• Alan has completed the new Pain Recovery Program. To read or share it, use this updated link: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/
  • Welcome to the new TMS Wiki server! Things aren't finished yet: email is not set up, so notification and password-reset emails don't go out, and new registrations are paused until email is installed. Details and updates are in this thread (click here). Locked out? Email tmswikisignups@gmail.com from the address where you receive TMS Wiki notifications.

Day 36 Pain and emotion

Mando

Peer Supporter
I was doing today's SEP exercise and came across a quote: "Pain has no place to hide in a person who is deeply happy and fulfilled, absent of conflict and armed with the correct information."

That got me thinking. Until starting this course I always thought emotional distress was a consequence of being in pain. I think I've had this completely wrong and I'm grateful to be able to reframe this in my mind.

It's amazing how we can go through times of great emotional anguish, and because we don't know how to deal with it, it gets pushed down and consciously forgotten about. And for me, it became a bad dream of sorts. And physical pain felt totally independent of anything emotional. That got me thinking, was I really as happy as I thought I was, throughout many years of my life? I've definitely had plenty of great experiences though when I look at my life now, I have always been running from anxiety and sadness, pushing those feelings away from me because I did not want to feel this way. I think I've been worried wayyyy more than I ever would have believed, and felt trapped by these emotions. I'm grateful that now the reframing of the cycle is become easier to see. There is always so much fear (pain) trying to be someone you don't feel you are inside.
 
Indeed, yes about this important insight, @Mando!

Mind you, our tendency towards negativity seems to have been evolutionarily selected as a positive trait for reasons of pure survival. In other words, a negative outlook resulted in more awareness of impending danger, thus more likelihood of surviving and thus more likelihood of passing on the negativity genes.

In OTHER words, we were literally designed to survive and proliferate, not to be happy :bored:

The good news is that individually, we CAN reprogram that tendency.
 
Back
Top