Talk to your pain - An essay on what your pain wants you to know

Recently I made myself write a letter to my fear and I was honestly amazed at all the things I wrote and all the things that were holding me back. I’d honestly thought that I’d overcome many of these fears but I was quite surprised to see how a lot of my fears were still deep-rooted within and needed out. I felt lighter after I talked to my fear and it felt good to actually make it a person instead of this invisible scary energy.

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I started writing to a lot of my other pain too. Overwhelm was a recurring feeling and I felt like I needed to talk to overwhelm in order to understand it better. Writing to my overwhelm gave me the permission to look at my distractions and find a strategic way to let go of all that noise. I also realized that sometimes I tend to romanticize overwhelm because that feels easy and obviously that doesn’t help at all. In fact, writing to my overwhelm gave birth to my digital journal “the managing worry journal”.

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Anytime I’ve asked clients to talk to their pain, they’ve often given me a very confused look. And often told me how uncomfortable it gets for them when they need to face their pain and go back to all those memories that cause them distress and I truly understand and empathize with how scary that feels.

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I’ve been in that phase where revisiting the pain and trauma has often left me close to catatonic. The fear of going back often held me back from addressing my pain and fear. But I didn’t want to stay in that phase anymore, it was more of a do-or-die situation for me. I knew if I didn’t face all that trauma, I would lose myself and there was nothing more painful than losing myself.

Healing is not always a smooth process. It can get painful and feels like nothing is really happening in the beginning. However, everyone’s experience is very different. The only way healing works is when you allow it to happen and have faith in the process.

When it comes to healing what most people fail to understand is that pain needs to leave your mind, body, and soul so there’s space for what’s healthy and happy.

I’ve found that pain also serves as a messenger. It’s a call for awareness and quiet time. Your mental and emotional body reaches out to you in the form of pain to probably tell you that you need to pay attention to yourself now. Maybe you’ve been hoarding a lot of burdens that need to be released now. Maybe you’re ready to let go. Maybe you’re stronger and more mature to cope with that pain and maybe now you’ve finally reached that period of exhaustion.

When I was going through depression, nothing made sense to me. Nothing felt good or important. After a point, I didn’t even find the meaning in waking up. I spent hours in bed, sleeping, crying, staring at the ceiling because I had reached that phase of exhaustion and my mind was tired from all the overwhelm and now my body was bearing the brunt. I understand depression is different for everybody and not everyone experiences the same thing. However, the pain is almost the same.

Pain visits me even today, in stages and it can be very traumatizing at times to be able to deal with the pain in a way that doesn’t cause further damage. In my experience, I’ve felt that when you talk to your pain you also unfold a lot of stories that you may have ignored because they were suppressed. When my old stories surface, I’ve now started looking at them as messages that my mind and body are giving out and I need to now pay attention to them.

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I find that sometimes just acknowledging my pain and asking my pain what it wants to tell me, makes me feel calm and grounded. Sometimes the pain is here to protect me, sometimes it’s here to remind me of something. Every time it’s different. And each time I ask the pain important questions I’m amazed at how light I feel.

I’d like to invite you to talk to your pain, any pain that you’re experiencing right now or experiencing often. Take your time with it and understand what it means for you. Maybe you’ll require a lot of patience with it and maybe it may not help you right away, however, this is certainly going to give you clarity and direction.

Thank you for reading!

If you could talk to an emotion that often shows up as pain or you experience it as quite painful, what would you say?

Feel free to write to me in case you'd like to share your experience with me.

This was also published on my Substack - Click here to read