When I am feeling sadness, I actually feel it in my chest. It sits heavy on me. A friend of mine who is a trauma therapist tells me this is actually a “good” thing. She tells me that some people are not in touch with their emotions. This causes health problems, among other things.

Unprocessed grief, pain, sadness, or trauma never goes away. You can do your best to ignore it, but unprocessed pain will not be ignored. There are people in the world — you may know some of them — who say things like, “Don’t let it bother you,” or “Quit being so emotional,” or “C’mon. Let’s go have a drink. You’ll feel better.” None of these ideas is helpful with respect to processing something painful such as the death of a loved one, a painful break-up, or old pain from a personal traumatic childhood event.

The world is full of people who think they can white-knuckle themselves into ignoring painful emotions. Unfortunately, they will never succeed in pushing away the pain. The pain will always remain until it is allowed to be felt and processed. Experts in the fields of psychology, co-dependence, trauma, and addiction recovery know this and have powerful tools to help those who are brave enough to face these painful emotions. Think of it in the same way as the pain of lifting weights in order to develop strong muscles. There are no quick fixes, but there are tools you can use to become stronger and happier. I don’t know about you, but I prefer to believe the experts over people who have very little self-awareness or who foolishly believe that a person should just “snap out of it” when trying to process a painful life event.

For your own good health, don’t ignore what your “self” is trying to bring to your attention. Unprocessed pain does not drown in alcohol or disappear because a person does their best to ignore it. Here’s a link to an excellent article about how to sit in your painful emotions in order to move through them and leave them behind.

How to Sit with Painful Emotions