How To Let Go Of Emotional Pain
Have you ever wondered why you find it hard to let go things? Whether that’s a dysfunctional relationship or what someone said about you?
Sometimes you feel like an addict going back to that same damn thought, over and over again. You’re sick of it; I get that. I used to face the same problem, but not just emotional pain, an addiction to pleasing everyone around me too.
It just seems to be on your mind, changing your mood and energy. And the scary thing is when you’re 100 percent honest with yourself, you realize that if this continues, it’s going to get worse.
Well, it’s not you, it’s your brain (conditioned response) and your body’s innate cellular intelligence (addiction) working against you. The mind and body are intrinsically connected, and when this connection solidifies, feelings become the way of thinking, and the two are now working holistically. The untrained mind cannot think greater than how they feel, so it spends more time feeling than thinking and gaining wisdom.
Have you ever called in sick at work, or decided to not go to the dinner party you were invited to? Well, you couldn’t think greater than how you were feeling. Something, well some dysfunctional neural net that is, triggered your body to do the thinking. So you didn’t “feel” like going into work or that party, and your brain, by repeating this thought fed the body its addiction and strengthened the mind-body connection.
Is that really a good thing? I guess it depends on the frequency and context of your reasoning?
Let’s dig a little deeper, when we leave a situation or relationship that we intellectually know is dysfunctional, we should in all good sense leave that emotional baggage behind, right. But that never happens; we’re left with emotional torment, not wisdom. Why? I’ll explain that soon.
But now that you’re out of that dysfunctional situation or relationship, why do you still feel the same way? You’ve stopped getting feedback from those people; they’re not around you anymore but, you seem to have packed your emotional bag so to speak, and brought those feeling with you, right?
Your thoughts (mind), and your feelings (body) just keep taking you back to the past without your permission. It’s like you’re rehearsing it in your mind, over and over again, dredging up those feelings of the past.
Can you just think positive and try and forget about it? No, that rarely works because your cells innate intelligence is addicted to this mind-body chemical connection. The body treats it no different than say chocolate to a chocolate addict.
But how? Stay with me here; I’ll get to that soon.
You see, when you are no longer getting daily stimulation from those people, and your cells are no longer being stimulated by the chemical bath they need, they signal the brain to utilize your memory taking you back to that thought. Realise that we can make our thoughts so real we feel them; this is called dwelling on the past or worrying about our future.
But why do our cells do this? I mean you no longer want to be tormented by this emotional pain, right. Lets now make the mind-body connection and explain this addition.
How does body control the mind?
Now, psychoneuroimmunology says that every thought we have produces a biochemical reaction in the brain vial neurotransmitters.
Neurotransmitters, for example, like serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine produce moods that excite and motivate us. Neurotransmitters are the reason why sometimes we will do an activity and be happy, while at other times we just don’t feel like it.
If like a lot of people, you go throughout the day from being in a positive frame of mind to then feeling frustrated, or overwhelmed and unmotivated, you have experienced the effects of neurotransmitters changing your mood.
As you can see below, our feelings really do influence our cellular intelligence.
These neurotransmitters enter the body by making their way to a structure of the brain called the hypothalamus. It takes these raw materials and ships them off to the pituitary gland where they’re further refined into neuropeptides, chemical thought messengers.
These chemical messengers (neuropeptides) enter the bloodstream and bind to receptor sites in the body where they act as thought messengers. The thoughts you think, produce chemicals in the brain that allow your body to feel the way you’re thinking.
In a nutshell, every thought produces a chemical recipe that matches how you feel.
So when you think great and inspiring thoughts about doing something exciting, you act and feel excited and inspired. The brain releases dopamine which turns the brain and body on in anticipation of this experience.
If you entertain unworthy, guilty, frustrated, angry or thoughts, the brain sends neuropeptides into the body to respond and act similarly.
Imagine for a moment that you feel guilty about one thing or another, you can replace “guilt” with any other emotion you like, and even a person, they have an emotional signature stored away in your neural nets just like an emotion. But for now, let’s roll with guilt because we can all relate, and have felt guilty about something in the past.
Now, back to guilt; let’s say you had a miscommunication with someone, or someone misplaced their frustration on you, or they unloaded their crap day on you, or whatever but, your fault or not, you accept the blame. So most of the time you think, “it’s my fault,” and “I always seem to attract this crap into my life.”
Every time you think like that your cells swimming in this neuropeptide chemical sea, and when you’re cells divide at the end of their life; the receptor sites increase to accommodate the abundance of the recipe called guilt that your thoughts produce.
If high neuropeptide levels of guilt are maintained on a daily basis, then the cells innate intelligence says:
“Okay so, the dude upstairs keeps sending us these chemical feelings of guilt, and we cannot deal with them all because we don’t have enough receptor sites. We need to get the contractor in, (epigenetics) to change the gene readout and give us more receptor sites to accommodate this abundance of these guilt peptides. And then, he’ll feel the emotion quicker and more intense because we can deal with them faster. I mean, that is what he wants”.
That’s upstream regulation.
Downstream regulation is the opposite, the cell, especially nerve cells can’t handle the abundance of these peptides, so they scale down from the over stimulation. They make fewer receptor sites, and some cells malfunction because they cannot process the flood peptides that are, in a sense, ganging up on them. The cells main role is to create more proteins and change the cell’s energy.
To recap, in upstream regulation the cell responds to the high demand by creating more receptor sites to perform better engaging the feedback loop between the mind and body, so you feel the way you’re thinking.
And in downstream regulation, especially nerve cells which help us react, they become desensitized. So over time cells need more peptides to reach the threshold of cellular activation, bring the body and mind online on a cellular level. In other words, we have to react more, worry more, or feel more about a thing to active that threshold, so it takes a lot more “feelings” to motivate us.
This is the way the untrained mind works, unconsciously and on autopilot. This is the basis of addiction; you need more chemicals to reach the threshold of cellular activation, to reach the same level of mind or same familiar feelings. When someone takes cocaine, it releases vast quantities of dopamine, which gives the person an wonderful feeling of anticipatory pleasure. But it’s all for nothing because dopamine is an action driver, not pleasure chemical; it excites us to move towards what we perceive to be pleasurable.
So the untrained mind becomes hardwired neurologically and biologically to a new state of mind and attraction and will attract more of the same. Does this start to sound like an addiction? Because it is, in the case of negative emotions, that ain’t good. You attract more of the same.
The bottom line is, every time we fire a thought in our brain, we make chemicals, which produce feelings and other reaction in the body. Our body’s cells become conditioned (addicted) to this level in your bloodstream surrounding them.
Any interruption in this regular, consistent, and comfortable level in your body’s chemical signature, will result in us feeling discomfort. And the mind-body connection will do almost anything to get back to harmony.
What starts out as little cravings from the body in the form of an impulsive thought, and if not acted on it’ll turn into a battle of the will that demands for an immediate action.
Now the body and mind go into turmoil, as a result of this chemical denial and its inability to return to homeostatic balance. Realise that it doesn’t want to recalibrate itself because 1) It’s energy, time and resource expensive, and 2) it has grown accustomed to the upstream and downstream regulation of receptor sites its addicted to. It’s just easier to remain here, surviving, day to day.
If you can’t think greater than how you’re feeling or you know that you are not living the life you want, the body is calling the shots.
That is how your thoughts program your body to become addicted to your feelings; bad or good, success or failure thoughts, the brain doesn’t care, it responds to what you give focus to.
And when that mind-body connection is complete, the body controls the mind by feeding your mind unwanted thoughts (ANTs, automatic negative thoughts) to make you think more thoughts that produce more of the chemicals your cells are addicted to.
This is why the untrained mind struggles letting go or changing and improving their life is very difficult to do.
You must break this pattern of >thinking and feeling >feeling and thinking and replace it with a vision of the future. The reason why is because we all think around 60 to 70 thousand thoughts a day, and over that day if you keep cycling back to familiar feelings, even if you want to change you can’t.
Why? Because over the course of a day and week, the amount of time you invest in these dysfunctional thoughts will give you a return on your investment, not cool huh. Every time the mind wanders back to these thoughts, the neural nets kept alive and the body remains addicted to this state of being and attraction. You must break this mind-body addiction.
For example, if you invest 60 to 70% of your day going back to those emotional torments or just feeling unworthy, frustrated, guilty, sad, or wishing and wanting, you will remain stuck in the loop; irrespective of how hard you try to stop, or how hard you try to think positive. To feel love and joy and be mentally and physically energized, you must replace that dysfunctional mind-body connection with a future vision; the life you want and deserve.
If you change this balance of power, your mind-body connection will be focused on the amazing life you have envisioned. Thus you will become addicted to that instead of the emotional torment of the past. But importantly, your body will be driving you, motivating you, and moving you towards this vision.
Think about this for a moment, where do you want to be in one year?
Close your eyes and really see yourself there, and feel what that would feel like. Now, what would you prefer? Living in the past with this dysfunctional mind-body connection, or a new empowered mind-body vision?
All you need to do is learn how. If you’re ready to learn, then I am ready to teach you.
But first, you must answer the following questions; then I can give you the tools to heal.
- Are you willing to stop these automatic thoughts and reactions midstream when they arise?
- Are you willing to become self-aware and take conscious control of your thoughts, and modify your behaviour without making anyone else responsible for how you are presently feeling and being?
- Are you willing to accept that your body is using you for its own selfish needs, and that only you can stop this and finally set yourself free?
If you answer no to any one of those questions, then you will continue this pattern of >thinking and feeling >feeling and thinking for a long time; and I cannot help you, you are not ready, yet.
If you answered yes, then I can give you the tools to think greater than how you feel breaking this addiction and then, you can heal.
So, if you’re ready to learn, then I am ready to teach.
Contact me for a free mindset session now:
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This is a good time, as this year is coming to an end, what a good time to set your goals and work on yourself, work on your skills.
What a good time to start this process of personal development, growing changing developing, having a good plan for yourself, and for your life and for your future; why not now?
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