Mary-Beth came to see me one evening complaining of backache which has been troubling her for several months. There was no injury or fall. The pain just seems to appear out of the blue. A physical examination did not reveal any physical signs. After a couple of attempts to treat her symptomatically, the pain remains. She was eventually referred to a specialist but despite extensive investigations, no physical abnormality was found.<\/p>\n
When she came back to see me for further review one afternoon, we decided to try hypnosis to uncover the cause of her backache. It was in this session that we soon discovered a traumatic childhood and the fractured relationship that she had with her mother. Apparently, this fractured mother-daughter relationship was the cause of her backache. After talking and crying, she felt better.<\/p>\n
Soon after that session, her backache vanished. It did not come back until about two months later when old family issues recurred.<\/p>\n
This story illustrates two important points. The first is that emotional pain can manifest as physical pain. The second is that we often unconsciously leave our emotional pain unattended to until it becomes too big to handle. An emotional pain, like an abscess that is unattended, will eventually fester and burst through.<\/p>\n
Many people find emotional pain more difficult to endure than physical pain. We are often so fearful of emotional pain that our normal instinct is to resist it when it arises. Too frequently, we treat emotional pain like a giant, hideous monster, believing that it is dangerous and harmful. Thus, in a knee-jerk fashion, we either run away, fight or hide from it out of fear. Unfortunately, whatever we resist persists and very often grows even stronger.<\/p>\n
The truth is that emotional pain, although it may look hideous and dangerous, is actually not harmful at all. It only becomes harmful when we believe it to be so. The very act of believing it to be harmful gives it the power to harm us. If we were to respond to our emotional pain in a counter-intuitive way, by watching, welcoming and even embracing it, we would be surprised by its revelations.<\/p>\n
Using mindfulness as a tool, we can become aware of our emotional pain without falling into our mental tendency to judge it, resist it or push it away. It is often a habit of the mind to want to manipulate, control or hide what is emotionally painful and undesirable. This is the first awareness towards befriending our emotional pain. It is a crucial first step as it allows us the space to observe the unfolding of the pain without wanting to change it in any ways.<\/p>\n
After some experience with non-judgmental awareness of our feelings, we begin to see that emotions are simply transient processes that arise and pass away, much like a passing cloud. It is not dangerous or harmful when we do not give it the power to harm us through our erroneous beliefs. In fact, after some time, we realize that we can even embrace and welcome these emotions without identifying and clinging to them as ours. In other words, we do not have to personalize these emotions.<\/p>\n
In reality, we are living in an impersonal universe. Nothing in it is personal without our own mind personalizing and identifying with it – not our thoughts nor our emotions. The moment we make our thoughts and emotions as ours, we give it the co-operation and the power to affect us. In other words, we dis-empower ourselves.<\/p>\n
As we become more skillful at befriending our emotions through non-judgmental self-awareness, we find it easier to be accepting and forgiving. It becomes easier to let go of the unwanted resistance and burdens we have been carrying. We become lighter and find our life more peaceful and easy.<\/p>\n
We find inner peace.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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