Tag Archives: emotional pain

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Coping with Emotional Pain

How to Cope With Emotional Pain

A Wikihow Article

 

Life, while mostly enjoyable, does have its ups and downs. The sun shines on the evil and the good. Pain is an inevitable part of life. Never think that you’ve been singled out for pain. We all seem to understand that physical pain takes time to subside, and as the wound or illness that caused the pain heals, the pain will ease. What we have more trouble with is realizing that emotional pain also takes time to heal.

Steps

  1. Don’t try to cure what is normal. Temporary emotional pain is caused by any number of events: death of a loved one, a breakup, thoughtlessness or cruelty on the part of others. When you’re hurting because of any of the above, accept that it’s normal to feel hurt or angry for a short time. Let’s face it: if a loved one dies, only a very cold person would be unaffected by it. If you love someone and that person dumps you, it’s natural to feel hurt. These things are normal. Trying to cure what is normal is pointless. Expect to feel pain for a while – it’s normal.
  2. There’s a statement that goes something like, ‘If you get (enter mad, hurt, insulted, offended, etc., here) it’s your fault.’ That’s just not true. That suggests that people don’t love, or bond, or trust, or invest emotions. If you have emotional pain, there’s a reason for it.
  3. Don’t pretend you don’t feel it. The pain is real. You have to address it, or you will never get beyond it. Don’t try to rush through this season of pain. Even though all you can really think about is ending the pain, the truth is that just allowing yourself the feelings is important. Masking your pain when you’re trying to work or just get through each day may be necessary to a point, but make sure to allow yourself some “me-time” – some time to allow yourself to really feel all of the feelings you are having, rather than just suppressing and denying them.
  4. Identify all of your feelings. Are you just heartbroken? Or are you angry, too? Maybe just the tiniest bit relieved – which is also making you feel guilty? Do you feel betrayed? Insecure? Afraid? Giving some thought to exactly how you are feeling can be very helpful in processing all of your emotions in the wake of a traumatic or life-changing event.

 

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.Depresion Steps

More Steps:

  1. Endure it. Things that cannot be cured must be endured. It sounds obvious, but sometimes, thinking of emotional pain as if it were physical pain can be very helpful. Think of your broken heart just as if it were your arm that is broken instead. A broken arm takes time to heal, and it hurts like crazy just after it’s broken, even after it’s been set and casted. A few days later, it doesn’t hurt so much. But weeks or even months later, if you bump or jar it, that pain can come roaring back to life with a vengeance. You baby it a little, take care not to aggravate it, and eventually, it’s stronger where it was broken than it was before. You have no choice – you can’t cut off the arm. That won’t make it hurt any less. You just have to endure it while it heals.
  2. Talk to someone. There are times when it seems that the hurt you feel inside is just too deep to talk about. You feel like no one could understand. Or maybe you worry because your loved ones didn’t share your feelings about whatever it is that’s hurting you. Maybe they didn’t care for your boyfriend, whom you just broke up with, or they didn’t know your friend, who passed away. You may be right – they may not totally understand. But right now, it isn’t being understood that you need. It’s compassion. Your family and friends love you. They see you hurting and want to help. Sometimes, if you will just try to talk out your feelings, say something about what hurts, it can help start your healing. Letting someone put his or her arm around you and hearing them say, “It’s going to be okay” may not seem that helpful, but it really is, because it helps you feel you’re not totally alone. Realizing that someone wants to be there for you will help.
  3. Don’t let anyone tell you that your feelings aren’t real. They are real, significant, and important. And, they’re your feelings. Feeling alone doesn’t mean there is no one around. Feeling sad doesn’t mean you’ll never be happy. Feel your feelings, think your thoughts, but realize they’re just feelings and thoughts.
  4. Get your mind off yourself and how bad you feel. You have the right to feel sorry for yourself – for 10 minutes. Then move on. No exceptions. Go out with friends. Tell yourself that you will not talk about your pain for more than a few minutes – you will not bring down the activity by wallowing in it. Don’t let your friends walk on egg shells around you just because you’ve been traumatized. You still need to live. Distract yourself by just forgetting it for a little while. If you’re grieving a death, or heartbroken over a breakup, especially, giving yourself a little time to just be without obsessing on the event that hurts will help you to heal and move past it. That’s not to say that you just forget about it and move on – no. It’s only to say that even grief needs to take a breather. Give your weary heart a little respite, and let it mend with the love and lightness of heart that comes from being with friends, or doing something that brings you pleasure. There will be time to cry again, but not just now.
  5. Allow time to heal. This is part of just enduring. You will need to muster up the patience to allow healing to commence. There isn’t any substitute for just … waiting. Time requires one thing: that you allow it to pass. Getting past emotional pain requires a grieving process, which takes time.
  6. Don’t let your pain define you. Remember you are greater than this hard time, you have a past and a future. You have awareness and creativity. This was a single episode which will soon pass.
  7. Write a letter. Writing down your feelings can help you to sort them out. It can help more if you use positive “I messages” instead of negative ones. If you don’t write, talk about your feelings with someone close or a therapist. Don’t justify them, just talk about them, get them out, and listen to what you say.
  8. Stay away from statements that blame you or others. Take responsibility for your actions, and your part of whatever went wrong, but do not indulge in blaming. The question of “And whose fault is/was that?” does not apply.
  9. Develop a learning orientation. Life hands you difficulties so you can learn from them. People who have really easy lives fall apart when bad things happen because they have never learned how to cope or let things roll off their backs. Everything, even very painful times, can be used to learn better coping skills and to develop wisdom and perspective about life that will help you deal with many difficulties in the future. Whatever doesn’t destroy you can serve to make you stronger.
  10. Make a ‘Thankfulness List’. Write down what you are thankful for, even basic things like having clothes and a warm place to sleep, then moving to people who care for you, and good things in your life. Being thankful is naturally healing and will balance out any trauma over time.
  11. If the pain is lasting more than a week or so, or you’ve lost hope or you’re thinking of suicide, you’re either suppressing your pain or you have deeper unresolved issues that you need to complete. The strategies above are healthy ways to deel with emotional pain. Often as kids, we didn’t use these strategies and instead incorporate the pain into our character, our subconscious. Said another way, when we’re young, it’s easy to let emotional pain define you. Often this needs to be undone, teased apart and handled in a healthy manner for us to be free. If a current incident upsets you too much or for too long, or your whole life is colored by a negative outlook, consider getting some help to unearth, re-examine and complete a prior incident.

 

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Tips

  • It’s normal to feel hurt or pain for some time after an event. How much time is up to you. Don’t let others rush or pressure you into “getting over it” on some timetable. But if you feel hopeless, or helpless, and this feeling doesn’t improve over time, but instead seems to linger, seek professional help. Emotional injury can lead to depression, which can be treated – don’t let yourself continue a downhill slide indefinitely. You should reach a peak or plateau, and things should start to turn around. You shouldn’t just feel like you’re continuing down, down, down.
  • Watch out for addiction to drama. You can get a lot of attention when things get bad – but it’s not healthy to keep working your friends for attention to your dramas. It can be hard to give up the experience of having people sympathize as you tell how bad it is, but drama can become a way of life that sucks all the good feelings out of your relationships. If you find yourself telling the same story over and over again, or similar stories where you are the victim and someone else is the villain, it’s time to get a handle on yourself!

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Article provided by a wiki how-to manual:  www.wikihow.com 

Solution Focused Strategies

Regain Emotional Health – Make up after the break up

Breaking up with someone who you have deep feelings for can be one of the most devastating emotional events that you will ever experience. It can unravel your emotional health fast! You will experience emotional pain, bitterness, anger, sadness and more! You may even be angry at yourself for feeling the way you do. Sounds familiar? What about the following scenario?

Zzzzziiiiiip…CRASH!…and then the shattering sound of glass as Deidre hurls Al’s       Playstation 3 from the 2nd story apartment window…followed by a shrill and sobbing  “GET       OUT!…GET OUT!…GET OooooUT!”

See,  IT WAS THE LAST STRAW! Even though Al loved Deidre with all his heart…he had lied so often… had ignored Deidre so much that she just reached her boiling point that hot, muggy summer afternoon.

And Al did get out. Deidre was serious. She had had enough of Al’s ways. See, Al was a good guy…a great guy even…he cared deeply and loved Deidre…and Deidre knew it too…but that wasn’t her problem.  She was sick of feeling unappreciated…and  Al just didn’t know what would make her happy anymore. He didn’t know how to wipe the slate clean…or start over…

And this WAS the end of Deidre and Al…forever…As it is the end of so many relationships…

What if it didn’t have to be? What if you didn’t have to put your emotional health in jeopardy?

What if you could recapture your ex lovers mind, heart and soul?…Wipe the slate clean? Turn back time? Even if you feel right now that your situation is too far gone…too screwed up …or just plain too darn complicated? What if you can regain your feelings of personal satisfaction regarding your relationship? What if you can smile, sing, hold hands, feel joyful… in other words – fully regain your emotional health towards this relationship?

Want to know more? Click here now!

Click Here!

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Emotional Abuse

Emotional abuse leaves little or no physical scars. Its victims suffer no black eyes, broken bones, torn flesh or spilled blood. Still, those who are emotionally beaten down might describe it as the most painful and destructive form of domestic violence.

While statistics are elusive, experts agree that emotional abuse—for mostly women, but some men as well—have reached epidemic proportions. And despite its everyday occurrence, few of us recognize it, identify it or even do anything about it.

Here are a few questions that might help you recognize it:

  • Are you walking on egg shells around your partner or spouse?
  • Are you worried, anxious or nervous about your partner’s attitudes or moods?
  • Are you concerned about you’re their criticism, sarcasm, frowns, glares, gestures, silence or other behaviors?
  • Are you concerned that they will withdraw or give you the cold shoulder?
  • Do you feel tense when you hear the car pull up in the garage and hear the door open and your partner comes home?
  • Does your partner uses economic, sexual or other power tactics to control you?
  • Are you happy and feel free when you are alone?
  • Do you think that if you tried harder that things will be better?
  • Are you mostly defensive about your actions? Are your reactions on automatic pilot?
  • Do you sometimes feel trapped in your relationship?

So what is the impact of emotional abuse?

Here are a few that are easily recognized. The emotionally abused individual will exhibit:

  • Loss of self-esteem and self-confidence
  • Increasing levels of self-doubt leading to the inability to make normal life decisions
  • Signs of anxiety and depression
  • Inner fear and anxiety that he/she ‘is losing it’
  • Loss of enthusiasm for life, decreased involvement in normal social activities, and decreased involvement with friends
  • Feeling of a loss of power and control over one’s life
  • Development of a very critical internal voice
  • A desire to avoid, escape, or run away
  • A false sense of hope that ‘everything will be OK’ when…
  • Increasing self-blame for everything that goes wrong
  • Pervasive feeling of ‘not being good enough’
  • Defensive of the ‘other person’ to friends who ask questions and show concern

What can victims of emotional abuse do?

Here are some suggestions:

  • Reach out to other people who you know care.
  • Read a good book on the subject as a form of bibliotherapy. See my article on this subject here.
  • Realize that you cannot change your partner… you can only change how your respond.
  • Develop a list of how you are affected by the emotional abuse.
  • Get professional assistance.
  • Make the decision to deal with the situation.
  • Develop your internal emotional and cognitive strengths and focus on emotional health.
  • Emergence of mental health problems such as anxiety and depression.
  • Change your self-talk from self-criticism to self-empowerment.
  • Look at your own behaviors and decide what you need to change and what new behaviors you need to adopt.
  • Decide on what you want and how you want to live your life.
  • Decide on and then set some personal boundaries and clear expectations for the other person to change their behaviors. Also describe the consequences.
  • Follow through on your decisions.
  • Make an internal commitment on your ultimate decision if the person does not change. In other words, are you willing to say goodbye to the person and hello to a new, more vibrant life?

At this blog we recommend tens of books that will help you through the process of confronting the emotional abuse and then starting to move towards emotional health. Here are some that we specifically recommend to help with emotional abuse.

                                                         

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Emotional Wounds

We are a wounded people. In this largely uncaring world, people are hurt from exploitation and victimization. People everywhere are experiencing all kinds of rape and trauma: racial, financial, political, organizational and sexual. Children are abused. Marriages are broken. Tragedies of all kinds – natural and man-made – afflict all of us. And many of these ‘wounds’ cut deep and last beyond a lifetime.

In many cases, emotionally wounded people are victims of the criminal, hurtful, or selfish actions of others. In other cases the emotionally wounded have self-inflicted wounds and are victims of their own hardheaded, addictive or narcissistic actions. The outcome is the same regardless of the source. People are emotionally wounded! And so they struggle with crippling emotions such as anxiety, anger, fear, desperation, shame and guilt, hatred, depression, and low self-esteem.

The pain of such emotions is often present with us even though the incidents and relationships that caused the hurt may be long past. We have difficulty with our relationships – even those within our own households. On the job, we can’t get along with colleagues. We fight with our neighbors – whether they are next door, around the corner, in the next county – or in the next country. Politically – there are fights everywhere: neighbor against neighbor; family against family; country against country.

Our emotional wounds show in the insanity of our public and private actions. What else can explain a father raping his daughter or a mother killing her kids? What else can explain a priest sexually abusing young children? What else can explain a politician raping his country of the financial resources earmarked for those who need it most in his country? What else can explain caregivers who exploit the elderly and the disabled? Those people – the perpetrators of those disgusting and horrible actions – are themselves emotionally wounded.

Caution! Think carefully before you decide that because you are not in this dastardly group and you therefore are not emotionally wounded!

Not everyone who is emotionally wounded abuse or hurt others to the degree that those described above do. Most people who are emotionally wounded do not abuse children and are not involved in any kind of rape – financial, political or sexual. Most appear to live ‘normal’ lives. Their emotional wounds and hurt are hidden deep on the inside… and only shows itself to the trained analyst and the expert eye. But those emotional wounds do wreak havoc with their lives and the lives of those closest to them.

What are some of the symptoms?

  • Addiction to approval and people pleasing
  • Alcohol and drug abuse
  • Gambling
  • Manipulation of others
  • Lust for control and power
  • Possessiveness
  • Extreme selfishness, disloyalty and self-centeredness
  • Lashing out at and hurting others without any visible signs of regret
  • Eating disorders
  • Kleptomania
  • Shopping addiction
  • High levels of anxiety
  • Fear of intimacy
  • Emotional numbness
  • Overly sensitive
  • Intensely secretive
  • Very little patience or tolerance for others
  • Shame and guilt
  • Nightmares
  • Rage and hatred – including self-hatred – and anger towards themselves
  • Depression
  • Sense of hopelessness leading to suicidal thoughts and gestures.
  • Phobias
  • Obsessive compulsive disorders
  • Irrational expectations (stated and unstated) of others
  • Abusive behavior including child abuse
  • It shows up in their children who exhibit emotional pain by being abusive and violent; children who use drugs and become involved in anti-social and delinquent activities.

As you can see emotional wounds are a fact of life and is exhibited all around us.

There is hope, however, for those who think that they are alone in their suffering. Despite emotional and psychological wounds – there are things that they can do individually and collectively to heal the emotional wounds and improve their overall emotional health. People with emotional wounds need a lot of things.

Here are a few of the many tasks:

  • They must acknowledge that they need help. This may be difficult for those who believe that their situation is hopeless. It could also be difficult for those who are intensely secretive.
  • They need intensive and clinically sophisticated help through counseling and psychotherapy with expert clinicians.
  • They need to feel a sense of hope. This will start them on their journey towards healing.
  • They must express themselves, to talk and be listened to. In this endeavor, they need to hear themselves from the inside and at the deepest levels of their psyche. Talk-therapy could be enhanced with expressive therapy whereby the individual is allowed to express themselves in myriads of ways with the guidance of an experienced professional. In this regard, any therapeutic intervention would have to take into account the dynamic, sensitive, tenuous and potentially dangerous nature of the therapeutic process for people suffering from deep emotional trauma.
  • They must accept that time does not heal emotional wounds or scars! Then they need to give themselves permission to let go of the past and heal from the inside out.
  • If codependency is a factor, they need to begin recovery and healing and develop awareness in the many ways that this is a feature in their lives.
  • They must uncover and then deal with the shadow parts of themselves which remain hidden from their conscious minds.

There are many resources that can help people who are suffering from emotional wounds.

Here are a few.

                                   

 

 

 

 

 

 

Solution Focused Strategies

Enjoy Emotional Freedom

Emotional Freedom Therapy or (EFT) is a remarkable technique that alleviates emotional distress using simple yet elegant techniques based on the body’s energy meridians.  There are very, very few techniques that ordinary people can use by themselves in order to gain some control over their dysfunctional feelings. EFT is one of those techniques.

The EFT tapping techniques are a series of astoundingly fast and easy processes can help just about anyone to achieve genuine freedom from the emotions that have created problems in their lives. These techniques have been described by some as one of the most important breakthroughs in the area of psychology in this century. They have been used successfully with thousands of people with a broad range of difficulties.

EFT (Emotional Freedom Techniques) is becoming known to many amazed users as a “modern miracle.” It can dramatically relieve emotional disturbances along with many physical symptoms. It often works in minutes, its results are usually long lasting, and side effects are almost always positive.

While there are many books on Emotional Freedom Techniques, I recommend one book as a first read for those who seek the quick benefits of EFT. By teaching an easily adopted system of tapping on the body’s meridian points, the book Enjoy Emotional Freedom enables you to ‘tune’ and ‘tone’ your body’s energy system for immediate relaxation and relief from stress and anxiety.

Enjoy Emotional Freedom enables and empowers the ordinary person to start getting results now, without having to be trained for years as a therapist. It’s full of useful tips and strategies which can be deceptively simple yet produce powerful results. This book guides you into ways of being better balanced and more emotionally ‘fit’. Best of all, it gives you the life-long gift of being able to help yourself far more than you ever imagined.

According to one professional, “This book, by two of the most inspiring pioneers in the field of energy psychology, is a lucid and light-spirited introduction to the field. It covers all the essentials, plus powerful refinements they’ve originated in their extensive clinical experience. If you’ve been held back from your dreams or goals by stuck emotional responses, you will find yourself shifting even entrenched patterns quickly — within the first hour of using the methods described so ably in Enjoy Emotional Freedom.”

Another reviewer reported, “I read Enjoy Emotional Freedom thinking that the ideas in it couldn’t possibly work. As I was reading it I thought I might as well try their suggestions, so I did what they said as I read. When I got into bed that night my husband said, “So what’s got into you tonight?”  “Why?” I asked, and he said, “You are so full of energy when you are normally tired and ready to go to sleep”. That’s when I realized their ideas really do work even though I was cynical! Since then I have started using then daily and found I am in a really good place emotionally and health wise.”

 

 

Information, Solution Focused Strategies

Bibliotherapy

 

The Reading Cure!


As a Clinical Psychologist, I am always looking for low cost yet very effective ways in which my clients can help themselves. Most clients meet with a mental health clinician a couple of times per month. Between those sessions clients ought to be busy working on healing themselves by practicing the strategies and techniques and making facilitating changes in their behavioral, cognitive and emotive processes. Most successful mental health outcomes are generated when people are focused on helping themselves.

One very useful method of self-help for emotional pain such as grief and depression is reading books. Reading books? Absolutely! Reading therapy!

The idea that reading can make us emotionally and physically stronger goes back to Plato. Plato said that the poets gave us the arts was “not for mindless pleasure” but “as an aid to bringing our soul-circuit, when it has got out of tune, into order and harmony with itself”. The Greeks had it right! Additionally, I don’t think that it was a coincidence that the Greek God Apollo was the god of both poetry and healing!

These days “reading therapy” is officially called bibliotherapy! Bibliotherapy is defined as an expressive therapy that uses an individual’s relationship to the content of books and poetry and other written words as therapy. In some studies, bibliotherapy has been shown to be effective in the treatment of depression and the results have been shown to be long lasting. Bibliotherapy is also an old concept in library science. The ancient Greeks put great faith in the power of literature, posting a sign above some of  their library doors describing the library as a “healing place for the soul”.

The idea of bibliotherapy or reading therapy seems to have grown naturally from the human inclination to identify with others through their expressions in literature and art. For instance, a grieving child who reads (or is read to) a story about another child who has lost a parent will naturally feel less alone in the world. Bibliotherapy is often used very effectively with children

Among adults, reading groups (book clubs) seem to serve many purposes. They serve as social gatherings for like minded people to discuss issues, ideas and topics relevant to their collective interests. Reading groups however also help to bring people together so that they feel less isolated and so that they can build their self-esteem. Reading groups also seem to be an experiment in individual and collective healing.

In one study, there was an indication that involvement in reading groups helped some members to deal with depression, loneliness and grief. Some book clubs specifically help members who are going through the loss of a spouse through death, while it helps others deal with those experiencing the pain of separation and divorce. Reading specific books as biblio therapy is also a feature of meny self-help groups such as Alcoholics Anonymous.

Books seem to help everyone… whether as individuals or in groups. No matter how ill you are, there is a world inside books which you can enter and explore, and where you focus on something other than your own problems.

The benefits of bibliotherapy or reading therapy as a ‘reading cure’ are threefold: Identification, Catharsis and Insight. Simply stated, when reading the appropriate book, a individual has the opportunity to:

  • relate to the main character and his predicament
  • become so emotionally connected to the story that their own feelings are revealed
  • realize that his/her problem is solvable or, at the very least, that he/she is not alone
  • process possible solutions to his/her problems
  • develop hope based on the positive outcomes from the lives of the characters in the book
  • bring an added positive dimension to the self-talk that goes on inside

As a result of reading certain books, people are uplifted, positively influenced motivated and inspired to heal themselves from the inside out.

The key to making all of this work is making sure you have a great book. With so many out there, how do you know which one to choose? In this Blog – Heal Your Hurt – we provide you with lots of suggestions – all of which can be seen through the lenses of reading therapy (biblio therapy). All of the books recommended in this blog can help with emotional pain, depression, sadness, grief or other devastating emotions that people can experience.

Here is another great book suggestion: The Help!  Three ordinary women are about to take one extraordinary step.

In The Help, author Kathryn Stockett creates three extraordinary women whose determination to start a movement of their own forever changes a town. And it forever changes the way women – mothers, daughters, caregivers, friends – view one another. This is a deeply moving novel filled with poignancy, humor, and hope.  The Help is a timeless and universal story about the lines we abide by, and the ones we don’t.

I found The Help to be therapeutic. My clients all rave about the many benefits that reading it provides them. You too will find it beneficial when you read it.