Pain is something none of us like. We tend to shape our patterns and lives around avoiding pain. But it is sitting with pain where we find healing. Pain is part of our internal compass that points to things we want to avoid, but it’s going into that pain that we understand the reason WHY we want to avoid it, and thus we can guide ourselves to people, places, and things that provide us with the things we do want.
This week in Deeper Thoughts we’re going to talk about how sitting with pain helps you realize where you need to heal. You have to know yourself to know where you need healing. This is how you build yourself up! And it takes a lot of work. It causes you to face a lot of pain. Knowing where your pain stems from is key to understanding your triggers, outbursts and coping mechanisms.
You have to go inward in your mind, where you’re alone, and sit with that pain. When you’re sad, angry, depressed, all of it, you have to sit with and experience that pain. Many of you reading this right now want no part of that, and that’s natural. For most of us we’re hardwired to run from pain, even when it’s of the mind, for protection.
But it’s here, in your mind setting with and feeling that pain that you get to the root cause of that pain. It’s not that recent break-up. While yes this is painful, it’s not the origin. What was the manner in which the break-up happened? Did they blindside you with it? Did they pack everything up and leave while you were at work? Both?
Sit with that pain, feel it, and go back as far as you can. Go back in your memory to the earliest version of these pains, all the way back to childhood. Did a parent abandon you, or pass away while you were young? (Death can in fact lead to abandonment issues.) Was your home chaotic and you grew up feeling on edge and anxious?
Now that you’ve sat with and explored this pain and became aware of its origins you can become aware of how you can meet the needs those events caused. In this case you know you need people who are reliable and dependable if you want to feel safe. You might cultivate relationships with people who are able to show up for you when you need them and communicate when they aren’t able to. You might create a home and routine that you can depend on so you feel like your life is less chaotic.
As a side note: In the case of this break-up scenario, going inward to look things over can help you see if there were any signs or not as well. While sometimes there aren’t any signs, in most cases with human interaction there tends to be. It could be teaching you a lesson to listen to your intuition when you felt that something was off.
Other examples can be such things like loud people causing you to feel anxiety can be that you had a parent that was verbally abusive or yelled and screamed in rage a lot when you were a child. A deeper inspection would show you that you want a partner who is calmer because that’s what makes you feel safe.
And on the flipside to this scenario, that loud person is loud because being quiet meant they got overlooked in their family and being loud was the only way to make sure they got their needs met. This person could look into relationships where proper communication is used so their needs are understood and can be met.
Men who harbor hatred toward women tend to get into relationships that don’t last due to their own behaviors and treatments toward their partners and when the woman leaves him. This reinforces his anger and hatred. If he sat with this pain, he would find there are most likely mother wounds to heal, such as an overbearing or over criticizing mother, and in doing so he would begin seeking out women who fit those needs he needs to heal, such as a partner that is supportive and helps build him up instead tearing him down.
Again on the flipside, a woman who is a “man hater” finds herself in abusive or emotionally void relationships. Sitting with her pain would reveal to her that her wounds stem from either an abusive father or a father who was emotionally avoidant. Sitting with pain teaches her to seek out men who can protect her but not be a danger to her, or is able to healthily express and talk about his emotions with her, depending on the needs her trauma warrants.
Sitting with pain and having awareness of it allows you to learn what kind of security you needed during those times and look into how you can meet those needs. It doesn’t stop the pain, but you develop better tools to overcome that pain should it, or similar events happen again. It’s going in your own mind and sitting with that pain that you learn how to build yourself up. Hopefully this article helped you to see how sitting with your pain instead of running from it or suppressing it can help you heal.
Thank you for reading, and once again, I hope you all have an enlightening day!
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