Understanding the Toll of Emotional and Physical Pain
Your body gives you a perfect metaphor to teach you how to heal your emotional wounds. It sends instant communication with your emotional body.
The physical pain you experience after an injury is something we all go through and it naturally produces a stress response. The body immediately gets to work on the healing process and the pain settles down to a dull ache.
And it is a process.
It takes time. What we do with that time is crucial to our growth and well being.
While the body is healing, we also have the opportunity to choose to grow emotionally by reflecting on how it happened as we watch to see how the healing progresses.
For a deeper look into our choices in every moment, read “Just When You Thought You Had No Choice…”
During that reflection time, many different thoughts will come up leading to emotions about the injury or the events surrounding it.
Yet, how often do we pay attention to those thoughts or emotions?
How quickly are they disregarded?
“The pain will leave, once it has finished teaching you.” –Unknown
Instead of disregarding them, it’s a perfect time for mindful awareness of the thoughts that come up so you can decide whether they’re actually your beliefs or someone else’s that you’ve taken on by default.
A perfect example of this was one evening when my husband went outside in his bare feet for a minute and stepped on a nail with his heel. The first words that came out of his mouth were, “I never should’ve gone out in my bare feet!” (Actually, the very first word was a little stronger than that ;))
This was probably a warning his mother or father might’ve said when he was a child, which in turn, created a subconscious belief in him that it was dangerous to walk outside barefoot.
Along with that belief, would’ve been emotions of shame, blame and guilt. Shame that he didn’t listen, blaming himself and
Photo by Danie Franco @ Unsplash
guilt as a quick follow up. This would all happen in a split second, making it easily swept aside, only to appear another time for yet another opportunity to see the belief and question it.
If you stub your toe on a toy, for example, not only will there be physical pain, you could be angry or disappointed with yourself or with someone else who is conveniently to blame. You might say things like, “Look at what you’ve done! Why would you leave the toy in the hallway where someone could hurt themselves?” Or, “How could I be so stupid not to pay attention!”.
The Pain Has Become Chronic
Energy is always in motion, right? Emotion is energy, right?
In the above example, with anger and blame as the emotions. The energy may not stay in the toe once it heals. If you haven’t taken the time to reflect on the emotions that came up and the beliefs behind them, over time, the pain could become chronic. Other occasions when the same emotions had come up would be accumulating.
More information on the effects of chronic stress is in this article, “Yearning For Quiet Amidst Life’s Busyness”.
Knowing you have more control over physical pain than you thought can give you some relief. Imagine knowing the role emotions play in your physical pain can give you the power to shift your state of silent stress.
There’s been a lot of research recently done showing the correlation of emotions and physical pain and how emotional awareness, expression and processing are key to releasing emotional stress and relieving physical pain.
When we resign ourselves to either living with the pain, or only medicating it with creams and pain relievers, we’re giving away our precious power and missing an opportunity to grow by releasing the emotions and beliefs that are not serving our wellbeing. There’s wisdom there waiting for us, lying dormant, to heal ourselves.
“The natural healing force within each of us is the greatest force in getting well.” –Hippocrates
Our bodies were never made to thrive in the constant state of stress we’re putting ourselves through.
Emotional Wounds
An emotional hurt from the past can be triggered in a flash, if it hasn’t been healed. You’ve probably experienced this.
Someone says something in just the same way a bully that taunted you years before did. You feel a familiar emotion coming up, and it may even feel a little bit worse this time around.
Maybe the colour of the sky looked just as it did that time you buried your father. A sense of quiet sadness comes over you.
Sweeping aside emotions and holding onto them, only keeps the patterns going.
It’s time to learn how to end the patterns of stress and regain the precious power you hold to make more time for you and love your way through life instead.
“It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” –Epictetus
Emotional healing is a process requiring mindfulness and time, just as a skin cut or broken leg would.
Now, you know you have more control over your health and wellbeing than you previously thought!
The silent stress you’re going through because of the pain you’re carrying or believing about your life can be released. Life can change for the better in an instant and you can feel lit up and love your way through life again.
When you know better; you do better. So be kind, thoughtful, and caring for yourself. This is how you begin to love yourself.
If this skill is something you desire to learn, join the waitlist for my new program opening up soon.
It’s called, “Harmonized Living; A Program to Break Stress Patterns and Make More Time For You!”