View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by Julia Kretschmann (@julika.illustration)

“I’m okay, I’m fine, I’m not hurt, I’m surviving.”

We keep hearing this on a daily basis as we become more and more numb toward major things that impact our entire being.

But it’s not okay, and our problems should not be disregarded.

What if we should get hurt? What if the pain fuels the next rise? What if it is a step toward happiness? But how could that be? What’s this paradox? How can it make sense?

Today, I want to share with you how I learned that pain is an inevitable fate for everyone who’s seeking happiness and healing. (And no, I am not a masochist—trust me).

Let’s start from our physiology as beings on Earth. When our body senses a natural predator attacking it, when it feels something is wrong, when it’s not functioning properly due to a certain disease or injury, the first response is pain.

Like a ringing alarm, a red flag, or a caution sign, pain triggers our attention and orients us toward an illness or a malfunction in our fragile bodies. It shows us that something needs to be taken care of, handled, or fixed to restore our bodies’ functions properly.

But what happens if we disregard that pain? What if we just silence it with some analgesics? Then pain will grow bigger and bigger. It will become unbearable, it will make our lives a living hell, and the more we disregard this warning sign, the more irreparable the problem becomes. The damage becomes permanent, and we are left with a sequelae that will affect how we function and the quality of our lives.

To mitigate that effect, or even prevent it from happening, we consult our doctors to get to the root of the problem and treat the cause of the pain—therefore, not only treating a symptom, but the disease itself and its origin, restoring our bodies back to normal.

It is the same with emotional and psychological pain. We are fragile human beings who are walking this Earth and getting affected by each other, by society’s norms, by inequality, by shallow views of life, by the common belief of having to be strong 24/7, and shoving our emotions in and not letting them get to us or prevent us from carrying on with whatever other problems we have.

We disregard our pain and emotions on a daily basis without even noticing. We believe that everything is okay and can be accepted (despite what we think or believe in) just because we are influenced by how things roll in our surroundings. We never question or doubt that some ways might be hurting us and preventing us from reaching our full capacity, from reaching our potential, from moving forward, and most important of all, from becoming happier and mentally healthier.

No, sexual abuse is not okay; being cornered to do what we don’t love in life is not okay; not being able to be with someone we love is not okay; domestic abuse is not okay; growing up in broken homes is not okay; being bullied is not okay; being in a toxic relationship is not okay; being hurt by close people and facing them is not okay; being wrongly accused of things is not okay.

Everything eventually takes its toll on us and affects our being and how we carry ourselves. A lot of things might threaten our happiness and keep us away from the people our hearts want us to be. But we must have a limit—a red line that can’t be crossed because some things should not be okay.

Getting out of those situations is amazing, but it is only the beginning of the moving on process.

We cannot carry that huge burden, that gigantic soul-breaking, earth-shattering pain, simply disregarding its existence and moving on to the next phase of life. That burden might trigger a lot of passive-aggressive behaviors, a tendency to feel unhappy and down all the time, and the inability to love and feel loved (it might even trigger the tendency to run away when things get rough).

Every behavior we exhibit is explained by how much we have been through and how much we push the unresolved into the back of our subconscious mind—pain simply gets the best of us. So why do we disregard its existence? Why deny it its right from manifesting, even though it is a sign from our souls and hearts to get to the bottom of the problem and “treat the cause”?

Pain is the beautiful bridge from wound to scar. We shall hold it up, acknowledge it, and feel it. We should break, fall apart, and let it get to the best of us. Let it burn to rise and overcome our horrible situations. Let’s allow it to turn us into better people, with more self-awareness, self-acceptance, self-love, and self-understanding.

To heal from something means we know it happened. We felt it, it hurt, we cried our souls out, we understood it, we knew its repercussions, and now, we are ready to put it behind us. For how can we heal from something we don’t want to deal with or refuse to admit it exists?

So dear friends, I really and most sincerely know that I have been through a lot of pain and suffering, and I have learned the hard way not to pretend I’m strong and not to fake it when I am not okay. I learned to embrace my bad days, my pain, to overcome them, and to turn myself into the masterpiece I want to become.

I also learned that it is okay to pause and to not be okay for a while. It is also okay to ask for help if we are not able to deal with our problems on our own.

I truly hope this changes our way of handling problems and hardships, and I will end this by a line from a song by The Script called “Superheroes” that I adore and that super motivates me.

Here it goes:

“Every day, every hour, turn the pain into power.”

~