~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ What a Good Pain! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Have you noticed that pain often seems to be part of the process of relating? Maybe, if you are going through ones of those not-so-lucky phases it gets to be too much part of the process!
However, many of us are too busy avoiding it in any shape or form to notice that there is more than one kind of pain . There is actually a type of 'pain' that is a sign that something good is happening.
There a 'hard' type of pain and a 'soft' type of pain.
The hard type of pain that tells us 'Don't do that!". It stops us putting our hand the fire and so on. The hard type of pain tells us that damage is being done and that we need to stop doing whatever is causing it.
The soft type of pain tells us that something needs our attention so that it can be healed. If we avoid that kind of pain then that prevents us healing our emotional hurts.
Just as our physical self has a natural healing process our emotions have a natural healing process too. The natural healing process for our emotions often includes paying gentle attention to them. It does not necessarily require us to try and fix them, or get into therapy about them (though that can be useful).
We can heal emotional pain in a very natural and easy way by being kind to ourselves and allowing the healing process to take its course. The problem is when we get hurt emotionally we often beat ourselves up instead; "Why did I do that! I should have known better!" and so on.
There is not much chance of natural healing process taking place while that is going on! Often the way we react to 'being hurt' does us much more damage than the actual hurtful event itself!
Self-judgment and self-condemnation are hard pains. A relationship not going the way we would like is a soft pain. We can much more readily get over a relationship not working when we are not dishing out lots of hard damaging pain to ourselves.
When we allow ourselves to feel sadness and disappointment of something not going our way it will naturally heal itself. When we stay with those feelings, and experience the soft pain that is held there by letting them have their say, we find that we move fairly readily and easily into a more buoyant and peaceful state. All without having to force, or push, or bully ourselves.
The repeat of a hard pain increases the damage. The repeat of an emotional pain can be a chance to let go of the beliefs and ideas that support a negative view we may have about ourselves, or about life.
Not that we need to seek out emotional pain, but nor do we need to beat ourselves up if we repeat an emotionally painful situation again and again. Judging and criticizing ourselves increases the damage rather than helping us heal in such a way that we can choose healthier situations.
For more information about this approach, and for useful ways of working with these kind ideas, check out an online, or bricks and mortar, bookshop for a self-help book with the word 'focusing' in the title - or just see what leaps out at you.
