Processing Through Pain
What does processing through pain mean?
How long does it take to process your pain?
What does processing through mean/look like?
When do you know you’ve processed through the pain and are better for it?
Feelings.
Processing is feeling your feelings. Feeling them. Not numbing them out by habits.
Sometimes our habits of soothing ourselves can be negative. Sometimes we use our coping mechanisms as a crutch to avoid feeling something uncomfortable.
Sometimes the things we avoid feeling are because it’s been a repeated cycle- pattern and it’s too big or too much to process.
Sometimes it’s deep pain that we would rather turn our backs against than stand strong facing it, knowing that we can do hard things.
I’ve come to recognize that in the past, I used things to numb out feelings. These feelings were “patterned.”
Jealously. Envy. Disappointment. Loneliness.
Man do I know pain.
My whole life I have taken painful moments and numbed them out. Pushed them under the carpet. Avoided feeling and processing what I was feeling.
That left me empty, bitter, and resentful.
For me, processing through an emotionally charged feeling means I need to be alone.
I do not need distractions.
I need time alone, to sit and ponder is this a belief about myself?
Is this a lie I have been telling myself all my life?
Jealously for me looks like “I want what they have”.
Jealously also looks like “I am not enough, or I am too much and that is why I can’t have this, or be like this, or be with this person.”
It’s a lie I am telling myself.
As a woman, I believe I was pushed into society to compare myself to other women.
Women who had a better body. Women who had a dad. Women who had a beautiful relationship. Women who had what I wanted at the end of the day.
The question I need to ask myself, or even tell myself is “I do have it all, and I can have it all and I am worthy of not comparing who I am and what I have against anyone else.”
So, then I need to see why I feel those feelings.
Once I took the time to sit down and process those negative emotions. I began to see that most of what I tell myself when I am feeling negative are lies.
Limiting beliefs I have carried through me all my life. I am tired of my own “limited beliefs”. I am no longer willing to continue to create a story in my head that derails me from stepping into who I truly am.
Limiting beliefs are thoughts, opinions that one believes to be the absolute truth. They tend to have a negative impact on one’s life by stopping them from moving forward and growing on a personal and professional level.
Limiting beliefs are unconscious thoughts that act as a defense mechanism to avoid possible negative or lower vibrating emotions (e.g., frustration, anxiety, anger, sadness).
I have created many, many defense mechanisms in my life. They have ultimately sabotaged relationships, circumstances and kept me “stuck in a place” that’s been defined by the outside world, that I have simply owned as my “truths”. Truths that aren’t true, that have kept me stuck.
So, it’s taken time and time again for me to see a situation for what it is, look at what I am telling myself in that situation (usually uncomfortable), and dissect it to see if it’s my truth or a truth that was imprinted on me some years ago.
And I will tell you that looking at these past beliefs that I have created in my head, has held me back. I now stand in a place where I can look at the feelings and ask myself, “Is this me, or is this old programming?”
Is what I am saying resonate with who I am, who I want to be, who I know I am after doing the work of seeing beyond the lies I have told myself?
Trusting myself, listening to myself, and standing in who I want to only allow me to break apart those limited beliefs and help me build myself into the person I have destined to always be. Love.
For an opportunity to work with me as a spiritual coach, email me at rachael@mygrowingspace.com
