A Hurting Heart

[Pondering]

Does anyone ever feel so much emotional pain that it physically hurts? How do you cope with pain that painful?

 

[Spiller]

How do you cope with pain that painful?

Hey Cheryl, I'm so sorry for your pain, I suffer constant emotional pain too, from years of isolation and being different, I guess.
Being open and honest here.. I'm not about to advocate self-harm, alcohol and cannabis to anyone, but I find medical cannabis particularly helpful, as well as daily meditation and excercise (I run till I feel better).
I'm also learning how to socialise, finding hobby groups that share similar interests, I've joined my local Aspie group.. I always feel better for a little contact with like-minded people.

 

[Warmheart]

I suspect that some of us have extremely deep, strong emotions, and a sensitive heart. I am so sorry for your suffering. Perhaps over time we develop some coping skills, ways to release our frustrations, and work-arounds to function while we process strong feelings. Sometimes the emotions really kick our butts, though!

I really like Spiller's idea of finding a local ASD group to hang out with. That's a really positive thing to do.

What helps me: T'ai chi, walking, long hot showers, being in nature, a good laugh, Zen meditation, being on probiotics daily, and having a good laugh. Oops, I said that already.. well, it really helps me.

We really can feel tossed about by our strong feelings. It helps me to remember: Emotions are temporary. It's hard when our bodies get into the act and respond with additional tension. Motion can soothe and bring relief, clear away the feelings easier, and to help sweep out the physical manifestations of our stress. Walks help.

I am wishing you a gentle peace and a strong measure of comfort today.

 

[DogwoodTree]

There are times I'm curled up in a ball because the pain is so bad. It usually starts in my left arm, and works its way up through the rest of me. Sometimes there are things I can do to distract myself until it fades a little...Star Trek reruns are a favorite standby because I've turned to them repeatedly throughout my life (I'm 41...started with Star Trek when I was in high school). If it's daytime and I can spare the time, hiking (even if it's rainy and yucky, I don't care) sometimes helps. Journaling, playing my guitar, listening to music, that kind of thing.

Recently I've started to think of emotions as energy, like a spiritual energy. If it gets all bottled up inside me, it causes problems. The normal mental trickery that people advise you to try, like beating on a pillow or yelling at the top of your lungs, doesn't help me a bit. I only feel more disconnected, coupled with guilt at not being like everyone else.

What has started to help is to think of myself as being part of, like, an electrical circuit. To drain the energy off, I have to be grounded. So I imagine that I'm directing the painful energy into the ground, deeper and deeper. Have you ever been to a place like Ruby Falls or Mammoth Cave? Sometimes, when I follow the painful energy into the ground, I find hidden treasures like that. Caves are rather quiet and peaceful and constant in temperature. They might be dark and ugly in ways, too, so I'm not saying I've found some panacea under there. But there's a peace in that place that I can draw from as I return to the surface.

When a crash starts to hit, the sooner I can direct the energy groundward, the sooner I start to come out of it later. It's tough, and it hurts, and there are times I just want to give up (for real). But I always come out of it, and I always reach a point later where I look around and say, I'm glad I'm here for this.

The pain is very real. The problems are real. For me, the key has been to choose to grieve my losses instead of letting myself demand what I can't have. I don't think that's a "formula for success" to solve everyone's problems, but maybe it helps just to know you're not the only one having to face this battle.

 

[Kirsty]

At the beginning of this year, Cheryl, someone special left me and I had pains in my chest for months. I couldn't breathe well because of the confused state and suppressing my feelings. I became depressed and distant with no one to turn to. It physically hurt plus emotionally. All I did was snap at people that didn't deserve it. Eventually the tears came out at once sobbing hard over messenger chat after someone asked if I was alright.

 

[nightowl]

I often feel physical pain when I am hurt or upset for something. This is something I experience quite often. Just as the members have mentioned different ways of dealing with it, or coping. I also have my own "toolbox" which has grown in size over the years. If possible I try to deal with the source of the pain, but when I am unable to do that, I try to let the feelings out, instead of locking them up inside me. Sometimes I try to distract myself by keeping myself busy, listening to music I like, or reading. Exercise is always good, it boosts endorphines in the body, so exercise is a win-win choice at any time.

In the end, we're all different, and our ways of coping with emotional pain might as will differ depending on the cause of it, and where we are in our lives...

 

[Rocco]

Copious supplies of dried flowers smoldering in a glass smoking apparatus, blank canvases and copious supplies of bright colors to paint with. And I also come here and message/chat/vent.

 

[Harrison]

When I was seventeen I watched my friend have a tatoo on his back, from his yelps and face pulling I guessed it wasn't painless. In my twenties I saw a film where some tribe inserted small stones under the skin to create patterns, others cut themselves.

Why mention that?

The painful times of my life, and there have been many, are the tattoos or stones in my soul. Like my fingerprints they are unique to me, my journey, and tell the story of how I lived my life. I understand that in order to appreciate joy I require pain, how else do I measure it. One flows from the other and even when my heart feels like it's breaking, I know it is because I have experienced the opposite to that moment.

 

[watersprite]

Yes I have felt a lot of pain and yet while I don't want to re-visit those experiences, they've shaped my life and my perceptions. When I've been in extreme pain I don't function much and all my energy focuses down on surviving it. It has manifested in various physical pains, most of the time my back, neck and head. I draw, paint and take walks or runs, & sometimes a drink but I keep that strictly controlled as I've seen what can happen with that. For me I am probably really lucky because the pain gets translated (can't think of the right words here), eventually in to my drawings and paintings.

 

[rx7chick]

When I get hurt, it happens so fast I have no time to think about ways to head it off. It's like getting hit by a train. I get chest pains, and in my arms and my hands. I lost someone to the war in Iraq, and for about 3 years I felt like I was falling off a tall building. I came close to suicide because of exhaustion from the feeling of falling. Finally meditation helped me to get my body calmed down. I am a permanently sad person and I feel tired all the time from the endless tidal waves of emotion. I have learned how to insulate and isolate to protect myself from intense emotional responses, and find distractions I enjoy. I write, I read, I play serious computer games, study physics...keep my mind occupied so I don't dwell on loss. I have a job, plus I am a volunteer teacher of small children, and I have learned to compartmentalize...when I am in my teaching mode, that is all I do. It's important not to let yourself get into situations where you brood. Stay busy with things you enjoy, so you don't go off into your head.

I am so sorry for your pain. If you find something, anything, that eases it, repeat it, and keep finding ways to minimize the pain and feel a little better. Feeling a little better is important, and you have the right to do what you need to feel better. Above all, stay out of toxic relationships. Better to be alone than be with people who make you feel bad.

 

[Lola_Daydream]

I definetly do feel intense physical pain with emotional pain. I always say I could probably handle the emotional pain better if it were not for the physical joining it.
When in anxiety I feel chest pain, pain in my left arm with tingling numbness, and face feels flu like burning best I can describe it.
When it moves to depression, I feel heavy, tired, drained all the time, and my stomach becomes unwell. Oh also in anxiety I get nauseous, and have pangs of pain in my gut.
I wish I had some good advice to help, but I am like you I don't know how to make it feel better.
I go for walks, that does help some, sleeping more, baths help a little. I am curious to know more too.

 

[radasp]

My Asperger curiosity about feeling emotion as physical pain led me to investigate alexithymia, its origin and place in human experience. What I discovered is that:
All human infants are born Alexithymic by definition. As infants we possess no WORDS with which to express our physical pain: there are no emotions when we are babies, just pain or pleasure; emotions are word descriptions that we learn later.

As children grow, they are TAUGHT to identify WORDS with basic physical responses. The brain’s system of processing our reactions to the environment is simple even in adulthood: there is one electrical pathway in the brain for pain, and the brain doesn’t differentiate between physical pain and emotional pain. It’s just pain. Children learn to “report” their pain or pleasure as words. This is not difficult to witness in action. Parents continually coax children to use words like sad, happy, etc. to describe their physical state, even before children are capable of processing language. It appears that Asperger children don't learn the social convention of naming pain in "emotion" words.

I too feel physical pain when seeing cruelty and violence; I've tried to explain to my therapist several times that seeing the terrible state of wars, economic deprivation, and lies told by governments cause me deep physical distress. He doesn't get it.

 

[On the Inside]

We clearly understand the pain from physical injuries as a signal that something is wrong, but we so easily dismiss emotional pain, or just try to live through it without acknowledging that there is something wrong, and it needs to be treated in some way.

I feel emotional pain intensely too. There have been times when I needed to just make a big kettle of soup, a few loaves of bread and just sit around in the dark and eat when I needed to for a few days, doing nothing else. Comfort.

Other times I've needed to go off by myself and experience some self inflicted hardships, like going backpacking by myself, a good hard long run, 4 or 5 hours of cross country skiing in the middle of the night. Fasting. Meditation retreats. Fighting fire with fire. Strengthening.

 

[Sheogorath]

I never know what people mean by emotional pain that physicially hurts. I mean, it hurts and is sometimes worse than physical pain. But I can't say I ever had emotional pain that I felt in my ankle or my arm. Besides that, emotional pain and physical pain both come from the exact location in the brain. So maybe that's why sometimes it feels the same.

 

[fredvizsla]

I never know what people mean by emotional pain that physicially hurts. I mean, it hurts and is sometimes worse than physical pain. But I can't say I ever had emotional pain that I felt in my ankle or my arm. Besides that, emotional pain and physical pain both come from the exact location in the brain. So maybe that's why sometimes it feels the same.

You said it: pain is pain. You are perhaps confusing "cause" with the pain itself. Pain can be caused by hitting your hand with a hammer; it can be caused by rejection or bullying. The result is pain (in your brain.)

 

[epath13]

I've seen the last post and it reminded me, I've read (or possibly heard) somewhere that painkillers (like Tylenol for example) can relieve physical l pain as much as emotional (meaning not caused, let's say, by illness but by emotional struggle). I'm not sure if it's going to work for everybody though...

 

[royinpink]

Does anyone ever feel so much emotional pain that it physically hurts? How do you cope with pain that painful?

Yes, and I don't know. It immobilizes me. When the pain gets that bad, I can hardly stand up, much less try to cope. It feels like my whole body is screaming. I like the phrase "wracked with grief" because it seems to capture the intensity of pain and the helplessness in the face of pain. It comes from being 'on the rack', i.e. being tortured by being pulled apart, although I don't think the actual feeling is like being pulled apart...more like my muscles seize up, writhe in pain. But it can't stay that intense forever, and eventually I can do something.

When it does subside, try something to center yourself. Be nice to yourself. Take care of your body, like others have said, with good food and exercise. Or just be free of demands for awhile. That would be my suggestion, but I am not the best at coping. I wish I could say I had a solution. Just, much sympathy and hope things get better for you.

 

[Maelstrom]

Does anyone ever feel so much emotional pain that it physically hurts? How do you cope with pain that painful?

When my dream of a happy family and loving wife slipped through my fingers right in the middle of getting engaged, I just curled up on the couch for what seemed like two months hoping to die. My soul hurt, my stomach hurt, my skin got hot and prickly so I could barely stand wearing clothes, I mostly lived on milk and juice I had no appetite food tasted bad and I could barely eat, everything felt grey, and if a certain thing wasn't forbidden for christians I doubt any of you would ever have had the chance to meet me. It has taken me almost two years to get better, there still are some days when I feel dead inside, so my answer is yes Cheryl emotional pain really does hurt.

I don't know what helps, other than reading the Holy books my favorites were Ellen Whites books that bring the Bible to life, soft music and fans may help, perhaps running would help flush negative chemicals from the system maybe I would have gotten better quicker if I had done that.

I would like to believe I am stronger and would do better now with lost love, but the power of my reactions were a little scary. I was wondering I am more autistic perhaps than aspie, is this increased emotional reaction normal for us, I don't run this hot on regular stuff I'm about half Spock and half Captain Kirk, I don't understand why I took it so hard.

 

[Beverly]

I feel it too, though I have a very high tolerance for any kind of pain. When pain of any kind does get to me, I take it out on my guitar - an hour or two of good rips does wonders for me. I imagine the pain going into the strings of the guitar and, evaporating as the notes fade. I know I'm okay again when I stop sounding like I'm playing death metal and find myself playing a familiar, softer song. (That could be any one of twenty or so songs.)

I know that isn't very helpful if you don't play an instrument but, it's all I've got.

 

[Mia]

My way of coping is going 'home' to a forest, spending quite a lot of time there, getting a sleeping bag and looking at the stars and watching animals and sleeping. Swimming in lakes is another thing that helps, the water soothes, the quiet and the sounds and smells center me in the world. It helps me to feel connected to something tangible and real.