If you believe it’s the right time for you to let go of emotional pain, here are nine steps you can take
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Overcome Emotional Pain and Learn to Love Yourself Again with These 9 Steps
Step 1: Don’t Ask Questions Yet
It’s not uncommon for people to ease emotional pain by asking questions like:
- Why did this happen to me?
- Where did I go wrong?
- How can I correct my mistakes?
- What will people think of me?
- Will this person love me back?
When your emotions are still raw, it’s not the best time to ask questions. Otherwise, they can lead to more confusion, hurt, and pain.
Instead, be still. Acknowledge what you’re feeling because that’s the only thing that’s real and that you can understand as of the moment.
Step 2: Learn to Deal with Your Anxiety and Depression
Depression and emotional pain usually go together, and that’s normal. The problem is emotional pain can end up manifesting through physical pain such as diarrhea and stomach cramps.
The reason is physiology. The vagus nerve creates a link between the brain and the gut.
The gut is sensitive to stress, regardless of the kind. It can cause changes to the biodiversity or makeup of your microbiome.
A significant part of learning how to cope with emotional pain is managing your depression, anxiety, and other negative emotions. You can do that with the following:
- Consume healthy foods that support your gut health.
- Learn to relax by meditation or yoga.
- Take walks around nature.
- Exercise to increase your serotonin levels.
- Surround yourself with people who support and love you.
- Get the right amount of high-quality sleep as often as you can.
What is serotonin? It is a neurotransmitter or chemical messenger in the brain that influences mood, appetite, and sleep.
Note: When depression and anxiety feel like they’re too much to take, please don’t hesitate to get professional help.
Step 3: Allow Yourself to Grieve and Savor It
You may be dealing with emotional pain because you feel you lost something. It can be your marriage, finances, career, or friendship.
Any loss is painful, but teaching yourself how to not feel emotional pain is only counterproductive. Your negative emotions will only accumulate.
Instead of running away from it or hiding it, savor it and feel it. It’s part of what makes you human.
Most of all, by embracing what you’re going through, you can be more open to the many ways of ultimately healing yourself.
Go on and read those emotional pain quotes and think back on what happened.
Step 4: Learn to Understand the Whys
Hopefully, by now, you are less emotional and more rational. You are more receptive to actually learning the reasons for the pain and failure.
This is the right time to start healing emotional pain by going back to your questions. Analyze and look at the events with a more objective perspective.
Step 5: Be Kind
During the course of your analysis, it’s possible you’ll realize a significant part of it is your own doing. You may then begin to judge yourself.
Self-judging is also normal, but overly criticizing will not help you learn how to get over emotional pain.
When you made mistakes, the first person you should ask forgiveness to is yourself. Accept the reality that you are capable of making them.
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Step 6: Free Yourself
One of the essential steps when it comes to how to release emotional pain is learning to let go. After all, there’s only one person you can control in any situation: you.
There are different ways to free yourself from emotional pain:
- Apologize to the people you hurt.
- Write down all your thoughts and emotions and then hide them somewhere (or burn them).
- Take a trip as a form of reset.
- Share your experience with others.
Step 7: Take Your Time
Here’s the reality when it comes to teaching yourself how to get rid of emotional pain — it won’t happen overnight.
There will be good and bad days. Sometimes, it feels you’re taking a few steps backward or that you didn’t move on.
That happens because emotions are dynamic, so don’t beat yourself up. Instead, ride with the highs and lows.
Step 8: Relearn to Love Yourself
When it seems you went through hell and back, you will feel broken and empty. One of the most powerful steps you can take to learn how to heal emotional pain is to relearn self-love.
Ask yourself, what are the changes you can do today to make yourself a better person? For example, you may need to practice self-gratitude.
This alone can do wonders. It can boost your self-confidence and inspire you to take care of yourself better.
It can also affect how you think. Self-gratitude can decrease your negative emotions such as resentment, jealousy, and pain.
Figure out these changes and take those baby steps as soon as you can.
Step 9: Show the World Some Love
When you learn how to love yourself again, you will discover you have more love to give. One of the ways for how to overcome emotional pain is to share your love with others:
- Say thank you to people who helped you in your journey.
- Take care of the planet by planting trees or reducing waste.
- Teach children or share your passion with others.
- Be generous with your I-love-yous.
- Inspire the people you meet on social media.
- Support organizations and causes you care about.
There’s no shortcut when it comes to learning how to stop emotional pain. It’s not even a straightforward path.
There’s a light at the end of the dark tunnel, however. You may feel defeated and beaten today, but you can also teach yourself to dust yourself off and stand up.
Before you know it, what you went through becomes your biggest teacher about life. You then become a better version of yourself.
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