Everybody Hurts . . . Sometimes

I don’t think any of us hasn’t been emotionally moved when listening to a ‘sad song’, we’ve all got our favorite ones. As the awesome song from R.E.M goes, “Everybody hurts, sometimes”. We all experience emotional pain and sometimes that actually comes across as physical pain. When we are experiencing heartache, our hearts actually do hurt – well, perhaps not our heart, but something in your body does hurt, and badly.

People often have a very low tolerance for the pain of heartache – they want to make it go away as fast as possible, by any means available. This is totally understandable of course. When you have a headache, you want to take an aspirin; and if your body hurts, you want to take a pain killer or rest, sleep or go to the doctors to sort it out.

Emotional pain is different however, even if we experience it physically. The best way to deal with emotional pain is to just let yourself feel it, without trying to make it better, because it’s the only way to the other side of feeling that pain.

When we have physical pain, it means that something has gone wrong in the body, you might worry about having a pain. You may wonder if you’re OK. You want the pain to stop, wonder if and when it will stop, and try to make a plan for how to stop it.

The same thing happens with emotional pain. You may feel heartbreak or frustration and wonder if you are ever going to be OK. You feel the pain and wonder if the pain will ever go away and how you are going to get through it.

The interesting thing is that we do survive it eventually, every time.

Emotional pain is not like physical pain. It can be totally debilitating and can take away your want to do things such as eat, walk, talk and just basically function, but it doesn’t actually stop you from doing those things. While physical pain is sometimes a signal that something is  wrong, that’s not the case with emotional pain. That is why you don’t need to be afraid of emotional pain. It’s not going to kill you. It’s not going to cripple you. It’s not going to blind you. Although it does REALLY hurt.

Emotional pain will go away if you let yourself feel it. Often in that situaton you feel like you can’t do anything else.  But if you do not face it and feel it, it can linger for a lifetime while you try and take actions to avoid feeling it.

Don’t be afraid to spend time with people, they will understand how you’re feeling. Don’t let yourself feel guilty about how miserable you are feeling either or about the times people do break through the fog and even make you laugh you’re allowed to laugh even when you feel you shouldn’t be laughing. Don’t hold onto the pain and don’t be afraid to let it go.

It’s natural to try and make plans about how you are going to stop feeling the pain, but don’t. When it’s particularly bad, try taking yourself off to a quiet room with some background music, lay down close your eyes and take slow deep breaths in and out. Allow yourself to cry if it happens, let yourself grieve the situation that has caused the emotional hurt, until the peak of the pain eases.

It’s true that no one wants to feel emotional pain, but sadly it is a part of life that none of us can avoid, and it’s better to know that we can get through it than to be afraid of letting it overwhelm us. Remind yourself of all the people that are around you, that love you and support you and want you to be happy. It WILL get better if you allow yourself to feel it and get through to the other side.