Processing Pain – 8 Steps to Help You Through It

When you process pain, you’re choosing to feel pain “on purpose.”

Say what?! Why on earth would you want to do that?!

Because here’s the thing, pain doesn’t go away when you avoid it. It just gets shoved to the side and then stews and festers there in the background. And if you leave it long enough, it can end up seeping out into every other aspect of your life so that your always creating this low grade unease and anxiety.

No, this is not how we live life anymore. The goal is to process and allow pain now instead of stockpiling it for later.

And you do that by actively letting it in instead of trying to escape the pain with pleasure (food, alcohol, media).

Here are eight helpful steps to break this process down:

1. Allow the feeling to be in your body. You can say in your mind “I am processing disappointment.”

2. Notice any desire to react, resist and avoid. Just let the desire be there without acting on it.

3. Acknowledge that this feeling is part of being human. Allow it to be there and notice the thoughts that increase it.

4. Write down your thoughts as they come up. Notice how they affect the feeling.

5. Don’t try to change your thoughts yet. You have to process the feeling first before you’re ready to think something different.

6. Own your pain and that you are the one causing it with your thoughts, and that is okay.

“I am responsible for this pain. I have created it with my mind. I can learn so much if I go in without resistance. I can meet myself intimately on the inside. I forgive myself for my part in this. I accept myself for who I am. I am not this experience. I am good. If I create pain with my mind, I can create relief with my mind.”

– Brooke Castillo

7. Invite yourself to let the thought that’s creating the pain go.

8. Repeat with every negative emotion that comes up. As you practice, you will get better and it will become easier.

As you start processing pain in real time when it first becomes activated, you will notice that you will have less days where you store up all the feelings and then explode three days later in a yelling and crying meltdown.

Just a year ago, I used to do this all of the time, but as I’ve worked on processing, I now catch the thoughts and feelings earlier when there’s just one or two emotions.

Instead of letting them back up (like old to-do lists or unanswered emails), I try to allow them in real time.

This is possible for you too! And the sooner you get started, the more life you’ll get to experience with this skill in your back pocket.

Avoiding Feelings – Part 2

How to feel your emotions instead and change your life.

The alternative to resisting and reacting is allowing.

Allowing is about feeling emotions in the moment as they come up.

Like a pipe with water flowing through it, when an emotion comes through, we stay wide open instead of constricting, resisting, and ultimately trapping it inside us.

Most of us have something like fear or sadness come down our pipe and we immediately close off and restrict flow. Then it’s like a blockage, and more and more emotions get stuck behind it as we continue resisting allowing it to process.

That moment when we explode on our kids or spouse, or end up crying it all out in a big overwhelming deluge, is usually the blockage getting pushed through finally.

You know that relief you feel after a good cry? It’s cause you’ve let the emotions finally come through.

But what if you could feel that relief from processing all the time, and in small manageable amounts rather than giant overwhelming floods?

It’s absolutely possible and it’s a skill that you can learn by just using 5 questions.

  1. What are you feeling now? – name one emotion
  2. Where is the feeling in your body? – heavy in your chest, tight in your throat, fluttering in your stomach
  3. What color is this feeling? – dark grey, deep red, bright green
  4. Is this feeling hard or soft?
  5. Is this feeling fast or slow?

As you go through each of these questions, stay in your body rather than your mind.

Try to experience the emotion as a sensation in your body rather than thoughts in your head.

Going forward in your life, whenever you notice yourself resisting or reacting, you can stop and take yourself through the 5 questions.

Allowing your feelings is absolutely possible and a skill that you can learn with practice.

As you learn how to process rather than resist or react, you will show up in your life more centered and empowered because you know you can feel any feeling.