How to appreciate emotional pain
Photo by Hybrid
Who would we be without pain?
I don’t mean physical pain, I mean emotional pain.
Sadness. Sorrow. Grief. Stress. Anger. Anxiety. Shame. Worry. Rage. Loneliness. Isolation. You know the type.
What if none of these emotions existed?
What if we never had to experience them in our human lives— not once?
Would it be amazing?
Or would it be something else entirely?
I’m going to make a case for why emotional pain is one of our greatest assets as human beings, and why we should start to appreciate the nuance of these emotions far more often.
Now, you agreed to come be a human being on planet earth, which means you agreed to have the full human experience.
50% of it’s amazing. 50% of it’s horrible.
50% good. 50% bad.
This perfect contrast is what makes our life feel, alive.
Our emotions exist on a very wide spectrum. Now imagine stripping that spectrum of HALF of its contents. Right down the middle. Keeping only the good half.
Control Alt Delete.
Imagine ONLY ever knowing joy, peace, laughter, gratitude, inspiration, awe, love.
You might be saying, YES PLEASE.
But listen. Without their counterparts, without their opposites, we would never know the difference between sad and happy. We would never know what makes happy so great.
If we were just happy all the time, it would be some monotonous nightmare. We’d never experience contrast. We’d never fully understand the utility of these painful emotions. We’d never have an outlet to express giant chunks of our lives.
Say you’ve chosen to only keep the good half, and good riddance to the rest. Then the next day your little brother dies in a car accident. All you feel is happy, joy, and laughter…
Then the next week you find out your neighbor’s toddler was just diagnosed with a terminal illness, and all you can feel is gratitude and awe…
The events of our human lives do not make sense without these painful emotions available to us.
It doesn’t work without them.
They are a GIFT.
They are ESSENTIAL.
We WANT to feel sad when something sad happens.
We WANT to feel angry when something outrageous happens.
We WANT to feel grief when something catastrophic happens.
And when we really allow ourselves to feel it all fully, we can truly appreciate when we are in a happier place.
The happy feels better with the sad. The laughter feels better with the stress. The love feels better with the sorrow.
Are you having a hard time appreciating emotional pain?
Are you finding it difficult to believe that sadness, worry, and rage all provide useful purposes in our lives?
If so, that means you haven’t been really feeling your emotions at all, you’ve been resisting them. You haven’t been allowing them, you’ve been avoiding them.
Resisting and avoiding just adds negative emotion ON TOP of your already existing negative emotion.
That is the definition of suffering.
Pain is inevitable. Suffering is optional.
Don’t suffer.
The best part about being a human is experiencing the FULLNESS of life, the good AND the bad. If you aren’t there yet, get on a free consult with me and I’ll teach you how.
Your friendly coach,
Ellicia
