Emotional Pain and Stress
We have all shared the common experience of pain during our lifetimes. We use pain as a guideline to our physical health and safety. Our intelligence alerts us to try to correct whatever is causing the pain.
When the pain is “correctable” we are pleased. The sensations of pain vaporize until the next time. This phenomenon is similar to what happens to women in childbirth.
Physical pain covers a vast array of types of pain. There is stabbing pain, sharp pain, lingering pain, dull pain, and excruciating pain.
Emotional pains are more complex and actually growing into suffering. These emotional pains will absolutely influence the whole circle of the host’s life; actually increasing physical pain, and tossing stress levels out of control, unless we deal with it. Pain grows to suffering, and often needlessly.
Each of us has learned, either from our own experience or others’ experiences, sometimes terrible and unfair things can happen to the best of us. People have experienced a nervous breakdown from unresolved emotional trauma. Maybe you have found yourself in a similar disoriented and depressed state from experiencing emotional trauma.
Human beings have a propensity to replay over and over again in our minds what went wrong, what we could have done to stop it, and what horrible things will happen next. We dwell in the past rather than trying to find a simple solution.
Often times we define ourselves by our emotional pain. When we do this we suffer additional emotional pain, unnecessarily, and the stress becomes a mountain we face.
In order to “recover” from emotional trauma, it is imperative to quit maintaining the identity of the one who was or is being hurt. Stop retelling the story (aloud or within your own mind) of how you were hurt, who hurt you, why it shouldn’t have happened, how badly you are hurt and so on and so forth.
When you quit telling the story, you immediately make the first step towards healing. You will have released the incident that initially triggered the trauma. Whatever it is, it is in the past now.
This moment you need to concentrate on either doing what you can to change the circumstances, or accept the fact that life has now changed, and the changes are beyond your control.
The only choice, at least the best choice, is to accept it and move forward. Step back, take a deep breath and tell yourself, “I’m not going down that road again.”