How I used to process pain
Someone asked me today if I spent a lot of time ruminating on things that happened.
And yes, when something happened that hurt me, I would ruminate on that for a while, sometimes a long time, but taking the long view, my personal strategy was more of: push it away and don’t think about stuff.
Since I wasn’t thinking about it, I thought I was over it, but I wasn’t.
A lot of the old pain I just pushed away and didn’t think about. Didn’t go there. So I didn’t realize how much it was still affecting me.
I thought I’d gotten over it because it had been a long time, and since I wasn’t thinking about it, I thought I was over it, but I wasn’t.
I didn’t truly heal from that old pain until I actually faced it and worked through it, in a loving and gentle way. Which really hurt and really sucked, but it turned out it wasn’t as hard or as awful as I thought it would be.
There’s still plenty to work through; I find more every so often, but I’ve worked through enough that it’s radically changed the course of my life and enabled new possibilities that I never ever would have considered.
(Like coaching. Now I talk to people for a living. Daily. Intentionally. And like it! This still kind of blows my mind. In a good way.)
One Response
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