Heal your emotional pain so you can be who you were meant to be

When we close the door on our emotional pain, we open the door on who we were meant to be.

by: E.B. Johnson

Our emotions are powerful things, and they can move us to some truly powerful places. Sometimes, however, these advances make us uncomfortable or leave us feeling off-balance. When that happens, we have a tendency to bury our emotions deep down inside, creating gaping emotional rifts that tear us away from our authentic sense of self and authority. If we want to find true happiness, we have to heal the hurts that hold us back. But that’s a process that takes staring long into the darkness that we’ve tried so hard to hide.

We can find true joy and fulfillment in the life, but we first have to detach from the pain that limits us. Only by coming to understand your emotions and how they impact you, can you unlock the ability to control them. Emotional pain is powerful, and it can run deep into the heart and soul of who we are. When we fail to address it, however, we kind find ourselves floundering, drowning and going down on the rocks of our own making. Want to be happy? Great. Start by dealing with the emotional pain that’s forcing you to the shoreline, rather than beyond the horizon.

What is emotional pain?

Humans emotions are strong, and they are strong for a reason. Our emotions serve to protect, and they serve to shield us from the things that hurt us or otherwise cause us discomfort. Things like anger, sadness, anxiety and even feelings of hopelessness are responses to environmental triggers, but they can become much, much bigger problems when left ignored or otherwise unaddressed.

Any emotion which causes you discomfort can be labelled as emotional “pain”. The concept as a whole goes much deeper than that, however. True emotional pain occurs when uncomfortable emotions are buried (day after day, year after year) and left to fester and rot in the core of who we are. Over time, these emotions compound upon one another to manifest in a number of toxic ways, slowly eroding our overall wellbeing.

Overcoming emotional pain is a process that requires time, but it’s also a process that requires a lot of introspection. Though the pain we experience in the outside world might be inflicted by others, it’s our responsibility to heal it and it’s our responsibility to make sure we find our way to resolution and happiness. Only when we start to take the initiative and pursue our own authentic joy can we get back to who we were meant to be. If we want to truly blossom in this life, we have to let go of our emotional pain and take control of the futures we want to create.

The facets of emotional pain.

Emotional pain isn’t just one horrible back of emotion, it’s chocked full of a number of tricky feelings and all the experiences that brought us to them in the first place. Understanding emotional pain begins with understanding the facets of that pain. Whether it’s unexpressed anger, or a sense of guilt that you just can’t address — you can’t deal with your pain until you name it.

Unexpressed anger

Our anger is a complex emotion, and one that can derail us completely if not closely managed. Anger can rear its head any time we suffer a slight or setback, resulting in irritation, annoyance and even self-pity or envy. Though our anger is uncomfortable, it has to be addressed and resolved sooner rather than later. The longer you leave it unaddressed, the more pain it will cause you and the deeper the roots of that pain will go.

Deeply buried sadness

Sadness is another uncomfortable emotion, and it’s one that’s particularly destructive when left buried. Our sadness plays an important role in our emotional regulation, and it plays an important role in helping us to identify subtle situations that might be undermining our overall joy and fulfillment. When we’re sad, it’s because we’re facing some conflict of self that needs to be resolved, and worked through consciously and with compassion.

Endless anxiety

Anxiety is a hard path to wander, and an even harder hill to climb. Your anxiety makes you doubt yourself, deny yourself opportunities and even isolate yourself socially and romantically from those who might otherwise bring light and joy into your life. Anxiety can be summed up as feelings of tension or stress that cause us to feel on-edge or uneasy. Like all our other emotions, anxiety can come and go in varying degrees of strength and have different effects on both our internal and external perceptions.

Guilt and shame

It’s important to note that shame is not guilt. Guilt is a pressure that is exerted from external forces, while shame is entirely an internalized experience. When we feel shameful, we feel as though we ourselves are flawed — rather than realizing that “truth” at the hands of someone else. It runs into the deepest levels of our self worth and can cause substantial psychological harm. From body-shaming, to clinging to the injuries of our traumatic childhoods — it’s a punishment of self, and a denial of happiness in every form it takes.

How it impacts our overall wellbeing.

Though you might think that emotional pain is relatively unobtrusive, nothing could be further from the truth. Because our emotions are so powerful, they have a major affect on our behavior and the way in which we make decisions (whether we realize it or not). Just because we choose not to face them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. As a matter of fact, the longer you leave your emotional pain unaddressed…the nastier the side-effects can become.

Increased addiction

Failing to confront the emotional pain we’re suffering from can bring us to our knees and make life unliveable. From stress and anxiety, to literal physical pain and discomfort…when you’re hurting you’ll do almost anything to stop it. For this reason, many who are suffering with deep emotional wounds, or unaddressed issues find themselves seeking numbing through the use of drugs, alcohol and other addictive behaviors (like gambling). When you don’t deal with your issues, your subconscious takes over and that can lead to addiction, warped relationships and lashing out that makes it hard to connect.

Life paralysis

Emotional distress activates your fight-or-flight, and makes it hard to capitalize on opportunties or changes to grow and improve our lives. Being stressed to the max, or dealing with feelings of hopelessness and grief, can lead you to freeze up and lock down. Failing to make the decisions and take the actions that you need to, you can find yourself in an analysis paralysis loop that makes it impossible to see the right paths forward.

Even more stress

Stress is one of the most toxic elements we can introduce to our lives, and much of it is generated from unaddressed emotional pain, or needs thhat go ignored. When you’re stressed, you experience, muscle tension, headaches, and even increased heart disease and mental illness. This is all thanks to cortisol, a stress hormone which erodes our cardiovascular health, while forcing our physical and mental bodies to freak out and break down.

Physical erosion

Stress wears your body down, and so too do emotions that are ignored or left in the dark until you’re on the brink of explosion. Whether your feelings lead to a full-blown case of depression that eats away at your physical health — or you just end up with a lot of buried guilt — these things contribute to physical pain, and things like tension headaches, muscle spasms, and even lowered immune function (something no one needs in this age of viral scaremongering).

The benefits of healing your emotional pain.

Focusing on the symptoms of your emotional pain alone is not enough to heal your hurt. If you focus only on how you are reacting to the pain you’re in, you’ll increase that pain and the negativity in your life. That’s why it’s important to understand the benefits of healing your pain, so you can create an action plan that allows you to build a better tomorrow.

Boost your mood

Getting down to the root of your moral or emotional hardships allows you to unlock some transformative powers that improve the quality of your life. Perhaps chief among these improvements is a boosted mood. As you shift all that anger, sadness and stress that has lain uninterrupted for so long, you’ll come to find a new freedom and a happiness in your new ability to thrive. Letting go of our negative emotions, or discovering ways in which to resolve them, relieves a figurative weight from our shoulders that can help us find greater levels of happiness and fulfillment.

Relieve stress

Releasing your emotional pain and baggage allows you to release your stress and find your way back to an even keel. Lowering the cortisol in our bodies helps us to release toxins, and it helps us to relax our mental state and better make decisions for ourselves and our lives. Letting go of our anger and our sadness takes a huge burden off our shoulders, and makes it easier to detach and look at life from a logical and rational point of view.

Better sleep

Loosening up on the emotional burden that’s weighing you down can improve your mood and relieve stress, but it also has the power to improve the quality of your sleep. Whether you realize it or not, one of the most brilliant side-effects of healing your emotional pain can be improved sleep quality and better ability to fall asleep and stay asleep. When we’re stressed, our brain patterns and sleep patterns are interrupted, which only goes to compound our stress and anxiety. Being exhausted makes it hard to balance.

Understanding of self

Perhaps the greatest benefit of resolving your emotional pain is coming to a better understanding of self. Resolving our hurts requires us to dig deep, and take a good, long, hard look at who we are and what we want. This kind of self-examination (not always encouraged in an increasingly politicized environment) allows us to unlock hidden strengths, and fall in love with the unique beauty we hold in life-affirming ways. When you understand your emotional pain, you understand who you are and how you react…and that’s powerful knowledge.

Subtle signs it’s time to heal your emotional discomfort.

Not all signs of emotional pain are as obvious as others. Below are a few of the subtle ways in which this unaddressed pain can undermine your wellbeing and signal that it’s time for radical and self-led change.

Unabated gluttony

Someone who just can’t seem to get enough — whether that’s food, alcohol, relationships or some other kind of distracting coping device? It might be a sign there’s underlying issues that need to be addressed. When we’re suffering emotionally, we often mask that pain with other distractions that allow us to check out and numb-up. The problem with this unabated gluttony, however, is that is does nothing to dissipate the feelings or the nasty side-effects they bring with them.

Conscious (or unconscious) isolation

Isolating yourself — while sometimes helpful — can also be a sign of underlying issues that need to be addressed. When our emotions become too much to bear, they muddle our thoughts and force us to detach from the people and the experiences that might otherwise bring us joy. This coping mechanism, though attempting to protect us from further upset, really only drives us further down the rabbit hole of negative thinking patterns and misery.

Inability to slow down

Are you someone who speeds through every task? Feeling as though you can never stop, or as though you have to complete everything as quickly as possible? Like it or not, this is a trauma response, and one of the ways in which we deal (or fail to deal) with some of our biggest and scariest emotional demons. Heaping up task after task, and ensuring that you never have a chance to breathe, also ensures that you never have time to face up to your emotions and the healing that you so desperately need.

Lost in fantasy

If you’re lost in fantasy or delusion, unable to see things for how they are (or unwilling to see the part you’re playing in it all) it can be a sign that it’s time for you to make some major changes. When we suffer from heavy emotional baggage, it can lead to a certain shut down and a forced wander through delusion. This is an attempt to protect ourselves our remaining emotions from any more damage. But it’s ultimately limiting to our quality of life and dangerous for our relationships.

The best ways to resolve the emotional pain in your life.

Don’t let the pain of your past or the hurt of your present control who you are or who you can be. We are the only ones who control our destinies, and there is a way forward for all of us when we begin to understand our worth and the personal power therein. If you want to resolve your emotional pain, start with an embrace and follow a few basic techniques that encourage big results.

1. Embrace the pain.

Pain is uncomfortable and unpleasant, and for that reason we — as humans — work hard to avoid it at any costs. The problem with this tactic, however, is that unresolved pain leads to serious problems in our lives, and can cause us to detonate the things in life that matter most to us. In order to resolve the emotional pain we’re feeling we have to face it, accept it and then learn how to embrace it for what it is; so that we can move through it find the peace and inner strength we never knew existed.

Embrace your pain. Accept and acknowledge it for what it is, and use that knowledge to get to work putting that pain in the places it belongs (ie: in the past). Face up to the things behind you that make you feel sad, insecure, angry or hopeless. Move slowly through them, and open your arms wide to your emotions as they come to you.

Mindful journalling is one way to begin this practice, and to do so in a safe space that is both neutral and secure. Begin with small issues in your past that you’re clinging on to for no discernable reason. Recall the incidents in your head, and recall too how you felt in the moment. Don’t shy away from things like anger, embarassment or sadness. Instead, notice how those emotions come to you, and what reactions they inspired in you. Utilizing this practice regularly, you can slowly build up to the larger incidents in your past, and find the strength to honestly analyze and resolve them.

2. Re-invent yourself

Re-invention is one of those wacky superpowers we’ve been granted as humans, which give us the ability to transform our lives and our surroundings in crazy ways. Re-inventing yourself is a great way to connect with who you really are, and it’s a great to build self-confidence and fall in love with who you authentically are. When you re-invent yourself, you give yourself a clean slate and the opportunity to try things from a different perspective. It’s catharsis, personified, and all it takes is a little personal honesty.

If you’re clinging to emotional pain that’s changing you, cast off the rags of hopelessness and start donning the skin you were always meant to wear. Break out of your insecurities, and make contact with the things in this life that truly give you meaning. You could change the way you look, change the people you hang out with. You could even change your career and lifestyle. Re-invention has no limits, save those we insist on putting on ourselves.

As you move through the different phases of re-invention, trying things out until you find the “coat that fits”, you’ll get to now new facets of yourself, and you’ll also uncover new strengths that allow you to connect with your purpose in this life. Although this process focuses on a lot of trial error, it also takes some meaningful soul-searching as well. Before you make any big leaps, or decide to quit your job or shave your head — take a step back and compare what you’re about to do with where you ultimately want to go. No matter how we choose to re-invent ourselves, it’s important that we remember to align it with what we want from our futures.

3. Fall in love with you

One of the greatest benefits of re-inventing yourself is giving yourself the opportunity to fall in love with who you are. Re-invention asks us to take a hard, honest look at who we want to be and where we’re going. In that space, it’s impossible not to notice all the beautiful strengths and quirks that make us uniquely who we are. Only when we learn how to love ourselves can we truly let go of the emotional pain and guilt that are holding us back and lagging us down…but that can be a brutal process to fully realize.

Whether you’ve decided to re-invent yourself, or you’re just working at facing up to and letting go of the pain as you are — falling in love with yourself is an inevitable next stop on the road to resolving our emotional hurts. When we fall in love with ourselves, we give ourselves permission to thrive, and we begin to realize that we alone have control over the things we want to accomplish in this life. That takes accepting our weaknesses too, though, and turning them into the touch-points that boost us when we’re down.

Really dig into the meat of who you are and embrace all those little things — the good and the bad — that make you, you. Take a long, hard look at your past, and consider all the things that were within your control. With that knowledge to hand, consider all the things that were outside of your control and the ways in which you addressed those things in the heat of the moment. Examine those strengths (and those weaknesses) that led you where you are today. Fall in love with them. They’re the same traits your heroes have and they’re the same ones that will empower you to change your life.

4. Learn to be present

Learning how to be present is one of the best gifts that we can give to ourselves, and it’s one that has some truly transformative benefits. We live in a a world that encourages us to live fast, and hyper-focus on a future that’s filled with individualism and material wealth. When we look beyond this need to micromanage our futures, however, we can start to see the true opportunities of connection and growth that add up to that big-ticket future.

If you want to be more present, begin with coming to the understanding that you are only human. There is only so much burden that can be taken on, and so much focus that we have within us. Focus on one thing at a time, and stop obsessing over the outcome — center yourself instead on the journey itself. Step back, and allow yourself to breathe when things get stressful.

Be a witness to your own actions, and notice when you feel yourself slipping into the pressures of tomorrow, or the pointless pain of yesterday. Becoming self-aware allows us to pull our minds and our emotions back into the moment, and let go of the things that don’t suit the purpose we’re trying to meet right here and right now. Just as the age-old saying goes: you can’t change the past, and you can’t control the future. All you can control is what you do right here and now in the present moment. Anything else is a waste of your precious, precious energy.

5. Find your flow

Flow is a powerful thing, and when we find it — powerful things happen in our lives. We have to find our flow in order to be truly happy, and we have to find it in order to create the ideal type of life that allows us to connect with our authentic self. Only when you find your flow can you find the power to let go of the emotional pain that’s haunting you…but that in-and-of itself can be a daunting prospect.

Find your meaning. Find the places you belong and plant yourself there. Surround yourself with people who encourage you to be the best version of yourself (whatever that is) and find the energy and the existence that moves you forward naturally, rather than the constant struggle.

Flow isn’t something with an exact definition, and it’s not something that takes an exact science to find. We find our flow by pursuing our passions, and doing the things that spark love, creativity, and interest in our lives. When you find your flow, you connect with a truer version of yourself. You also free yourself in ways that empowers others to be free to. It’s like sparking a light within yourself, which can cast out the darkness and the shadows that make life so hard to navigate. It’s building a lighthouse on the shores of your soul.

6. Get proactive

Because modern life is so fast-paced and stressful it can encourage us to drop-out or wane, finding ourselves on the sidelines in an experience that is meant for anything but spectating. The only way to create a happy life is to get proactive about finding happiness and creating the environments and experiences we need to let go of our pain. Instead of sitting complacently on the sideline, waiting for healing to happen — we have to get proactive about healing ourselves and stop letting things fester and rot inside.

If you’re truly seeking to deal with the emotional pain or moral injuries that are holding you back, start by making a commitment to being more proactive. Deal with things as they come and don’t let them linger. If you’re upset, speak up — and stop letting your emotional comfort take a backseat to that of the people around you.

We have to stick up for ourselves, and we have to stick up for the way that we feel. Buried emotions don’t disappear, that just compound and muddy the waters in ways that make it harder for us to find ourselves. Stop sitting-by. Stop looking for someone else to wave a magic wand and fix all your ills. Stand up for yourself, and stand up for the way you want to feel (and the kind of life that you want to lead). At the end of the day, you are the best advocate that you have. Advocate for your right to live a happy life and stick to the boundaries that ensure your happiness.

7. Be patient

Patience is the way in which. we maintain our cool when life gets tough. To be patient means many things, but above all it means not giving up when things go wrong. Just as we have to be patient with our partners, our pets, our children — we have to learn how to be patient with ourselves and the journey that we’re on. Did you learn all of algebra overnight? Chances are, no. So don’t expect to learn an entirely new way of living overnight either.

Healing your emotional pain is not a journey that will happen overnight. The damage that was inflicted by that pain will not magically go away overnight. You have to be patient with yourself, and you have to understand that this pain and all these emotions will require time to resolve. Not only that, but you’re going to make mistakes along the way, and you’re going to fall back into old patterns too.

Embrace the mess that you are right now, and embrace the mess that this journey is going to be. Never was a path to healing straight-forward, so understand that there’s going to be temptation to backslide and mistakes and missteps along the way. Finding happiness isn’t about getting from Point A to Point B(aka sick to healthy). It’s about developing, growing, and learning how to process our emotions, our environments and ourselves in new and different ways. Be patient. Be compassionate. Know that the journey is worth more than the outcome.

Putting it all together…

Emotional pain is a burden that can drag us down to the depths if we’re not careful. When we leave feelings like sadness, anger or grief unaddressed, it can lead to fractured sense of self and an even more fractured state of existence. The relationships we build, the lives we attempt to create, are dependent upon our emotional stability. We have to heal our pain in order to move forward with confidence and creativity.

Embrace the pain and the turmoil that you feel and start to name your emotions for what they are. Be honest with yourself and — when you’re ready — reinvent yourself and find a way to live in line with the most authentic version of you. There are no rules when it comes to finding happiness, but it does require us to fall in love with ourselves. Build a version of yourself that you can love, and lean wholeheartedly into that person. Be present. Find your flow. When we follow our passions, we can often find the strength we need to let go of all the bad stuff that’s holding us back. Creating a better tomorrow for ourselves requires detaching, and getting in touch with the power that allows us to be more proactive about life. Stop waiting for things to happen or get better, and start sticking up for what you want and how you want to feel. No one is in charge of your life but you. Be patient with your journey and find that authentic person that’s ready to thrive and bloom.