“No tree, it is said, can grow to heaven, unless its roots reach down to hell.”
Carl Jung
I’ve been enchanted by pain for as long as I can remember; it just seems cool. My favorite fictional characters are usually the dark ones – Batman**, The Hound from Game of Thrones. I love blues songs about how awful the singer’s life is. And I’ve always enjoyed religious imagery about devils and hell much more than the kind with angels and heaven.
Despite being drawn to these things in stories, I have a tendency to resist all these feelings in myself. I hope that tendency will be weakened by creating this post. So I’m writing to sing praises to emotional pain – sadness, depression, anxiety, and the like.
Sometimes I go through emotionally dark periods. Coming from a privileged background, I’ve never really had anything awful happen in my life – which only makes me more upset for not being happy. I get sad about being sad about being ashamed about not being fulfilled about feeling guilty… on and on. And it seems the more I resist, the worse I feel.
It isn’t until I stop judging myself for not being happy that I can finally get through it and move on. I have to stop trying to be positive and focus on being real.
Rather than resist and beat myself up about experiencing pain, here’s some reasons why I want to accept my pain:
- Resistance to unpleasant emotions tends to make them last longer.
- My pain defines me just as much as my pleasure. Thinking I shouldn’t feel pain is like saying I shouldn’t be me.
- Unpleasant feelings are inevitable
- Pain can often be the impetus for greatness. Batman’s parents getting killed is what drove him to be a superhero.
How do I stop resisting my pain? I don’t have to do anything. I just have to NOT do whatever I normally do: reach for my cell phone, food, or other distractions; beat myself up about not feeling good; or whatever other clever technique my brain comes up with for not facing my pain. So next time I catch myself doing these things, I will try to pause, remember this post, and embrace the pain full on.
What’s your relationship like with pain and negativity?
* Shout out to Jun’ichirō Tanizaki
** Here’s my favorite page in The Dark Knight Returns where Batman is totally owning his shit
thank you, reading your post make me remember i am doing exact same thing. I will print your saying and making it stay in to my memory…and just start learning qigong and tai chi and watching your videos i learned so many things about china, which do fascinate me. So keep doing it. Someone has to teach, but first has to learn…so thank you.
Joži
Thanks for watching the documentaries and reading the posts, glad you liked them. I will definitely ‘keep doing it.’ Where are your writing from?
Slovenia.