Listening to the Mental Wealth & Wellness podcast last weekend, I wrote down this sentence: The cure for the pain is the pain.
Jenna’s guest, Coach Dee, shared these words talking about her own journey and the truth of them vibrate within me still a week later.
It means that there is no way to move past pain (hurt, disappointment, shame, or any other twisted thing that takes roots within us) without first turning into it. It means that healing isn’t forgetting, isn’t pretending something never happened, it isn’t a permanent distraction. Healing is being in the fire and throwing buckets of water on it little by little until its ash. Then its rubbing salve on your burned skin, every day, until it doesn’t hurt anymore. Or doesn’t hurt so much. I am not convinced that the deepest wounds ever disappear. But I’m learning still.
The cure for the pain is the pain.
It’s a small kind of bravery to sit with yourself in sadness, wherever it stems from. It doesn’t mean to wallow in it or to feed yourself spoonfuls of self-pity. But I do think you have to be present for it. Acknowledge that the pain is here, that it’s real. Convincing yourself that you shouldn’t feel the way you do or that it’s all in your head keeps you from dealing with it and ultimately moving past it.
I used to spend so much time berating myself for feeling sad. I’d tell myself I shouldn’t feel that way. That everything was fine. That I couldn’t be sad because what did I have to be sad about really? As you can imagine, this pattern only fed past depressive episodes.
Now I let myself feel what I’m feeling and I try to get better at dealing with it in a kind and healing way. I still get sad. Some nights I give myself permission to do some wallowing. But that conscious choice, the permission, is acknowledgment rather than distraction and it makes all the difference in moving through the emotion rather than letting it pin me down.
With Love,
Natalie