Healthy Pain versus Unhealthy Pain
You might be asking yourself how could pain possibly be healthy?
As humans, we have this huge spectrum of emotions. Some of them are painful - sadness, disappointment, fear, and sorrow to name a few. Painful emotions are a part of life. They are necessary to help us heal and grow and they support our ability to empathize with others. Allowing our painful, negative emotions makes the joyful emotions even sweeter.
But what makes the feeling of pain healthy or unhealthy? Healthy pain feels cleansing and necessary while unhealthy pain, which we cause to ourselves, is unnecessary and leaves us spiraling or stuck. It sticks around like dirty mud.
When we have pain, we want to take a look at it and make a conscious decision to hang onto it or process it and let it go.
There are times when you want to feel pain. I call this healthy (or clean) pain.
It’s the gut-wrenching sadness of losing a loved one.
It’s the disappointment of a plan not working out.
It’s the sorrow from causing physical pain to someone by accident.
It’s the hurt after being left.
It’s the fear when you or a family member is diagnosed with a terminal illness.
These are not times when you want to feel joyful or delighted. You want to feel the pain and stay there for a while. Looking at it. Leaning into it. Being absorbed by it. Allowing this kind of discomfort can be cleansing (like a good cry). Depending on how traumatic the event, you may have to let it wash over you again and again, but each time it will get smaller and eventually you will heal.
Unhealthy (or dirty) pain is created by your mind. It is not necessary. It does not help. It stops your mind from finding solutions and instead points it in the direction of finding evidence that something is wrong with you, with someone else, with your life or with the world. It is created by thoughts such as:
I’m worried or concerned about what might happen in the future.
I should have done that thing differently.
I am never going to figure this out.
That should NOT have happened to me.
I don’t have enough time to get everything done
We all create some unhealthy pain for ourselves. The pain is created by thoughts that are churned over and over again, keeping us out of the present and unable to see other possibilities. This unhealthy pain can be minimized by noticing and allowing it. Become aware of the pain, label it as a painful feeling such as overwhelm, worry, shame, anger, confusion etc.. Then look at what thoughts you are allowing to create the pain. Question those thoughts. Are they really true? Are they positively true all the time? Or are they actually not true at all. Could the opposite even be true? Is it possible you could be wrong?
The goal is not to try and quickly replace negative thoughts with positive thoughts. This NEVER works. If it is done too quickly, the brain doesn’t believe it. The goal is to be on to yourself. Be aware of the pain and look at what is causing it. From that place, you get to choose…Is it healthy pain that you want to stay in for a while or is it unhealthy pain you are self-creating? You always get to choose if you want to stay there or not.
It’s hard to see it when you are in it. I’m here to help you see it and relieve the pain.