Do You Feel Stuck in Emotional Pain?

Your Pain May Have Become Comfortable

Pain, hurt, hardships, wounds… we all experience them. Some we can bounce back from, and others we have a harder time with. Do you feel stuck in your pain? Do you feel movement towards relief in any way? If not, there could be several understandable reasons why.

Reasons We Become Struck in Pain

The Comfort of Familiar Pain

When something is familiar, it usually feels safe, steady, and unchanging. When we have been repeatedly hurt, or held on to hurts long enough, these feelings and thoughts become familiar. As a result, we are well acquainted with them and become accustomed to how they feel. Anything different can be frightening. Then, if we attempt to heal, we may experience push back.

Offering relief to the hurt may feel more like a threat to a familiar environment than hope for a suffering soul. The feeling of being in control of what we know can discourage us from growth.

Holding on to these faulty attitudes and thought patterns block our capacity to achieve genuine happiness, peace, and fulfilling relationships.

Expecting Pain and Anxiety

It is easier to expect to be disappointed than to be disappointed. If we live expecting to be rejected or abandoned, then we feel we can control the pain it will cause us. If we think that staying alert to oncoming pain will help us avoid it, then we will naturally stay on the look out for the negative. This is directly related to anxiety. We physiologically place our body in a state of hyper vigilance, unable to relax, constantly on the lookout. We won’t seek peace because this part sees that as letting down the guard and trusting the unknown. We have a need to stay anxious because that part helps us attempt to see pain coming our way so we can block it. Thus, anxiety feels safer than peace.

Negative Attention is Still Attention

We all desire to feel special, cared for, seen. We get these needs met through various attention we receive from others. Some believe the only way they can get this attention is when there is some type of problem. Perhaps while you grew up, the only attention you received was when you got injured in some way. At some point you believed that chaos or injury brings attention. Even negative attention is still attention. This part of you may believe that this is the only option for meeting these deep needs: to stay in pain.

Get Unstuck to Find Relief from Pain

The list is lengthy, and the reasons are valid, but the results of staying in pain block true contentment in life. Holding on to these faulty attitudes and thought patterns block our capacity to achieve genuine happiness, peace, and fulfilling relationships. Our true self longs for peace, to get unstuck there needs to be a paradigm shift. This usually takes deep inner work that could very well challenge everything these parts believe about your Self. But love, a real sense of joy, success, and all things beauty; the work needs to be done.

Make an Appointment with Watershed Counseling

We encourage you not to do this work alone and would be honored to work with you in finding the best way to release pain and step into joy. To make a first appointment, please call 601-362-7020 or send us a message.