The Gift of Pain
The last five days I have been in the most excruciating pain due to having strep throat. For those of you who haven't had strep throat, it feels like a burning hot rod being shoved down your throat every time you swallow (I wish I was exaggerating). Through this experience, I was led to reflecting on the concept of pain.
I realized that pain is just a messenger. When there is something wrong in your body, pain is a way that your body tells you. If we did not have pain, honestly, we would probably die. If our appendix burst and we did not feel it, we would not know that anything is wrong, that anything needs to be addressed or changed. If our hand was on a hot burner, and we didn't feel it, it would cause so much more damage. In my case, if I did not have pain in my throat, I wouldn't know there would need to be measures taken to help get rid of the bacteria which would likely lead to it spreading and causing more health issues. The pain is a message. A message indicating that something is wrong and needing your attention and care.
I now want to highlight how this relates to emotional pain. Every feeling that we experience is a message. The "negative" feelings are especially strong messages that something is in need of your love and attention. These feelings are often tied to inner child wounds (unprocessed pain or trauma from your past). Though in this society, instead of seeing pain as a message, it has become second nature for us to do anything and everything to avoid seeing or feeling it. Our emotional body is trying to tell us that something is wrong and we turn our back, grab our phone or a drink, take a pill or pick up an extra shift at work. We need it to go away because we have been taught we can not handle it, that we are too weak and powerless to handle our pain. Though this is not the truth at all.
You see, our soul has an innate desire to want to connect with us. For us to be living in alignment with it. When we are living from our wounding vs. our true self, we tend to feel depressed, unhappy, easily triggered or lifeless. Oddly enough, this is all perfect. This is a map back home to ourselves. These feelings are all messages from our soul saying."Hey! Pay attention to this, because if you heal this, you can become more whole, you can be living from your highest place". We are presented with an opportunity every time we are triggered into pain, we then get to choose if we want to continue avoiding, perpetuating the pain or go in and heal so it is no longer a part of us.
These messages are not always super obvious. Let's take anxiety for example. When we see the anxiety as a messenger, we see that it is telling us there is something unprocessed that needs your attention. Anxiety is a symptom of unprocessed emotions. Our subconscious is trying so hard to avoid feeling the pain, that it comes out as anxiety. Lets say you have a deep fear of not being wanted (stemming from childhood when you felt your parents did not want you around). You do everything you can to set up your life so you do not have to feel that feeling you were unable to process as a child. You people please, you self sacrifice, you make yourself small, you agree with everyone, you avoid confrontation, you become over responsible, you do EVERYTHING. Seeing as you are not in control of other peoples feelings or situations, they end up controlling you. This creates an underlying anxiety that something may go wrong, that you may not be able to make everyone happy all the time, that maybe someone might decide they don't like you and wont want you around. The anxiety is trying to tell you that there is a deep rooted wound that needs your love and attention. The anxiety will not go away until you address what is underneath it. Do you see how this works? When we are trying to control the uncontrollable, when we feel like something might go wrong, is where we experience anxiety. Anxiety comes from avoiding what the real issue is. Anxiety is only telling us to look deeper.
If we were to see this anxiety as a messenger, to be curious, to look deeper than the surface and stop running away from all painful or undesirable emotions, then maybe we could take our lives back. When we learn to pay attention to our emotions, to see, to validate, to love what is under the surface, when we finally step into our power and face what is there, we become more whole. We realize that the avoidance of the pain is just contributing to the feeling of disconnection within ourselves. Our lives end up reflecting just that, a disconnection within, a disconnect from our soul and who we truly are.
So next time you have something come up for you, when you are triggered into anxiety or fear or anger, try to see it as a gift. A gift from your soul. Open up to it instead of running away. Spend time with it. Be the listening ear, the absolute presence, the deep honoring that you would hope someone would be for you. Bring it into your heart. Feel the power in that. This is where healing begins.
