Be your own biggest well-wisher

My uncle recently had a wheelchair run over his foot. It hurt his leg badly and he was in severe pain. He was unable to walk. He finally took some painkillers to ease the pain. The pain was numbed, so he began walking again instead of resting his leg. The wound hadn’t healed yet so his foot began to swell and he had to finally stop walking for sometime and give it some rest.

Have you ever burnt yourself on a flame? Touched a vessel when it was too hot? Cut your finger while chopping veggies? Stubbed your little toe on the table (the worst!)? What was your first reaction? To move the hell away! To put yourself out of harms way.

Pain serves very specific purposes. It alerts you that what you are doing is hurting the body. It makes you stop doing that specific action. And the memory of pain makes you careful to not repeat that action in the future.

This isn’t limited to physical pain though. We can extrapolate it to the emotional pain we all endure at some point or the other. Emotional pain and trauma appear as a result of something harmful we are inadvertently exposed to (or expose ourselves to). It’s a pain often harder to bear than physical hurt. You don’t have any scar to show that you are hurting inside. People can’t see it so they may not always believe you. Yet the pain persists.

My thought is simple. Consider emotional pain like the physical one. Try to find out what it is that is causing you this. Can you step away from it? If not, can you minimise it? Is it something you are doing? Will stopping that ease the pain? Whatever you do, don’t ignore the pain. Don’t try to numb it with short term ‘painkillers’ or distract it with other things. It will only swell like my uncle’s foot did and leave you unable to function. Face the pain and go to its root to completely heal yourself.

If it takes therapy to reach that state, go for it. Don’t listen to people telling you that therapy is for ‘crazy people’ only. Don’t walk around hurting inside and smiling outside. Your emotional and mental health matters more than the opinion of others.

Be your own biggest well-wisher.

MentalHealth #Pain