How to Deal with Emotional and Mental Pain

Emotional and mental pain obeys the same rules as physical pain. Allowing this pain to flow through you will lessen the amount of time you need to experience it. This pain is usually caused as a result of unconscious expectations on how you think or feel life should be.

This type of pain is usually related to another person or a situation. In either case you tell yourself, "I did not receive what I thought I should have received from this person or this situation." The key word is: should.

What has happened is a deeper and less mature part of you has adopted a very specific way of looking at life. On this deep level we believe and expect life to be a certain way. The problem is life has a habit of disobeying our beliefs. We give ourselves to the person or situation hoping and expecting it to fit into our scheme or point of view of life and bam! We get hit! Now, as adults it is up to us to look at our pain and learn from it. Otherwise it is quite probable that we will continue to look at our world through this illusion and our hopes will continue to be dashed.

It is important to realize that pain is not the problem. It is only a reaction. It is the cause of the pain that needs our attention. Pain is life's way of trying to wake you up. Any attempt to lessen your experience of the pain will only serve to distract you from your responsibility of uncovering and changing an illusionary belief. Drugs will not address the cause. Only by experiencing the pain will you and your body discover what caused the pain in the first place. Emotional and mental pain is an opportunity to get closer to the truth of your reality and transcend the illusions you create.

Allow your pain. Work on relaxing your defenses against it. By resisting it you are saying to your pain, "You should not be here or this should not be happening to me". This thought does nothing to address the reality of your pain in the moment where it lives. By accepting the reality of your situation even when you don't understand it gives the pain an avenue to flow.

The best advice is to keep it simple. Forget about analyzing it for now. Answers will come. The first step is to allow your pain and stop blaming yourself or anybody else for its existence.

Let me try to make it easier… Imagine you are in a room with a child. The child is huddled in the corner wracked in pain. What do you do? Do you talk to the child and try to help him/her understand the situation with your words? Do you yell at the child that he/she should have known better? Or do you pick that child up and hold them as lovingly as possible, telling them that it will be alright that you are here to help them.

This child is your pain. It is not the words that you say that creates healing but the action of your love and compassion.

Accept the reality of your pain. Take responsibility for its existence for the truth is no one caused you this pain. No one reached inside of you and pushed a button that is marked pain. What happened was YOU reached inside of you and pushed your button based upon your expectation of how the world SHOULD have treated you. The world did not fulfill its bargain. Now what?

The core of your pain is caused by a belief about yourself or the world. Once you uncover the existence of this belief you now have the opportunity to change it. Changing one's perspective is one of the most satisfying and fulfilling experiences for it provides a tremendous amount of freedom and personal power.

Once you have faced your pain (requires courage) and have transcended it (requires patience and compassion) what you achieve is personal growth and maturity.

Consider that pain is really an access. It is a teacher. Its lesson are the hardest ones but also the most valuable.

As always, don't take my word for it. Next time you are in pain breathe with it. Allow it. Focus on the experience with the same intensity you focus on working out. Be patient with this experience since you have spent years avoiding your pain facing it will not necessarily dissolve it as quickly as you might like. Learning relaxation techniques to help calm your body during your pain will help tremendously.

Click here to learn how I can help you learn these techniques.