Introduction

We are all closely familiar with pain. Immense, excruciating pain. The kind that doesn’t let you sleep at night. The kind that consumes your thoughts, leaving little room for anything else. In those moments, our world seems shrouded in darkness, with no end in sight to the pain. Yet, remarkably, the pain does eventually subside. We are miracles of nature, shaped by years of evolution to withstand pain in the moment, and recover from it to continue living our lives. A profound aspect of our human experience is the resilience we build from overcoming pain, and the fragility borne of our existence, which always leaves us vulnerable to more pain. However, what truly happens once the pain stops? We consciously or unconsciously, learn to live with not only the remnants of that pain, but also what caused it.

Physical vs Emotional Pain

We most frequently experience two kinds of pain — physical and emotional. While reading so far, were you thinking of a specific instance of pain? Did you consider that the above paragraph was talking about both, or were you focused on only one of the two kinds? There are several parallels in how our bodies and minds deal with and heal from physical vs emotional pain, but stark differences in how we choose to treat them. Take, for instance, my recent ordeal with a completely torn ACL. I hurt myself on the 3rd of January. I had never felt such excruciating physical pain before in my life. I couldn’t sleep that night. At that moment, I thought it would be a long, long time before life would feel normal for me again. Yet, just four weeks later, without any intervention from doctors, I found myself at Lollapalooza, navigating the crowd with a surprising ease. Today, if you saw me walking on the street, you would be hard-pressed to tell I had suffered a debilitating injury just a few weeks ago.

We go through a similar process with emotional pain. Imagine (we don’t really need to imagine, but hey) we’ve gone through a painful breakup, or been rejected by that person we were really into. In the instance where it occurs, pain is all we feel, with all other thoughts pushed out of our minds. We have trouble sleeping. We may lose our appetites (If you’re like me, you may sadly gain an extra appetite. That is a different pain, so let’s move on). Yet, if someone were to talk to us a few weeks later, would they be able to tell with certainty that we had gone through something terrible in the recent past?

Recovery from Physical vs Emotional Pain

I will soon have surgery on my knee, and with 6 months of intense rehab, I should be able to get back to 100%, and play sports like I used to. Pretend for a moment, however, that I had never seen a doctor for my initial injury, and that I chose to not see a doctor at all for the rest of my life. How would I have dealt with this injury? In the initial weeks right after the accident, it is impossible to put any weight whatsoever on the injured leg. That would have been an obvious insight to me, and I would have limped around for a while. As the swelling would have reduced, and the non-ACL injuries in my knee would have healed, I would have reached the same level of activity that I am at now. It is possible for someone to live without an ACL, and lived, I would have. With some trial and error, I would have figured out the movements such as running and jumping cause me pain, and would have consciously (and eventually subconsciously) avoided those.

Would I be able to live a fairly normal life despite these restrictions? Yes. Would I, for the rest of my life, avoid certain actions that I knew would cause me pain? Yes. I would be living, but I would not be living a full life. I would not be living in the same manner that I was before the injury. It would be absurd of me to not see a doctor about my knee. It would be equally nonsensical to opt out of surgery and rehab. Will it be easy? No. Will it hurt more before it starts being better again? Yes. As difficult, painful and long as the healing process may be, the choice for me to undergo it so I can live a full, unhindered life, is an obvious one.

We are presented with a similarly obvious choice when dealing with emotional pain. Yet, we often reject it. Think back to the last time you felt deep emotional pain. I am sure that with time, the wounds healed and the pain stopped, as it did with my knee. Like with physical pain, we have the capacity to sustain immense emotional pain, and come out of it feeling and looking normal. But do we stop and ask ourselves whether we are truly okay? Are we living our lives as fully as we did before we suffered that pain? In most cases, the answer is no. We have normalized living with trust issues, avoidance, overcompensation, etc as part of our day to day lives. We have healed from the pain and situations that caused these shifts in our behavior, and a lot of us have forgotten what we were like before we suffered the pain that caused them.

Conclusion

Will we be able to live fairly normal lives despite our conscious and subconscious behavioral changes? Yes. Like with my knee, I recognize that the life I would be living would not be whole. For me, the choice to seek help, and go through what would probably be a long and painful healing process, is once again an obvious one. Wouldn’t you like to feel emotionally whole again? Wouldn’t you like to be the person you were before you were hurt? Wouldn’t you like to be able to live and love like you did before? I repeat, the answer is obvious. OBVIOUS. Choose to be whole. Be you.

(9 out of 10 therapists recommend that you read this article)