Most people aren’t fans of emotional pain. Nevertheless, it’s part of the human condition. Let’s look at ways to move through pain with more ease and see what can be learned in the process.
We’re in this together
We humans are made up of minds, bodies, and emotions. This makes up an interconnected system that enables us to dream, reflect, work, play, and feel. The feelings we experience vary, depending on our personality, history, connection to our body sensations, and openness to vulnerability. This means that each of us has a different and unique experience with our emotions: some of us feel little; some feel a lot; some feel something, but we don’t know what.
Pleasure and pain
The range of emotions we can experience includes joy, sadness, love, anger, fear, and surprise. Generally, people are more okay with some emotions than others, hence the tendency to label them as good/pleasurable or bad/painful.
It’s useful to remember that we’re all different in what we feel, why we feel it, and how comfortable/uncomfortable we are with the feeling. We also differ in how long we’re willing/wanting to hold a feeling. We may attempt to prolong or repeat pleasure and avoid or stop pain.
Comfortably numb
Although we’re designed to be thinking and feeling beings, we’ve also developed societies and cultures that encourage us to tamp down our feelings, sometimes completely and sometimes selectively.
As social animals, we learn from an early age to moderate and manage our emotional expression. We may also do this in response to traumatic experiences. Sometimes this occurs to such a degree that a person feels very little: when asked how they feel, they honestly don’t know. Regardless of our emotional make-up, there are inevitably tough patches, whether it’s feeling too much or too little, or experiencing a rollercoaster of feelings.
Self-compassion
Self-compassion is a practice to be fostered. With self-compassion, we can gain self-awareness around our emotional reactions and appreciation for ourselves and our emotions; we can access new ways to process emotional pain and mobilize ourselves to find supportive connection. All these actions lead to a new relationship with emotional pain and healing.
Can emotional pain get stored in the body?
Sometimes we experience emotional pain that seems out of proportion to the current situation. This can occur when we’ve inadvertently tapped into a stored experience. Leslie Sanderson, a registered clinical counselor who specializes in trauma-informed and somatic approaches, says that “leading trauma experts believe our bodies do hold emotional pain.
“When we experience overwhelming emotional pain, our nervous system responds in the following ways:
- Mobilizing to meet the challenge. Our brain releases stress hormones cortisol and adrenaline, our body’s sympathetic nervous system engages, and we move into what is typically known as fight or flight. If the emotional distress is not resolved, we move on to the next step.
- Engaging the dorsal vagal branch of our parasympathetic nervous system. The body enters an immobilized response to numb our experience of pain. We may dissociate from intolerable emotions of fear, terror, hopelessness. Traumatic experiences become frozen in our bodies, out of conscious awareness, to be triggered again by the sensory realm.”
A positive path forward
Regardless of the source of our emotional pain, we can learn to handle it with more ease. This begins with self-awareness: noticing we’re in discomfort, and engaging our curiosity to ponder its origins and its impact.
With conscious breath, and a safe place to be vulnerable, we can explore our feelings rather than attempting to avoid or shut down. Accessing some compassion for whatever we’re feeling helps us to honor our experience.
5-4-3-2-1 grounding technique
- What are 5 things you can see? Look for details, colors.
- What are 4 things you can feel? Notice sensations on skin; pick something up.
- What are 3 things you can hear? Notice things you may have tuned out.
- What are 2 things you can smell? Notice the air, flowers, an unlit candle.
- What is 1 thing you can taste? Carry gum, candy, or snack for this.
Specific tools
Pendulation
This technique involves noticing emotional pain and associated sensations, then finding a place in your body that feels comfortable or peaceful. Slowly shift your focus from the place of comfort to the place of discomfort and back again, noticing how the sensations in the place of discomfort start to shift and change.
Movement
Creative and gentle movements allow your body to move intuitively with the emotions; gentle and slow yoga practices can help the body process stuck emotions.
Breath
Our bodies hold the patterns of our emotional experiences. You can use your breath to gently release areas of tension, energize your system, or help your body settle.
Therapy
A therapist can provide a grounding and supportive presence, help you regulate your emotions, and help you shift your perspective.
Creative expression
Creativity is widely thought to be a right-brain process, which is also where emotional pain is lodged. Connecting with our right brains may allow for processing emotional experiences and implicit memories that are stored there.
Connection
Remember and/or cultivate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental resources.
Supportive supplements
In addition to consulting your family doctor, or seeking out a therapist, there are a number of supplements that may support us in managing emotional discomfort.
| Supplement | Potential uses |
| St. John’s wort | sleep, anxiety, mild to moderate depression |
| vitamin B complex | memory function related to depression |
| ashwagandha | relieve stress and anxiety, improve sleep |
| L-theanine | decrease anxiety, improve sleep |
| rhodiola | decrease anxiety and depression and improve memory |
| magnesium | decrease anxiety, improve sleep |
Whether we’re having a tough day, or a tough year, there are many things we can do to understand what we’re feeling, to relieve some of the discomfort, and to support our bodies and nervous systems in the process. There are numerous ideas in this article with which you can experiment, to find what fits best for you. And, always―remember to breathe.
Use PAUSE to reset
P = be Present―but don’t Panic
A = Accept―that you’re experiencing a feeling; verbalize and acknowledge it
U = Understand―and be curious about what you’re feeling; why are you feeling it?
S = Sensations―are the language of emotions; use physical sensations to identify what you’re feeling and what you need
E = Express―your emotions in a way that’s healing and helpful
This article originally appeared on alive.com as “Navigating Emotional Pain.”
