How to Handle Emotional Pain
When faced with an intensely painful circumstance and undergoing the healing process, we typically shy away from feeling the pain. While this is a normal reaction, avoidance or suppression of emotional distress or other difficult emotions leads us to cope in dysfunctional ways.
True healing takes time, patience, strategy and a willingness to journey through discomfort and unchartered territory. It’s not fun being there, and trust me, I’ve been there. You feel lost. You weather emotional storms, and it gets exhausting. Sometimes it feels like an uphill battle, and other times? It’s all downhill. It is rarely a linear process.
Can you handle it? Yes, you absolutely can.
Turning toward pain instead of running from it can feel like an adventurous challenge. But it leads to true healing if you trust yourself and accept that the only way out is through, as Robert Frost alluded to in his poem, “A Servant to Servants.”
And as with any difficulty that you’ve persevered through and successfully overcome, you can look forward to becoming stronger, wiser and more confident in your ability to get through and out.
Here are some tips on healing with greater ease (click to open):
- Pace yourself and be patient with the process.
- Recognize healing as an “ebb and flow” process.
- Practice mindfulness with difficult emotions. Use your emotions as essential sources of wisdom, which can then direct you to address your needs and desires.
- Recognize that suffering is a universal experience.
- Offer yourself kindness and compassion.
- Treat emotional wounding as you would a physical wound. Proper rest, nutrition, and exercise are among some basic things you could do for self-care.
- Seek out trustworthy people who will genuinely listen and support you.
- Don’t take things too personally. It might have happened to you, but not necessarily because of you.
- If you are struggling with depression, anxiety, or addiction issues, get professional help.
- Adopt a non-striving approach concerning timing. Focus less on timelines and the pressure to be above it all or have it all together. Let nature take its course.