.

Pain is a feeling and your feelings are a part of you. They are your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them and hide them, you’re interrupting your own reality.

Stand up for your right to feel your pain.

Have a cry. Scream into a pillow. Use your voice to get rid of some pent-up energy. Punch a pillow. Take a boxing class. Go for a run. Pain is energy and so you must let it move through you. When you do these things, it helps you process the feeling so you can work towards your healing.

Working through painful emotions is never easy. The important thing is to find healthier ways to cope and use healthy activities and healthy coping mechanisms that can promote healing in a positive way.

When you feel an emotion coming on — whether it’s regret, guilt, shame, emptiness, or loneliness, don’t run. Feel it completely. Allow them to arise in the body and notice the sensations that occur. No manipulations and no trying to control them. Allow the pain to swallow you whole so it doesn’t break you.

People try to hide their pain but the pain is meant to wake us up. Dont sleep to your pain. Stay up with it. Carry it like a radio. You feel your strength in how you carry your pain. Be with your pain. Carry it until it leaves. And it does when it’s done teaching and showing you the actual problem.

© 2023 Kimberly Fosu. All rights reserved.

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