When Feelings Hurt

The other day I listened to The Life Coach School podcast Episode #379 titled ‘When Feelings Hurt’ and I loved it so much that I had to share it in a blog post. In this blog post are the notes I made: [I’m pretty sure I’ve written out the whole script lol but there is science in writing out the things that you like]

People often ask: This feeling hurts, how do I stop it?

But here is the thing – the goal isn’t to get rid of it.

When you feel a negative emotion, the goal is to move THROUGH it so that you can release it and move on.

So when people ask: it hurts, what should I do?

The answer?

Let. It. Hurt.

Really feel what it feels like in your body and let it hurt for as long as it needs to hurt WITHOUT: reacting, resisting, buffering or avoiding.

Emotional pain is caused by a thought.

In life we have a balance between positive and negative feelings. When you think something positive you feel it in your body. In the same way when you think something negative you feel it in the body.

When feelings hurt it’s because we are having negative thoughts and we experience them as painful.

We have a negative thought and it causes emotional pain. This is different to the thoughts you have ABOUT your pain.

So when you have a negative thought and it causes pain allow yourself to feel it. Really feel it and be able to describe what it feels like – is it  a purse on your shoulder? Is it a heavy weight in your stomach. When you can describe it in words you become stronger and more aware of what the pain feels like.

If you get good at thinking a thought, feeling the emotion then letting it go and understanding it THEN you can change the thought if you want. A lot of the times we don’t want to change the thought causing the pain. We want to process them and come out the other side so that we can move on. Unprocessed emotions will always come out.

The goal isn’t to be happy 100% of the time as that would mean being happy about awful things.

The goal is to live an expansive life, an evolved life, a large life.

50% of the time feelings will hurt but when we reduce the upset about our upset then we reduce half of the pain in our lives!

If you’ve never experienced a negative emotion you are not going to be able to connect with another human being.

Here is a quote from the podcast that will forever stay with me:

“If it doesn’t hurt when someone dies, you are missing the joy of them being alive”

Let it hurt when it hurts, even if it’s your thoughts causing you pain.

Let it ache sometimes, let yourself go all the way in and feel the pain through. You will feel a clean release if you allow the pain to be there.

What we do as humans is we buffer away hard feelings with junk food, drugs, porn and alcohol.

Allow yourself to be alive in the vibration of the emotion.

Once you’ve allowed the pain fully you will be able to access the thought causing it.

Your thoughts will move from:

1)    This shouldn’t be happening/ why is this happening to me???!!!! [it’s when you argue with your current life reality]

2)    This is happening and that’s ok

3)    This is supposed to be happening and I will be ok

 Note that number three isn’t about accepting pain as a deserved pain but about seeing that it isn’t about you at all.

We are always going to be in pain that we can’t control the universe, that we can’t make other people behave the way we want, that we can’t have other people get the good fortune that we want them to have or the success/happiness we want for them.

It will be painful to watch people do things we don’t want them to do like hurt themselves.

This is LIFE. It’s a risk, you’re not always winning the lottery.

 There is risk in business, in relationships, in life. Hearts can be broken which is a risk.

If you can handle the pain of being alive, you’re always going to be willing to take that risk, to go where you can feel at the highest level of emotion.

You will be able to feel the depth of good & bad feelings and STILL keep going and do it all again.

SO when feelings hurt – celebrate that you are an alive human being, allow the emotions to be there, process them then release them.

The better you get at processing emotions the better you get at life as feeling your feeling is one of the most powerful things you can do.

There is no emotion that can kill us so long as we are willing to process it.

You can decide to not feel on purpose or to feel on purpose – it’s your choice.

When you don’t walk away from pain and you process it – you will be strong enough to come third, to win, to fail, to learn, to grow and ultimately….. 

TO LIVE THIS HUMAN LIFE TO THE BIGGEST OF YOUR POTENTIAL.

If you enjoyed reading my writing of the episode definitely go listen to the episode. Brook has a way of talking that really inspires action. It’s an episode you will want to go back and listen to over and over. When you re listen to it you will get further lessons that you didn’t get the first time. 

The podcast is free to listen to on Spotify, Apply Podcast player and other podcast apps. I like to use Podcast Guru. The series is called The Life Coach School by Brooke Castillo and the above episode is episode number 379.

If you do listen to it I would love to know your key learning points.