We do an amazing amount of damage to ourselves in order to avoid painful emotions. We sacrifice decades of our lives, our ability to achieve our dreams, our core identities so we can avoid a pain that may or may not ever occur. People in painful, stressful, emotion churning situations often start by denying that this is the case all the while reacting wildly to prevent the emotions from gaining any traction in reality, then find a routine that medicates the emotions away, then make excuses for why the situation is not only completely rational, but their staying in it is a requirement for life just like gravity or air, and then they go searching for an answer to why their life isn’t working.
Nobody wants to feel pain, emotional or otherwise. However, it’s part of life and part of the reason we embody. Pain spurs us to grow. It’s the underlying cause of necessity, which is the mother of invention. It’s one of the things that as souls we have only a dim understanding of. To fully feel and appreciate all the emotions, we have to be able to feel and deal with the painful one. And how do we learn how to feel and deal with them? By first feeling them, then dealing with them. Simpler said than done, I know, but in the end it’s true. Client’s ask me “What do I do with these feelings?” And my response invariably is to feel them. Because they are true, they need to be validated, and until we spend the necessary time and conscious attention to them that they require, we are denying ourselves one of the richest parts of ourselves, the true core soul driven voice that rings out through the pain. How can we hear the “I Am!” if we aren’t even willing to listen to the “I hurt?”
In order to see and interact with reality in a healthy, present way, we must also see and interact with ourselves in a healthy and present way. If we can’t be ourselves honestly, if we are being a role or living in a way that someone else expects or dictates for us, then we can’t see others clearly either. We end up reacting to shadows of what might be rather than what is and so hold ourselves back from the life we deserve to have and who we deserve to be. And that’s a shame because the world has been patiently waiting a long while for us to be ready to share who we are with the rest of…well…everyone. When we can feel the real, then we can be real and embrace the world.