The 30 Day Happiness Challenge has opened doors for so many people, myself included! It's always exciting to hear from my readers how their circumstances have improved since making the conscious decision to change their mindsets and shift to focus on the positive. That said, I realize that making the decision to be happy is only half the battle. I wanted to continue to introduce you all to a variety of coping mechanisms, so we all can live healthier, happier lives!
Physical Pain and Suppressed Trauma.
It's important to note briefly that trauma can be anything. Something as simple as thinking you were lost forever as a young toddler who lost his mother behind the coat rack, only to find her about ten seconds later, or some sort of severe physical abuse. Both, in the moment of experience, were very intense, and we aren't always equipped with the tools to process these things (tools including permission to feel the feelings the events brought up).
I'm of the opinion that the body is highly affected by emotions and our experiences. When we face hard emotions, we don't always allow ourselves to experience them, and we end up holding those emotions in our bodies. Those "knots" we feel in our backs, shoulders, and necks, we say are caused by "stress". Well, what is stress, if not a collection of inflamed emotions we are trying to get around addressing? Think about it, maybe you're stressed about a relationship. Your significant other is being really distant lately, showing little interest in you. They're being secretive on your phone and not supporting you how you'd like to be supported. You're worried (or maybe aware) that they're cheating. What does that make you feel? Hurt, fearing abandonment, maybe feeling betrayed, embarrassed, scared for your future, worried you'll never feel loved and adored and supported the way you did at the beginning of the relationship, etc. That's a lot to feel! You've also got work and friends who are going through their own stressful moments in life, and you don't really "have the time" to deal with that pain right now. Or maybe, you just feel like there's a socially acceptable set of emotions and timeframe to handle the situation, and you rush yourself to half-grieve the situation and then move on. What's the first thing you're going to say in this scenario if your friend asks why you seem so off? Probably something along the terms of, "oh, nothing...I'm just kinda stressed is all".
When we're young, we're taught about emotions and what is acceptable to express and what isn't. While most of our parents did their best, they're only human, and exactly zero parents in the history of all of humanity has been able to successfully train their kids in the art of healthy emotion management. Society as a whole gives us mixed messages of what's acceptable to feel and it can really mess us up. So we suppress and suppress until our bodies scream out for some sort of relief. Emotions we never properly experienced as a child stay locked up, and various stimuli and circumstances which we come across later in adulthood irritate those old wounds, and we become jumbled messes if not addressed. What can we do?
The process
This concept may seem completely ridiculous, but hear me out! It's worth trying. When these physical pains pop up, we've got to heal them and release whatever is locked up. The way to do this is fairly simple; Step one, find a pain. Could be a back ache, could be sore legs, whatever. Just figure out what hurts. Step two, massage the area in a circular motion (gently and consistently!) while breathing deeply via the mouth (not the nose!). This will not feel comfortable, and in some cases could even be excruciating. It's important to keep going so it can be healed! Step three, go through whatever emotion comes up, and follow it through all of the way. Some of these pains will be easier than others. You may even have random memories from childhood pop into your head! I'll use my own experience as an example of how to do this:
Since I was eight years old I've had this excruciating pain in my lower back. It doesn't hurt just walking or going about my day, but it feels like I'm being stabbed by a million knives whenever anyone would touch it, even with the gentlest of hands. I thought it was weird, but I didn't want to say anything, mostly because I didn't feel like I could without getting blamed for something. I still have this pain to this day. The trauma it holds runs incredibly deep, and lives in multiple places. However, after I began doing this exercise over time, it's lessened immensely.
The experience of the exercise can make you feel a little foolish at first, but with the difference it makes, you won't care! As I begin to try and massage out the tissues and orient myself with the sharp pains it creates, I'm taken by emotion. This is the unfinished business that area of the body is holding. This emotion is why we're doing this. While my first reaction is to run away from the feeling and distract myself by anything, I take a few deep breaths and focus again on allowing myself to feel the hard emotions. As I continue to explore what the emotion is like, and allow myself to feel the pain and express it, the physical pain dissipates until it is either no more, or much more tolerable. When I've had absolutely all I can take or the pain is gone, I rest my hand on the afflicted area. I ask myself what my hand feels like. Normally, the first thought I have is warm. As I continue to focus on my hand, more positive emotions come. Things like loving, protective, sturdy, etc. I have a quick talk with myself about those emotions, telling myself that I am those things. The physical and emotional pain are not who I truly am. I can experience them, but I can also release them.
How this method has helped me
The first time I tried it by instinct. When I was younger and had some big emotions I had no idea what to do with, I'd always tried to get as much physical pressure on my sternum as I could by an outside source (stuffed animals, books, if you can imagine it, I probably had it stacked on my chest). When I did that, it took the emotions from way too big for me to radio silent, or at very least, easy to ignore. As a teenager and adult, I realized how odd a coping mechanism that was, and opted to just massage it instead. It hurt even though I was being extremely gentle on the area, and it was weird, but I quickly realized that after I'd gotten through the emotions and found some peace, touching my sternum didn't hurt. After years of doing that, I tried applying it to the other pains in my body. Now, I catch myself rubbing my elbow and thinking, "oh, yeah, I remember not letting myself cry during math time back in fifth grade because how difficult it was for me" or massaging my palms thinking, "my guitar honestly should have been protected from my rambunctious brothers, and it really wasn't fair that they broke everything I ever loved, and it's okay that I was angry about that. Being angry about my destroyed stuff didn't make me a bad sister at all".
As I've allowed myself to face and experience previously suppressed emotions, I'm more readily available to handle them as life continues. For example, in a previous blog post I mentioned having to say an incredibly difficult goodbye, after which I cried and it was the kind of crying I didn't believe was humanly possible. That moment brought up the same emotions that my lower back carries. If I hadn't have been practicing and releasing that emotion, I'd probably have suppressed that and allowed it to kill me. I'm not going to lie, despite how hard I did let myself sob, I still cut myself off a little short and ran towards every distraction I could, and the hurt did in fact inflame my back pain! Regardless, I worked through it and managed to get better than I'd been before the whole event took place.
What's more, I have more of a range of motion in my lower back now, and I don't want to scream every time one of my close friends gives me the good ol' football patdown! My cat can jump on me or rest on my back and it won't make me want to die. Physically, I'm doing much better!
The reality of it all
It's so important to get in tune with ourselves and figure out what's been influencing us and our minds and bodies and emotions. We need to get real about what we've gone through and what we need to finish. I'm not ready right now to handle what is being stored in my lower back, not yet at least. So, I'll still be working through that for some time to come. In the meantime, there's so many other things I've been able to cope with, and other facets of that pain I've been able to resolve.
Happiness is a result of progress and intention. You have to want it. You have to choose it, and then you have to make yourself happy. While we're on these journeys practicing happiness, we're destroying the monsters that once tore us from it. I absolutely believe that as we continue forward, we won't just be healing ourselves, but generations, both that follow ours and precede.
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