The Emotional Pain Experiment

Emotional pain is so completely misunderstood, it's astounding. As I've considered the topic over the last few days, I've changed my understanding of it a few times, and I can't promise that I won't change my mind again. Is pain intrinsic to the so-called negative emotions? Is pain simply a result of resistance to the emotion? Can happiness be painful or is painful happiness just a compound of multiple emotions? Every time I answer one question, I seem to come up with another.

I've long been fond of the idea that the pain and suffering associated with certain emotions is due to our resistance or judgement of those emotions. It's not just that you're sad, but that you're trying to tell yourself not to be sad. It's not just that you're angry but that you believe anger isn't a good thing. It's a helpful point of view in that it can lead you to at least attempt to accept all your emotions. It dispels the notion that the emotions are your enemy. Now, it does turn resistance into an enemy, but that's a new, deeper realization for me. In any case, I think it can be a useful paradigm to consider.

But thanks to Matt Kahn (TrueDivineNature.com), I started to wonder if the pain of an emotion could have nothing to do with my beliefs about the emotion. I wanted to know if I could have a painful emotion that I wasn't resisting, so I started an experiment. I prayed for guidance and it wasn't long before I had my answer. For some not-so-unknown reason, that same night I decided to watch the news. I usually don't bother with the news any more, but that night was different. For the sake of other sensitive souls out there, I won't go into the details of the story I saw, but it was terrible and I was quickly triggered into a deep state of grief. Thankfully, I was alone so I didn't feel the need to hide my tears, and for the sake of this experiment, I dove right into the feelings. As far as I could sense, I had no judgement or resistance to these feelings, and yet the pain I experienced was intense. Those who advocate for the "pain is resistance" paradigm might explain this by saying that my resistance was unconscious to me. I admit that it's a possibility but it's just not what I really felt to be happening.

Thankfully, whether the pain came from something I created or not, the best way to react to the pain is the same. Please don't be shocked if I say that the answer is love (this is a spiritual blog after all)! You see, just as with physical pain, the stronger the emotional pain, the more attention it needs. In the physical world, attention may mean some physical solution such as a band-aid or even surgery; in the emotional world, the best (and only) cure is love. And while, being held by someone else while you're in your pain can definitely be helpful, the love that's really needed is yours. The length of time the pain lasts says nothing about you or your ability to give love, it just means that you need to keep bringing on the love. Sit with the pain and let it know that you are there - you accept it completely and you give it all the love it can take. That's what I did with my pain. Eventually, it passed and I lived to tell the tale.

Okay, I admit that it isn't necessarily easy to jump into one's deepest, darkest pain and shower it with love. But you don't have to start with the deepest and darkest. Start with the "smaller" pain and give the love a try. Do you feel better afterwards? When you think about the cause of the emotion, do you still feel the pain? The goal of this isn't to get rid of your emotions - we're not trying to become spiritual robots. But I think the pain is a charge on the emotion that we don't have to live with forever.

I'd love to know if this helps you. Feel the love and leave me a comment!

Image: Witthaya Phonsawat / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

© Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers, 2014. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Amelie Rossignol and Heart Answers with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.