Tools: Dealing with festering low-level pain

Introduction: What’s festering inside you?

Even if you think you are happy, you might have some toxic emotions festering inside you. Any personal development quest or a search for happiness requires a seeker to deal with this.

This exercise will yield some surprising results. It aims at uncovering “hidden” negative emotions, some of which might have been there for years. Even when you feel happy or peaceful, you would be surprised to discover there is some undercurrent of sadness or anger inside you.

I believe in fact that these “hidden” emotions are not, in fact, hidden. Rather, they’re so much a part of us that we no longer notice them, although the toxicity still eats away at us from the inside.

There is a physical analogy for this that I have: A few years ago, a minor spine injury I suffered in training began hurting so much that I desperately began looking for health care practitioners that could fix it. After trying many different therapies and practitioners, I eventually found one which worked. The pain disappeared for days. But after a week, my spine started hurting again, and I booked in for another appointment.

At first I was thinking that he didn’t fix the injury, and that it had returned. But it wasn’t the case. He checked my spine, and told me that in fact, he had fixed that injury. The pain I was feeling was in fact the pain that I have been carrying for years prior, caused by poor posture and obesity. I had become so accustomed to it that it didn’t register consciously. The reason it felt like fresh pain to me was because I had been pain-free the week before.

This is the case for emotional pain as well. Much like old physical injuries, they have a way of destroying your body slowly, sometimes without you noticing.

The reasons behind these sensations

These “background” resentments are a bit harder to understand then more intense emotions. Eckhart Tolle, in his powerful works The Power of NOW and A New Earth, states that they are caused by a few structures of the ego. See if any of them apply to you:

- This shouldn’t be happening to me.

- I need to get (a new relationship, a new job, more money)

- Something happened to me in the past that shouldn’t have happened.

All of these carry in common a theme of waiting – waiting to live, waiting for something to bring you happiness, waiting for something to be cleared so you can be free.

Tolle goes on to explain that you cannot live in the future or the past. If you waiting for a future event to make you happy, it cannot – for Now is the only time you are alive, and the only time you can ever be happy. When the future comes, it is no longer the future, but Now. The same applies to past burdens. You cannot live in the past, there is only Now. Think about it.

He also goes into detail about the ego, which is the root of unhappiness, as well as the pain-body. I won’t go into them here, but he suggests observing the unhappiness – a part of which is accepting it – and it will slowly be transmuted into what he calls Presence (a deep peace and inner stillness). In essence, as you observe your unhappiness, it disappears.

I agree with his observation method, but I also find that using a combination of observation and letting your emotions out safely and healthily work better for me, hence the exercise below.

Checking deep inside yourself

Get into a habit of doing the exercise described below regularly; at the end of every day if you have time; otherwise at the end of a week. The stresses of everyday life are personally one of the ways that this pain comes back in. Another reason I’ve found would be your environment; physical discomfort or extreme heat, for example.

1. The first step to this is to find a quiet space. You might want to be alone or with a trusted person.

2. Take a few deep breaths. If you watch your breath, you won’t even need to make it purposely deep. Just observe it, feel the air as it enters your nose and goes down your airways into your lungs. It’ll naturally enter deep into your belly. Practise this for a minute or two, until your emotions settle and you are calm and quiet.

3. Allow yourself to feel safe. For some, gazing at yourself can be scary. Know that while it might be difficult, it is nothing you cannot handle, and the results are worth it.

4. Now just invite anything to come into your space. It could be flashbacks, bodily sensations, or an emotional sensation, or a voice expressing what you feel. Most likely it is there already, but you have not noticed it.

5. Don’t fight it. Accept it. Let any emotions bubble up to the front. If you have to laugh, cry, or rage, then do so. Do not suppress it. Let it run until the charge is spent.

6. Once you’ve come out of it, you might want to write down what you experienced or relived.

Feeling fine? Or do you think you know what you are upset about?

Give this exercise a shot even if you feel fine. There might be some hidden current of sadness. If you are upset and you think that you know what you are upset about, try it anyway. It only takes a few minutes.

It might help to know what others went through in this exercise. A few weeks ago I tried this again after a long period of emotional work, and feeling on top of the world. Surprisingly I discovered a deep sadness still inside me. This exercise cleared out the remaining sadness.

Another time I did this exercise was when I was consciously upset over a recent relationship break-up. I thought I knew the reason I was upset – loneliness and a broken heart – but as I discovered, relationship break-ups often trigger older feelings, such as abandonment and hurt. Doing this exercise brought back several childhood memories, long forgotten or repressed, that were multiplying the hurt. Identifying them it allowed me to make much headway in clearing out the cobwebs.

Since then, I’ve done quick checks on myself throughout the course of a normal day, whenever I remember to. Sometimes I don’t even have to do it alone; quick checks can be done anywhere – for example if you are in a traffic jam or waiting in line at the bank.

These quick checks often reveal bodily sensations. Sometimes it reveals tightness in the chest or neck, or a heat, or a dark heavy feeling. Often minor sensations will disappear simply because you have accepted it and begun slow breathing. Stronger emotions run deeper and will require continued work and will have to wait until you can go somewhere you can spend time alone.