The pain experience is deeply personal and people in pain often suffer in silence. It can be terribly upsetting being unable to support your family to the best of your ability, and being unable to live a life of meaning and purpose. But there is a way out of the shame and guilt of being in pain.
Openness to the pain experience is the first step towards breaking free of those negative emotions around pain. This involves many aspects of pain care...
Honesty. Be honest with yourself first and foremost. What is the pain taking away? How is the pain affecting your life? What are the ways that you may be causing harm to yourself? Be open with yourself. See if you can leave your ego by the door.
Find your support network and communicate! It may seem obvious but this is one of the most important steps towards freedom from pain. We need a network of people we can trust and rely on. We need safe spaces to share and be vulnerable.
Through communication and the feeling of being understood, we can shift the negative beliefs, attitudes, and emotions around the pain. I often hear the statements “I don’t want to burden anyone else with my problems”, “No-one understands”, “It’s easier if I don’t mention it”.
If that is you, I would like you to ask some questions of yourself. Have you tried to help people understand? Have you strained your relationships by not speaking up? Has the pain gotten any better by not sharing? Have you felt frustrated and irritable when people don't understand?
I know, I know. I don’t know what it's like to be you, to live in your shoes, and to feel what you feel. And that’s totally true. I don’t know. But if you’re suffering and needing to find a way out, being open about your experience and sharing can often be the first step towards releasing some of those pent up emotions and the physical tension in your body.
I totally get it if you are not someone who speaks up. I was and am still that person a lot of the time. However, through commitment to expressing my thoughts and feelings about my pain regularly (to myself and others), I have been able to let go of the grip that pain has on my life. Openness and vulnerability has allowed me to free myself of the burden of keeping emotions and tension stuck in my body. Letting go of the shame and sadness of being in pain and disabled.
It’s no secret that our tension and pain is tied to our emotions. The growing popularity of mind-body approaches, somatic healing, emotion focused therapies are all based on the premise that our negative emotions can cause physical issues and vice versa.
Openness and vulnerability can help us with the healing process. It can help us overcome our shame, our guilt, and most importantly, our pain…
Warmest,
Ray
P.S. Check out my FREE guide if you haven't done so below: https://raychenzen.ck.page/33101a42a0
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