Pain is avoiding how you feel

When we hear the word trauma, we think it’s something physical or violent, but that only encapsulates 1% of trauma. When actually 100% of trauma is emotionally based.

“Trauma is when your parents don’t acknowledge how you feel.”

The reason why that is is because “you are your feelings.” Therefore, when a parent doesn’t acknowledge how you feel, they don’t acknowledge you.

When there is trauma, there is pain. When somebody punches you, you feel pain. What is the number one thing that all children do in response to emotional trauma (especially when they cannot change their parents’ hurtful behavior and their parents are unwilling to acknowledge how they feel)?

They DISSOCIATE.

Some methods of dissociation are:

• Overthinking

• Denial

• Feeling emotionally numb or blocking things out

• Addiction or addictive behavior

• Being forgetful or having a poor memory

• Difficulty focusing

• Blaming yourself (i.e. shame & feeling not enough)

Dissociation is a survival coping mechanism of the inner child not to feel pain but we carry it all the way into adulthood which wreaks havoc on us.

Why?

Because trauma is when your parents don’t acknowledge how you feel, all trauma results in the same pain, which is the pain of feeling unseen and unheard. If pain is feeling unseen and unheard, what does pain want and need?

Pain wants to feel seen and heard.

However, every time we feel pain, what do we naturally do? We push it away through dissociation. Every time we push away the pain that feels unseen, unheard, alone, and invisible, the pain only then feels more unseen, more unheard, more alone, and more invisible.

The simple truth is:

“Pain is avoiding how you feel”

This means when we feel pain we are feeling the pain of avoiding how we feel. That’s what pain truly is. Pain is a reminder that we are abandoning ourselves emotionally.

To find the emotional peace we are craving, we must do the very opposite of what comes naturally to us. Instead of pushing away our feelings, we must integrate them. Integration is accepting your feelings as a part of yourself.

Remember, you are your feelings and your feelings are your inner child. When you accept your feelings as a part of yourself you are accepting your inner child as a part of yourself.