Most people aren’t fans of emotional pain. Nevertheless, it’s part of the human condition. Let’s look at ways to move through pain with more ease, and see what can be learned in the process.
We humans are made up of minds, bodies, emotions. This makes up an interconnected system that enables us to dream, reflect, work, play, and feel. The feelings we experience vary, depending on our personalities, history, connection to our body sensations, and openness to vulnerability. This means that each of us has a different and unique experience with our emotions: some of us feel little; some feel a lot; some feel something, but we don’t know what.
Self-compassion is a practice to be fostered. With self-compassion, we can gain self-awareness around our emotional reactions and appreciation for ourselves and our emotions; we can access new ways to process emotional pain and mobilize ourselves to find supportive connection. All these actions lead to a new relationship with emotional pain and healing.
The range of emotions we can experience includes joy, sadness, love, anger, fear, and surprise. Generally, people are more okay with some emotions than others, hence the tendency to label them as good/pleasurable or bad/painful.
It’s useful to remember that we’re all different in what we feel, why we feel it, and how comfortable/uncomfortable we are with the feeling. We also differ in how long we’re willing/wanting to hold a feeling. We may attempt to prolong or repeat pleasure, and avoid or stop pain.
Although we’re designed to be thinking and feeling beings, we’ve also developed societies and cultures that encourage us to tamp down our feelings, sometimes completely and sometimes selectively.
As social animals, we learn from an early age to moderate and manage our emotional expression. We may also do this in response to traumatic experiences. Sometimes this occurs to such a degree that a person feels very little: when asked how they feel, they honestly don’t know. Regardless of our emotional make-up, there are inevitably tough patches, whether it’s feeling too much or too little, or experiencing a rollercoaster of feelings.
Sometimes we experience emotional pain that seems out of proportion to the current situation. This can occur when we’ve inadvertently tapped into a stored experience. Leslie Sanderson, a registered clinical counsellor who specializes in trauma-informed and somatic approaches, says that “leading trauma experts believe our bodies do hold emotional pain.
“When we experience overwhelming emotional pain, our nervous system responds in the following ways:
P = get Present but don’t Panic A = Accept what you’re experiencing; verbalize and acknowledge it U = Understand what you’re feeling; why are you feeling it? S = Sensations are the language of emotions; identify what you need E = find a way of Expressing your emotions that’s healing and helpful
Regardless of the source of our emotional pain, we can learn to handle it with more ease. This begins with self-awareness: noticing we’re in discomfort, and engaging our curiosity to ponder its origins and its impact.
With conscious breath, and a safe place to be vulnerable, we can explore our feelings rather than attempting to avoid or shut down. Accessing some compassion for whatever we’re feeling helps us to honour our experience.
This technique involves noticing emotional pain and associated sensations, then finding a place in your body that feels comfortable or peaceful. Slowly shift your focus from the place of comfort to the place of discomfort and back again, noticing how the sensations in the place of discomfort start to shift and change.
Creative and gentle movements allow your body to move intuitively with the emotions; gentle and slow yoga practices can help the body process stuck emotions.
Our bodies hold the patterns of our emotional experiences. You can use your breath to gently release areas of tension, energize your system, or help your body settle.
A therapist can provide a grounding and supportive presence, help you regulate your emotions, and help you shift your perspective.
Creativity is widely thought to be a right-brain process, which is also where emotional pain is lodged. Connecting with our right brains may allow for processing emotional experiences and implicit memories that are stored there.
Remember and/or cultivate intrapersonal, interpersonal, and environmental resources.
In addition to consulting your family doctor, or seeking out a therapist, there are a number of supplements which may support us in managing emotional discomfort.
Supplement |
Potential uses |
St. John’s wort |
sleep, anxiety, mild to moderate depression |
vitamin B complex |
memory function related to depression |
ashwagandha |
relieve stress and anxiety, improve sleep |
L-theanine |
decrease anxiety, improve sleep |
rhodiola |
decrease anxiety and depression and improve memory |
magnesium |
decrease anxiety, improve sleep |
Whether we’re having a tough day, or a tough year, there are many things we can do to understand what we’re feeling, to relieve some of the discomfort, and to support our bodies and nervous systems in the process. There are numerous ideas in this article with which you can experiment, to find what fits best for you. And, always―remember to breathe.
This article was originally published in the July 2025 issue of alive magazine.