5 Easy Ways to Deal with Emotional Pain

Every person goes through emotional pain at some point in life. Emotional pain refers to the impact of grief, sadness, or any incident that leads to heartbreak. Usually, we have enough power to control our emotions but when we are grief-struck these emotions tend to have control over our mind causing pain.

Emotional pain can be overwhelming and it can affect your mind and body as well. Sometimes people are not comfortable sharing their emotional pain with others. So, they try to suppress it in different ways. In this article, we will be sharing the ways people suppress their emotions, how it affects their bodies and you will also read about the ways to deal with emotional pain.

Meaning of emotional pain

Emotional pain is the experience of dealing with overwhelming emotions such as sorrow or sadness. Experiencing these emotions puts you in a situation where you have to go through emotional pain. The emotional pain impacts us deeply that we feel difficult to perform daily functions as it makes our heart heavy.

Emotional pain has a connection with our mind, our thoughts often trigger the pain inside us and our body starts reacting to it. For instance, stress and anxiety make us go through emotional pain and we feel tough to perform the regular tasks and feel like sitting at the same place or laying in bed for the whole day. Thus, we can say that emotional pain has a very negative impact on us.

Why do people try to suppress emotional pain?

Emotional pain is not something that people can see easily in you. It is reflected in your behavior or your body language and someone who knows you well can recognize when you are acting differently.

But not everybody is comfortable in sharing what they are going through. The reason could be anything; maybe you don’t trust others that much to share your things or you don’t want people to know your weak side. We often feel that if we express our emotional pain, people will take us as emotionally weak, and of course, nobody wants that.

The suppressing of emotion is rooted in one same thing; fear. Reason can be varied but the base is fear that stops us to share our pain with others. The fear of people overpowering you are considering you weak is the most common thing. Because taking advantage is not that difficult and people do not resist while taking advantage of someone weak.

In relationships, the one who is weak suffers the most. Thus, people think it is better to conceal their feelings and act strongly.

The other very common reason is prevalent among the male section of the society. Men like to hide their emotions as they think that displaying too much emotional pain would let people make fun of them. People do not accept when men are weeping or whining for some reason.

They are considered “girly” and some might have experienced people laughing at them for crying. Thus, they consider it better to hide their pain and act normal no matter how broken they are from inside.

On the other hand, women tend to hide their emotional side as they are afraid that their partner would condemn them to be “too sensitive”. In relationships, people who are not able to handle their emotional partners, push them away. So, this fear stops people from sharing their pain.

Sometimes we are just afraid that if we discuss our emotional concerns or the things hurting us would turn the people off and they will just push themselves away.

In childhood, we are sometimes too banished to share the emotional pain that we fall into the habit of not sharing and keeping our issues to ourselves as we don’t want to bother others.

Is shutting off your emotions helpful? No, not at all. If you think that suppressing your pain would make it go away, then you are completely wrong. Suppressing would not make it any less, it would only make you burst out one day that you won’t be able to handle it at that time.

So, what to do instead? How to handle the suffering and the pain that we are feeling? Let’s know some of the ways that would help you deal with your emotional pain.

Ways to deal with emotional pain

Don’t shut them off

The first thing any human would think of while going through emotional pain is to shut their emotions off so that they don’t feel anything. But it is the worst step you can take. You can avoid your emotions temporarily but they will start bottling up and would burst one day. It can also damage your relationships if you lash out at your partner because nobody would understand the appropriate reason for your outburst.

Avoiding your emotions would not do any good to you. You have to sit with it and deal with your emotions gradually. Meditation and yoga are the right ways to spend time with yourselves and realize your pain while focusing on letting it go.

Indulge in physical activity

Distracting yourself is not what I recommend but there are some healthy distractions as well that can make you feel good. The healthiest distraction is to move your body by choosing the way you like to move it. For instance, do some workout, go for walks, or do any light exercise that makes you feel good. It is necessary to get yourself endorphins and dopamine to make you feel better.

It will make it somewhat easier for you to manage your pain and deal with overwhelming emotions. You will get out of the grief gradually and feel better. And the best advice is to continue the exercise so that you have something constant to feel good and make your body healthy.

Stop repeating the same thing

Sometimes, all we need is to talk with someone who understands us. In such a situation, taking NLP therapy is the best option for people who feel unable to deal with their emotional pain. But those who don’t go for the therapy, share everything with their friends or the people who are very close to them.

But when we are stuck in grief, we don’t realize that we are repeating the same story over and over again. It keeps hurting us as we go on repeating the same thing in our minds. Not only this, but it also pushes people away from us as they feel forcefully dragged in our sufferings and get bored of hearing the same thing. So, we should take care of what we are sharing and let the whole thing out at once. Then, try not to repeat it ever again to anybody not even to yourself.

Break down into tears

There is nothing wrong with crying and letting your emotions out. Sometimes, a good hard cry is all we need to let go of the pain holding inside us. We are so afraid of people judging us that we hold everything inside but it does not help.

Crying helps release the toxins from our body and we automatically start feeling good after crying because the toxins are gone.

So, it is also a healthy exercise to give yourself time and space to let it all out and you will feel slightly good after that.

Don’t rush into things

Feeling better and letting the emotional pain go is not an easy thing. It takes time and a lot of self-care to heal from the things that hurt you from inside or break you emotionally. Just like physical wounds, internal wounds also need some time to heal.

If you force yourself to feel better, you would be doing injustice to yourself. Take your time and practice the things that make you feel better. Surround yourself with people who care for you and give your body enough time. You can practice yoga, exercise, and meditate in your “me time”.

At last, you need to know that healing from emotional pain is something that is easier said than done. But it is not something impossible that you can’t handle. You just need to take some steps to self-care and the determination to heal from the pain eating you up from inside.