How to Stop Avoiding Emotional Pain and Reconnect With Yourself
No Pain, No Gain? How to Stop Avoiding Emotional Pain and Reconnect With Yourself
How do you relate to your pain?
Not just physical pain, but emotional pain.
The grief. The anger. The disappointment. The fear. The loneliness. The resentment. The shame. The heartbreak.
Maybe you push through. Maybe you avoid it. Maybe you minimize it. Maybe you numb it.
Or maybe, like me, you reach for the remote, a cozy blanket, a podcast, an audiobook, your phone, food, productivity, or approximately 47 other distractions because please, for the love of everything, don't make me sit here and feel this.
Girl, I feel ya. Because honestly?
Pain is uncomfortable.
And most of us have gotten really good at avoiding it.
But what happens when we spend our lives trying not to feel pain?
And what might become possible when we learn how to gently turn toward it instead?
The Emotional Beach Ball
Think about what happens when you try to hold a beach ball underneath the water.
You can do it. For a while. But eventually your arms get tired. And the second you let go?
POP.
That beach ball comes flying back up.
Our emotional pain can work a lot like that. We can push it down. We can tell ourselves it wasn't that bad. We can distract ourselves. We can stay busy. We can convince ourselves we're “over it.” But that doesn't necessarily mean the pain has disappeared. Sometimes it just waits. And then it whispers.
Pain's Whispers
Our pain often gets louder in the quiet moments. When the kids are finally asleep. When you're driving alone. When the house gets quiet.
When you're lying in bed and suddenly your brain decides that now would be an excellent time to review every uncomfortable thing you've ever experienced.
Our pain whispers:
Hey. I'm still here.
And I don't always want to hear it either.
It feels so much better to be in bliss, denial, distracted, cozy, or zoned out.
But sometimes I wonder if our pain is a little bit like a child playing hide-and-seek.
It wants to be found.
Not because pain is inherently good. Not because we need to romanticize suffering. But because there may be something underneath the pain that needs our attention.
Why Do We Avoid Emotional Pain?
There are so many reasons we learn to avoid pain.
Maybe we weren't taught how to feel difficult emotions. Maybe we learned that being “good” meant keeping the peace. Maybe we learned to put everyone else's needs before our own. Maybe expressing anger, sadness, disagreement, or disappointment wasn't welcomed when we were growing up. Maybe we experienced something painful and simply didn't have the support or capacity to process it at the time. So our nervous system learned:
Don't go there. Don't feel that. Don't say that. Don't remember that. Don't make anyone angry. Don't rock the boat. Keep everyone happy. Keep moving.
And these strategies often make sense when we understand them as attempts to protect us.
The problem is that what protected us at one point in our lives can become limiting later.
We can find ourselves living primarily from protection rather than connection.
In other words:
“How do I keep myself from feeling bad?”
instead of:
“What do I actually need?”
What Happens When We Numb Pain?
Brené Brown has famously taught about the difficulty of selectively numbing our emotions.
We don't get to say:
I'll take less grief, but I'll keep all the joy. I'll get rid of anxiety, but keep all the excitement. I'll avoid vulnerability, but still experience deep connection.
When we spend our lives trying not to feel difficult emotions, we can also lose access to some of the more vibrant parts of ourselves.
Joy. Wonder. Pleasure. Connection. Creativity. Aliveness.
And life can begin to feel a little…
Grey, bleak, dry. stale.
And our arms get really tired holding that beach ball underwater.
So Why Bother Going Inside?
Here's where it gets interesting for me.
Because I think we often assume the solution to emotional pain is to get outside of ourselves.
If my kid would just behave differently… If I could just get this promotion… If we had more money… If my husband would just… If the dogs were trained… If my body looked different… If this person would finally understand me…
And to be clear: our external circumstances matter.
I'm not suggesting that difficult circumstances don't create real stress. They absolutely do. If our basic needs aren't being met, that matters enormously. But we can also spend our entire lives tinkering with the outside world while never learning how to have a relationship with what's happening inside of us.
I love an image from Bruce Davis that describes life like an ocean.
We spend so much of our time building and repairing our boat so we can survive the waves.
And of course—we need a boat! We need ways to navigate life's stressors. But beneath the waves is an entire ocean.
Deep, vast, beautiful, mysterious.
And sometimes we're so busy trying not to get wet that we never dive in.
The Magic Is Within
This is something I keep coming back to personally and professionally:
There is something inside of us worth getting to know.
You might call it:
Inner wisdom
Intuition
Self
Soul
Inner child
Inner mother
Sacred self
Divine presence
Your nervous system's wisdom
Or simply the deeper part of you
You don't have to use my language. Use whatever language feels natural to you.
What's important to me is the relationship.
Because when we become more connected to ourselves, we have more access to information that isn't available when we're completely hijacked by fear, protection, old memories, or the opinions of other people.
This is one of the things I love about different therapy approaches.
From an EMDR perspective, we might ask:
Am I responding to something happening right now, or am I responding from an old memory that hasn't been fully processed?
From an Internal Family Systems perspective:
Am I responding from my Self, or has one of my protective parts taken over?
From a nervous-system perspective:
Am I approaching this from connection, or am I in protection mode?
And from a spiritual perspective:
Am I operating from fear, ego, and external approval—or am I connected to something deeper within me?
Different languages. Different theories.
But I think they can point toward a similar invitation:
Can I become more connected to what is true inside of me?
What If Pain Is Trying to Tell You Something?
Turning toward our pain does not mean tolerating harm.
But sometimes, underneath an emotion, there is information.
Anger might tell us something matters. Grief might tell us something mattered. Resentment might reveal a boundary we've been ignoring. Anxiety might point toward something our nervous system perceives as threatening. Loneliness might reveal a longing for connection. And sometimes sadness simply wants to be witnessed.
So instead of immediately asking:
“How do I make this feeling go away?”
we might experiment with:
“What is this feeling trying to tell me?”
That is a very different relationship with pain.
“Sit With Your Pain, Cradle It Close”
One of the songs that motivates me to connect with my pain is by Fia:
“Sit with your pain, cradle it close, lean in and listen…”
I love that invitation.
Not fix it. Not analyze it to death. Not make it go away.
Just: Sit with it.
Could you make yourself a cup of tea and sit with your pain for a few minutes?
Put a hand somewhere that feels comforting.
Notice your breathing.
Notice where you feel the emotion in your body.
And gently ask:
What are you trying to tell me?
What do you need?
What are you afraid would happen?
What would help you feel safer?
You don't have to solve anything.
You can simply let the hurting part of you know:
“I see you.”
What If Pain Is Connected to Power?
Another song that gets me is by Reuben and the Bullhorn Singers:
“If pain is power, I’m powerful.”
Could it be that there is power in becoming someone who doesn't have to run from her own experience?
Could there be strength in being able to say:
Yep. This hurts. Yep. I'm angry. Yep. I'm grieving. Yep. This brought up something old in me. And I'm still here.
Because maybe the goal isn't to become someone who never hurts.
Maybe the goal is to become someone who knows:
I can feel this and stay connected to myself.
That is different.
The Goal Isn't to Live in Pain
The goal is to have choice.
Can I distract myself because I genuinely want to? Or am I unable to be alone with myself for even 30 seconds? Can I rest? Can I feel? Can I move toward something? Can I move away from something? Can I listen inwardly before automatically reacting? That is where I think freedom begins.
What If Avoiding Pain Is Keeping Us From Feeling Fully Alive?
Here's the question that really gets me:
What if letting go of the avoidance of pain actually helped us create a life we felt less compelled to avoid?
What if we didn't spend so much energy trying to make sure we never feel uncomfortable? What if we developed more capacity to experience the full range of being human? Because being alive means being available for the whole experience.
“The Best Hearts Are Broken”
Andy Grammer sings:
“The best hearts are broken.”
I don't think this means we need to romanticize suffering.
We don't need trauma to become wise. We don't need pain to become worthy. We don't need to be broken to be good people. But there is something powerful about becoming honest about the places in ourselves that hurt. Because when we're constantly trying to hide our broken places, we're also constantly managing how other people see us.
Don't let them know I'm struggling. Don't let them know I'm angry. Don't let them know I need something. Don't let them know I'm not okay.
And that can make genuine connection really difficult.
Because if I am only willing to let you see the polished version of me, how deeply can you actually know me?
When we can begin to accept the whole of ourselves, including the messy, hurting, complicated parts. we create more room for authentic connection. As Brené Brown has explored, self-acceptance and belonging are deeply connected.
And I think there's something beautiful here:
The parts of ourselves we're most afraid to reveal are often the places where we most long to be met.
What Does It Mean to Be Your Own Safe Place?
Maybe the deepest work isn't learning how to never hurt.
Maybe it's learning:
I won't abandon myself when I hurt.
This is one of the things I love about the idea of developing an internal relationship.
We can become the person who notices. The person who listens, protects and nurtures.
The person who says:
I've got you. You don't have to figure everything out right now. We can slow down. Let's see what you need.
In Circle of Security, parents are encouraged to be the bigger, stronger, wiser, kinder presence for their children.
I think there's something beautiful about eventually developing that relationship with ourselves, too.
Not in a perfectionistic way. Not because we should be able to self-regulate every difficult experience alone. We still need other people.
But we can also begin practicing a different relationship with the person we spend every single moment of our lives with: ourselves.
So, Mamas… Rock On With That Pain
Maybe pain isn't something we need to conquer. Maybe it isn't something we need to get rid of as quickly as possible. Maybe we can learn to have a relationship with it.
To notice it. To listen. To ask what it needs. To offer ourselves compassion. To get curious. To let ourselves be supported.
And sometimes, to simply say:
This hurts.
Without immediately adding: But I shouldn't feel this way. Other people have it worse. I need to get over it. I'm fine.
Just: This hurts. And I'm here. I'm not leaving myself. I'm listening.
Because perhaps the opposite of avoiding pain isn't suffering. Perhaps the opposite of avoiding pain is presence.
And maybe that presence is where we begin to feel more fully alive. So, mamas, rock on with that pain.