No One Tells Us Just How Painful Certain Phases Of Our Lives Will Be

There are periods of life that feel horrible. I think most of us at some point go through at least one period like this. This can ring true the older we get and the more situations and people we encounter. As much as we try to discard the emotions and pretend they aren’t there, they roar with a furry and distort our life outlook. We think we are tougher than what life is throwing at us, but we succumb to the pain.

Sometimes this leads to ill behavior. We take up some form of substance use, start binge eating, become obsessed with our social media feeds or engage in some other form of distracting or destructive behavior. It temporarily makes us feels better. It temporarily lifts us away from the pain and lets us indulge and feast on the ephemeral pleasures of life, but the pain arises again. It still cracks through. We are on a high and then the crash of our current reality is still there.

We must face that the person we care about has moved on. We must face that we will no longer see our person again. We must face our mortality. We must face the ills of the world. We must confront our negative aspects. We must no longer pretend that we can just go on about things as they are.

We’ve got to change something. It might be our actual physical actions in the real world that we must change, or it might be a complete mindset shift on how we handle and view the world. We might have to let in solutions that we overlooked before. We might have to finally just cut the cord on a long-held connection. We might have to spend time in intense therapy to truly handle our past.

However, It’s not hopeless. Our pain is there, but we can bring just a little bit of resolve to it. While radical shifts might be necessary, small shifts can be transformative as well. We might have to just list one thing a week that we are hopeful about. We might have to spend only 10 minutes being mindful every other day. We might have to just stop seeing a certain person one less time a month. It might be small things over time that will heal the pain.

Whether we are currently in a painful time in our life or on the other side, we can understand ourselves and other people better. We understand that things often don’t go our way and that is the way it is. This one can be very hard to truly grasp. When our idea of what is fair is challenged, right in front of our face, we must shift. Instead, it is better to accept this reality. It does not mean that we cannot pursue fairness in our own life. it doesn’t mean we have to give up our values because someone else didn’t comply. However, we must realize that not everyone views the world the way we do. Not everyone feels the pain in the same way.

Only in our own experience can we feel our pain the way we do. We can’t expect another to always pick us up when we are down. It’s nice when we get support. It’s nice when we get love. It’s nice when we have pain free experiences, but it does not help us to become strong if we want only feelings of ease all of the time. We can make incredible leaps in life when we have the pain with us and transform it into guidance for our future selves.

Photo credit: Road Trip with Raj on Unsplash