Moving Through Emotional Pain

I am often asked: “As I become more conscious, is there less emotional pain? I want to live an empowered life and I no longer want to be numb to my emotions but I don’t want to experience any more pain.”

I understand not wanting to experience more pain. I understand the desire to numb oneself to not feel emotions. I have been there. This is what I learned: becoming conscious is a process and as I moved through the process step by step, there was a part of the process where I experienced excruciating emotional pain. The pain was a threshold and on the other side of the threshold I experienced a new way of being with emotion. With guidance, I found my way through the threshold of pain. I discovered I could feel emotions and allow them to move through my body without getting stuck in them or in the pain. I will share that part of my story to show you that it is possible for you too, to move through your pain.

I remember when I first became aware of my need for control. I was participating in a weekend workshop. The workshop was being facilitated by a Jungian psychoanalyst and we were using the labyrinth as a tool to access the unconscious. I had always been attracted to labyrinths and had walked many, so I was familiar with how to work with the labyrinth as a tool. I had decided to look at the pattern of control.  I had never seen myself as a person who needed to be in control. That was my mother and my husband but not me. However, I was aware enough to know that these two prominent people in my life were reflecting what I wasn’t seeing in myself. I had decided it was time to see what I had been resisting. Each time I walked the labyrinth that weekend, my intention was clear. Take me deeper. Show me more. I am willing to see. With each walk in and out of the labyrinth, more was revealed and before our last walk at the end of the workshop we were invited to write what we wanted to release on a piece of paper and burn it in the center of the labyrinth. I boldly wrote: “I release my need for control. Thy will be done!” I was all in. There was not a shred of doubt. During the weekend, I had glimpses of how I was like my mother when it came to needing control and that was not what I desired to be. 

The burning ritual was powerful and I walked out of the labyrinth with a sense of freedom. I could feel twinges of joy in my heart. As I drove home, I was thinking about the possibilities for my life with no need for control. I could see that controlling my environment, including the people around me was a pattern of protection. What if I didn’t need control as a protection? What would my life look like if I didn’t need to control? These were big life questions. I was curious to continue this journey. 

Then the unexpected unfolded. I pulled into the driveway and there before me were the wild roses that a few hours earlier had been literally wild. They had been dancing in the wind, branches adorned with pink flowers spilling onto the grass. They had been free to be and they were being. Not anymore! They had been forced upright, thrust against a wooden lattice. Their branches bound, their delicate blooms broken, leaves crumpled as they were pressed tightly against the wood. I flew out of the car in a rage. I gave no thought to what the neighbours might think. The anger and rage that had been stuffed deep within while being a good girl for too many years erupted. It was coming up and out and there was no stopping it. My husband was caught off guard. He could not comprehend why I was so angry or why I was tearing the lattice away from the roses and breaking the cords that bound them.  I had no concern for my bleeding hands nor the pain of the cuts. He didn’t know that I was not seeing roses — I was seeing myself. The roses were a mirror reflection of me — bound, forced to be something other than my wild nature, limited, and constricted. I was no longer going to be controlled. I was freeing myself.

Later as I gently pruned the broken battered branches I was no longer in a rage. My heart was broken open and I could feel my pain and the roses’ pain. The tears fell softly, cleansing our pain and I understood the pain of grief in a new way.  As I continued to tend and nurture the roses, I tended and nurtured my heart. I could see clearly that my mother and my husband were my teachers. They were mirroring my need for control and showing me the pain that pattern causes. I had unconsciously given my power to them and I was allowing them to control me. The more I resisted being controlled, the more power I gave them. Just as they needed more control, I needed to control more to keep myself safe from their control. I saw how this was a cycle of endless pain and suffering.  I could feel the pain I had caused others by my need for control and the pain I had caused myself. The pain was excruciating. I was hurting myself far more than anyone else was hurting me. I was not a victim. I was an unconscious participant in the classroom of life.

With the support of my guides, I moved though the threshold of emotional pain and in time I could appreciate my husband’s story. He had wanted to mow the lawn. The roses were in the way. He knew cutting them back would upset me so he thought he had found the perfect solution. He never expected what unfolded!

I encourage you to be aware of who is showing up in your life. What are they reflecting back at you? Is there something about the way they express themselves that irritates you? Perhaps brushes against a wound you do your best to protect?  That is your clue to a pattern, or perhaps patterns, that you are unconsciously resisting in yourself. The beauty is when you become aware of and accept the irritating pattern within yourself, you are no longer irritated when you observe it in another and you are no longer giving your power to the pattern. Your wound heals and the magic happens. You no longer enable the pattern in others and they have the opportunity to become aware of their patterns as well.