you will need them to grow.
What is the purpose of pain?
Have you ever heard a person say....."the cancer was the best thing that ever happen to me"
or "losing that job was a gift" or "going through this financial loss or relationship loss saved my life" or "this addiction was a wake-up call for me"
What are they talking about?
What is the nature of this pain?
Most of the time it's about loss of the awareness of who we are.
All the problems, or crisis that we are experiencing in our lives are not there to hurt us. They are there to help us and to wake us up. They are sent to us by a part of ourselves that loves us so much that it will create extra difficulties for us if we are on the wrong path or have taken a detour in our lives. It is a sign to get us back on track. It's a sign that we need to grow up.
What else can it do?
This is the only way that it can get us to pay attention.....through difficulties and pain. Otherwise we would not pay attention. With pain we are now forced to pay attention. It can be done through physical pain or emotional pain. These difficulties are waking us up and forcing ourselves to get to know ourselves.
You can look at a problem in 2 different ways.
- Something to overcome and to get through
- A possibility of learning. A message from our true self
If we ignore the lesson, we will get another lesson and another. And every time you ignore the lesson the more severe the next lesson will be until you finally stop and pay attention to the pain.
The more stubborn you are, the longer it will take for you to get the lesson and to be able to re-connect with yourself.
Unfortunately many people need many wake-up calls. Most of us are not very quick to learn. It will take a long time to wake some people up.
Sometimes we wake up for a while but then we have a tendency to go back to sleep.
The experience will often allow people to finally accept themselves, getting to know themselves and to love themselves.
Before the experience came along a lot of these people were just stumbling along in life. They were sleep waking through life. Awake but not entirely awake.
Being alive but not actually living.
Any problem that comes along is not to make our lives more miserable. Actually it is to make our lives better and less miserable.
The suffering that is imposes is an attempt to wake us up.
If we wake up, it will be a reason to be grateful.
Anything that comes along..... illness, addiction, death, abuse or loss..... take it as an opportunity to learn. Take it as an gift that is here to wake you up.
So don't ignore your pain. It has a message for you. Slow down. Learn from your pain. It is here to help you.
The pain in here to help you to re-connect to your essence.
So whatever you do, don't shut off your pain. Instead learn to except your pain.
Remain vulnerable.
From my book.....Bounce Don't Break
You must learn to self-sooth. Because anything you reach for out there, won't help you fix your problem and the emptiness in the inside.
Learn to be still. One thing that would be helpful to learn is to sit through your painful feelings without turning so some kind of addiction to numb out.
You can't avoid the pain with any kind of addiction or distraction. It will eventually catch up with you. There will not be enough alcohol, drugs (prescription or non-prescription), food, sugar gambling, shopping, sex, relationships, internet, TV or staying busy all the time to distract you from your pain.
It will never fill the emptiness that you feel on the inside. Addiction will only wreck havoc in your life. You can't keep running. You can't keep putting off the pain for temporary feelings of pleasure. Those feelings won't last.
You can never avoid feeling those uncomfortable feelings. Instead you must learn to deal with those feelings in a better way. Feel.....Deal.....Heal.
In life we all have "good" and "bad" feelings. No one wants the bad ones. But that isn't reality. Life comes with a variety of good and bad things and feelings. For all of us. Instead we must find a better way of dealing with them.
My favorite drug of choice is chocolate. If I want to numb out I go for the sugar. When I feel those uncomfortable feelings coming on, I dive into a bag of Peanut M&M's.
While I was in the relationship with my narcissistic ex, I used to go shopping as an escape. I had to get away from him and out of the house. I used to spend hours roaming the big department stores, buying things that would make me feel better for the moment. But as soon as I returned home and walked into the house that pleasurable feeling was no where to be found.
I did have a lot of pretty clothes, shoes and purses in my closet. But I didn't do me any good because I never got to wear them.
But going shopping was a great escape fro me. A new purse and some chocolate was my best weapon for feeling insignificant, ignored, lonely and unworthy of love.
We do so many things to get away from pain like using substances or acting in a certain way.
Your pain is a messenger. Protecting yourself from pain doesn't work. And when we try to fend ourselves from suffering, then we only suffer more and we don't learn what we can from the experience.
www.karinglannstam.com
No comments:
Post a Comment