Why Is It Important To Process Pain And Are You Aware Of Yours?

You may have started becoming aware of the pain you carry. I love that for you! Honestly, learning how to process pain has been the most taxing, yet rewarding thing I’ve ever done. But it has been so worth it!

If you’ve never been on this journey, you may wonder “why does it matter if I process my pain? Do I have big pain, and isn’t easier to just avoid it?”. You may be reading this and thinking “I never even thought about trying to process my pain.” And if that’s you, you are not alone. Most people go their whole lives just coping and getting through the tough parts of life. We “pull ourselves up by our bootstraps” and tell ourselves it’s not important or doesn’t matter that much. We simply “deal with it.” But is avoiding the big emotions of shock, grief, or anger really dealing with it?

Avoiding Your Pain Isn’t Helping You

The problem with avoiding our pain is that it doesn’t just go away with time. In fact, it grows. Pain gets stuck in our bodies when we don’t address it effectively. It compounds, but if we have built a cycle of “brushing it off” or stuffing it down and acting like it doesn’t affect us, we actually start to believe it and we find ways to cope with the pain instead. Unfortunately, when we cope we are usually latching onto addictive behaviors instead to try and escape the pain.

Pain manifests itself in many different ways. You might not cry, but maybe you have a really hard time staying calm and get angry at others easily. You might be a very mellow person, but you have a hard time trusting people. Maybe you have an amazing workout routine and you eat super healthy, but you are super strict with yourself and judge yourself critically if you miss something.

Maybe you are super easygoing and loving, but you isolate yourself because you are afraid of what people think about you. In your own life, you can start to see the cycles that keep you stuck. If you want to get unstuck, you have to be able to address the root of your pain. You need to learn how to rewire your internal systems. Pain will affect every area of your life when it goes unaddressed. It will affect your relationships, your view of yourself, your view of God, your ability to resolve conflict, and have deep intimate relationships. It affects everything. Pain holds you back from the life that you are dreaming of having.

How Do You Process Pain?

You might be asking, “Okay, so how do I address my pain?” or “how do I know if I even have unprocessed pain?”. These are great questions to be asking! Becoming aware that you even have pain is the first step to healing. If you are truly wanting to go on this process of healing, you are gonna need to commit to learning. Learning about yourself, learning about pain, and learning your story. If you’re not willing to learn, you’ll start the process and get stuck.

It’s also important to have safe people around you that can be there for you in your big emotions. People who won’t try to fix you or tell you you can’t cry or place a positive spin on your big pain. You need people who will be there to listen and validate your pain. If you don’t have people like that, pay for someone who can give you that.

Notice The Emotion

There are multiple ways to process pain, but when you are just starting out, it’s good to start simple. The first thing you can do is start to notice your emotions. This looks like identifying them as they show up in your body. If this is hard for you, you can begin by looking at a feelings list. I have one you can start using immediately in my 5-Step Guide On How To Reconnect To Yourself When You Feel Overwhelmed.

This guide will also give you some basic step-by-step tools for addressing and unpacking emotions. Get familiar with this list, this will give you words to put to the feelings you experience in your body. You don’t have to move on to the next step right away. You can just get familiar with the list a few different times. Read through the different emotions and try to identify ones that you know you feel often.

Identify the pattern

Next, you can start to look for patterns of that emotion. For example, if you know you feel angry often, try to backtrack to a previous time you felt angry. Identify what happened before you felt the anger. Anger is a feeling, not an identity. There is always a trigger or an event that takes place before big emotions come up.

When we can identify the trigger, we can learn to unpack the trigger and heal the pain that’s behind it. When you learn how to heal the pain behind a cycle, you are able to more easily change your responses. This will lead to fewer anger outbursts and a better sense of security. When the core need you have can get met, the trigger and big response, like anger will lessen.

If you can get to that point, that’s huge! It may take some time for you to unpack your big pain, and that’s okay. It’s important to have safe people around you to help you in this process. But it is such a good process to be on.

Where Did It Come From?

Once you’ve identified the trigger, you can ask yourself “where did this trigger come from?”. Another good question is “how old do I feel in this big emotion?”. When you can pinpoint the age you felt or a memory, that is your key to unlocking healing. If you don’t get answers for this, you can talk to your body and remind it that it is safe. Put your hand on your heart and say “I want you to feel safe with me to share, is there anything you would like to tell me?”.

The first thing you hear is most likely your younger self talking. Listen to what she’s saying. This is important because this is how you reintegrate your younger self into your adult self. Usually, with big pain, there is a split in the brain that takes place when pain or trauma happens. That split separates you from the present. So learning to reintegrate will act like a bridge for that split or gap to close. This also builds trust with yourself, which is needed if you’re wanting to heal. You want to be a safe person for you.

Practice Bringing In Compassion

If you do hear something, be careful not to judge what you hear. Instead, you can validate yourself by saying “thank you for trusting me and letting me in.” If a memory or an age comes up, you can go back and talk with that part of you. Get curious. Ask them what is happening around them that made them feel angry, scared, small, sad, etc. Ask them what they need from you.

This could be that they just need to feel seen and heard. They could need a hug from you or words of truth. Maybe they need to know that what happened wasn’t their fault and was out of their control. The goal here is that your current, adult self would be a safe and secure adult for your younger self. Your adult self helps your younger self regulate their nervous system. This brings that fight or flight level back down for them where it originally was stuck.

When big pain happened in the past, our stress levels spiked. If we didn’t receive care and loving support in the trauma, we get stuck at the height of our pain. Then every time a similar event takes place, our body reacts the same way we did in the past. Our bodies crave to be healed. So that pain will continue to show up until it gets seen and met with compassion and love. You can start practicing self-love talk today, read through my blog post on this here.

Was This Helpful For You?

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Also, If you’re looking for resources, I have a basic step-by-step guide here on how to unpack triggers and connect with your heart.

If you are wanting to learn how to process pain and want to start a healing process for yourself, I am offering one-on-one coaching sessions. These sessions will help in learning how to process pain in a healthy way that actually brings lasting change and self-confidence.

I’m also creating a course that goes into the depths of all this as well. The course will take you step-by-step in how to walk through a healing journey. You will get live group coaching calls, a community of support, and one-on-one coaching with me. Also, subscribe to my email list to get updates for when the course is launched! If you have questions about anything, please reach out! I would love to chat with you via email.

You can email me at co*****@dy************.com with any questions you might have.