In our society, I have noticed pain can oftentimes be dismissed, ignored, shoved away in a box in the back of the brain, so-to-speak, and it builds. It builds emotionally until you snap. It builds physically through body aches, headaches, sometimes fibromyalgia, sometimes IBS, sometimes TMJ, and a variety of other physical ailments that are all trying to communicate your holding a lot. Your physical body, your nervous system, can only take so much until it starts to break down.
Being with your pain, not fixing it, or ignoring it is what begins to heal it. Most of us were taught to solve pain or we weren’t taught anything about how to feel pain. We might have been taught to stop crying or we would be given something to cry about. We were taught to distract it with food or some exciting activity. We might have been taught to spiritualize it hoping God would take it away. We might have been taught that our pain was because someone did something to us, so we were taught to blame or perhaps, we as children were blamed for our parents’ emotions; “You make me mad”, “If you hadn’t disobeyed, I wouldn’t be mad”. So many other messages parents might have indirectly taught their children that the child is responsible for their emotional state and then when the child grows up, they subconsciously repeat the same thing they experienced. It was what they learned. We may also try to explain away our pain or try to analyze it. This is where I once was, I am extremely analytical and a thinker. I used to shove my emotions down, ignore them as I was once taught, “you better fix your attitude”.
The truth is, many of us weren’t taught to sit with our emotions, to feel, to make space for. We learned that pain was a problem to eliminate, not an experience to tend to. So when discomfort rises such as sadness, fear, anger, anxiety, our instinct is to make it stop. We reach for solutions. We look for someone or something in our environment to change. We try to think our way out of what we feel.
Being with your pain might look like:
- Naming what you’re feeling instead of suppressing it
- Placing a hand on your chest and taking slow breaths
- Speaking gently to yourself instead of criticizing
- Allowing tears without shame
- Resisting the urge to immediately “figure it out”
When you stay with your pain, you communicate something powerful to yourself: I am not abandoning you. Healing doesn’t come from force or from pushing harder or trying to override your humanity. You don’t have to become stronger, more positive, or more spiritual. You just need to be with you; presence, which is steady, patient, and compassionate. Pain that is met with love does not stay sharp forever. It softens and it passes as it is felt. This is how healing begins.
