Expressing Your Emotional Pain

Are you afraid of your feelings?

You could have looked at this subtitle and thought one of two things: “What’s the big deal? We all know how to deal with our feelings” or “Yes. I think my feelings are too big or to0 many or too scary”. For those with the second comment: sometimes when we find a challenge, like in addressing our emotional pain, their are benefits. Only, if we look.

I don’t know what it’s like in other states on other freeways but you’ve probably heard we have lots of traffic here in L.A.

Well, I’m scared of driving on the freeway and so I usually don’t unless someone else is traffic driving. A couple of weeks ago my husband was driving in pretty heavy weekend traffic going south on the 405. Sometimes when we drive we chat about this and that (in between grousing about the traffic and drivers). This day we were chatting about how lucky we are to have been trained how to deal with our feelings and emotional pain when along comes a license plate saying WHY HURT.

WHY HURT can mean more than one thing. It can mean:

First- “You don’t have to hurt” and I agree with that. We can make a choice. Unfortunately, many think they can’t, but still, WHY HURT?
Second (this is the reason it struck me so)- A reason to feel hurt (if you are really in touch with your feelings and know how to let them flow as they were meant to) could mean you are on your way to healing your emotional pain. HURT is milder than ANGER, on it’s way to having one know their FEARs and a bit closer to LOVE and FORGIVENESS.

So I ask you: “Why hurt?” you are so close to being in a place of love and forgiveness. Why not learn and move on and become that much closer with yourself? In the pursuit of not feeling our feelings, at the very least we become disconnected from ourselves and have problems relating to others deeply and well. Why hurt?