Why do we cling to pain and suffering instead of letting go ?





  Pain is unavoidable. But Suffering is a choice.
     
Some time back I was tapping on a problem, and  underneath a bunch of issues I found traumas and pain from my  past. So I tapped on "I have past traumas", and then suddenly I found myself saying "I want past traumas"... (Tapping means EFT, a powerful way of bringing out subconscious stuff).  And that made me realise that I have a bunch of reasons for  holding on to pain.



     We all have had pain in our past, and most of us hold on to that pain.


   Remember a painful, tragic, sad or embarrassing incident form your past. Do you still feel the pain / shame / sadness?
  Why ?
  Why feel negative emotions about something that is in the past,  that is over ?


      Why do we hold on to pain ?

    We can choose to let go of suffering, to end that painful  relationship, to forgive ourselves. That would be logical, I  mean, everyone wants to be happy and all that, right ? But we  keep on holding to all that negative crap. Why ?

  Here are some reasons that occurred to me:

  We hold on to pain...
  * To get attention and sympathy from others (poor girl, your  husband treats you so badly)
  * The pain or problem is a part of who we think we are (I am  the girl with the eating disorder) If we let it go we would  feel lost !
  * We have an excuse to do or not to do certain stuff (no  wonder I have a drinking problem, after my partner left me life  has never been the same)
  * We think that remembering the pain that was caused by making  that mistake will help us to remember that lesson (I was  careless with my money, I lost it and then my parents shouted at  me. Remembering my humiliation will help me to be careful with my  stuff in the future)In  fact the opposite is true: if something is associated with  negative emotions, then our brain tries to avoid processing it.  We remember better if we remove the negative thing attached to  it.
  * We are mentally lazy, it doesn´t occur to us that we can  work on past pain; nobody ever told us about such things !
  * Pride: we prefer to pretend that we didn´t go through pain,  because we don´t want to appear weak. This is often truer for  men, because of the social stereotypes of "boys don´t cry".  (Of course I wasn´t afraid of that ! Of course it didn´t hurt  !)


  So, that´s all I can think of. What other reasons can  you come up with ?


  More on the topic:  
Are You in Love with your Pain ?
The Sedona method's four ways of releasing.

Photo by charlotte miceli  





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