Post by Della Wren on Feb 25, 2023 18:01:54 GMT -6
Identifying with pain is something the ego likes to do. It identifies with pain as a protection mechanism. It's a way for the ego to help make sure you survive the pain you're experiencing. It's a coping mechanism of sorts and it serves a valid purpose. But that purpose doesn't come without some pitfalls that we're going to start talking about.
The truly big issue with identifying with pain is that it keeps you in it. It makes you hang onto it and wear it like a costume. It forces you to create coping mechanisms to manage the pain because you don't have another strategy. The built in strategy of pain identification is the only option and so that's what happens.
As we become more aware of ourselves and begin to understand why we function the way we do and what behaviors we have that came from pain, we can begin to make new choices about what to do with future pain.
Obviously we can't avoid pain. Self-awareness and self-mastery do not allow you to avoid pain, they just give you ways of managing it that aren't so self-destructive. So what are those ways of managing it?
First and foremost is recognizing that emotion is meant to be temporary. When you identify with your feelings it gives you an open-ended relationship with them. It means they can hang around for as long as they want to without ever worrying about overstaying their welcome. Have you ever had a party where this one person just doesn't want to go home even after everybody else is gone? It's that except with your feelings. They become an uninvited guest and that's not how they are meant to be.
When something happens and it hurts or causes you pain, the emotion is inevitably going to come up and that's fine. That is exactly how it is meant to be. It's what you do from here that matters. The important part is that you realize that your emotions are not an uninvited guest. They are welcome to be there but that it's not an open-ended invitation. It has a starting point and an ending point that you need to be conscious of.
It may be that you're upset for a couple of hours and that's fine. During those couple of hours you allow the emotions, you cry your eyes out, you beat up your pillow, you vent at your best-friend, and then it stops. At this stage once it's out of your system, it's done. There is no more work to do. This is the part where you let it go.
The emotion just is. It's part of the experience. Just like the experience started and stopped, so do your emotions. When you finish venting, you let it go. You don't have to hold onto it. You don't identify with it. You don't make up stories about it. It just comes and goes.
Once the emotion is gone your work is in your head to control your thinking so that you're not making up stories and blaming other people for how you felt. Your job is a mental one not an emotional one.
You see we don't heal emotions because anybody can look at sad picture and cry. Because we're not going for desensitization, the idea is to get okay with the memory of the event upsetting you. Just get okay with it, recognize that that's what happens and it's normal, and don't do anything about it. There is nothing to fix or heal. Crying at a sad picture makes you human not broken.
So when you are actually sitting down to heal the deeper wounds, you don't have to get sidetracked by the memories that are triggering emotions. You can keep those contained while you deal with the bigger things. It doesn't have to be a distraction anymore.
Part of the reason people struggle with the deeper healing is because they do get distracted by the emotions and they get overwhelmed by them. It stops them from healing.
What if you could recognize what those emotions are, keep them contained, and then do the bigger work anyway?
Learning how to keep your head screwed on straight, even when the emotions show up, is part of self-mastery. That's part of healing. We have to be able to overcome the emotions to heal. If we never make the effort to understand that most of our emotion is just a normal response to painful memories, then we never get by those old experiences. We never get by the painful memories. We're always stuck in them.
It doesn't have to be like that. Next time it comes up, recognize what the emotions are. Contain them by not digging in them. Just let them come and go and then continue on with what you were doing. You will find that if you stay out of it, they come and go much quicker and you can actually get to the deeper wounds you're trying to heal.
There is a way forward here and my goal for this space is to show you how to do that.
Love to all.
Della
The truly big issue with identifying with pain is that it keeps you in it. It makes you hang onto it and wear it like a costume. It forces you to create coping mechanisms to manage the pain because you don't have another strategy. The built in strategy of pain identification is the only option and so that's what happens.
As we become more aware of ourselves and begin to understand why we function the way we do and what behaviors we have that came from pain, we can begin to make new choices about what to do with future pain.
Obviously we can't avoid pain. Self-awareness and self-mastery do not allow you to avoid pain, they just give you ways of managing it that aren't so self-destructive. So what are those ways of managing it?
First and foremost is recognizing that emotion is meant to be temporary. When you identify with your feelings it gives you an open-ended relationship with them. It means they can hang around for as long as they want to without ever worrying about overstaying their welcome. Have you ever had a party where this one person just doesn't want to go home even after everybody else is gone? It's that except with your feelings. They become an uninvited guest and that's not how they are meant to be.
When something happens and it hurts or causes you pain, the emotion is inevitably going to come up and that's fine. That is exactly how it is meant to be. It's what you do from here that matters. The important part is that you realize that your emotions are not an uninvited guest. They are welcome to be there but that it's not an open-ended invitation. It has a starting point and an ending point that you need to be conscious of.
It may be that you're upset for a couple of hours and that's fine. During those couple of hours you allow the emotions, you cry your eyes out, you beat up your pillow, you vent at your best-friend, and then it stops. At this stage once it's out of your system, it's done. There is no more work to do. This is the part where you let it go.
The emotion just is. It's part of the experience. Just like the experience started and stopped, so do your emotions. When you finish venting, you let it go. You don't have to hold onto it. You don't identify with it. You don't make up stories about it. It just comes and goes.
Once the emotion is gone your work is in your head to control your thinking so that you're not making up stories and blaming other people for how you felt. Your job is a mental one not an emotional one.
You see we don't heal emotions because anybody can look at sad picture and cry. Because we're not going for desensitization, the idea is to get okay with the memory of the event upsetting you. Just get okay with it, recognize that that's what happens and it's normal, and don't do anything about it. There is nothing to fix or heal. Crying at a sad picture makes you human not broken.
So when you are actually sitting down to heal the deeper wounds, you don't have to get sidetracked by the memories that are triggering emotions. You can keep those contained while you deal with the bigger things. It doesn't have to be a distraction anymore.
Part of the reason people struggle with the deeper healing is because they do get distracted by the emotions and they get overwhelmed by them. It stops them from healing.
What if you could recognize what those emotions are, keep them contained, and then do the bigger work anyway?
Learning how to keep your head screwed on straight, even when the emotions show up, is part of self-mastery. That's part of healing. We have to be able to overcome the emotions to heal. If we never make the effort to understand that most of our emotion is just a normal response to painful memories, then we never get by those old experiences. We never get by the painful memories. We're always stuck in them.
It doesn't have to be like that. Next time it comes up, recognize what the emotions are. Contain them by not digging in them. Just let them come and go and then continue on with what you were doing. You will find that if you stay out of it, they come and go much quicker and you can actually get to the deeper wounds you're trying to heal.
There is a way forward here and my goal for this space is to show you how to do that.
Love to all.
Della