Dealing With Your Emotional Pain

Some emotional pain will leave us with time. Some will leave if we decide to let it go. There are times, though, when we must live with emotional pain; either because we haven't had sufficient time to heal or because we are not able, willing, and/or ready to let it go.

There is fresh emotional pain, and there is the variety that lingers in varying degrees (sometimes in the form of emotional scarring but sometimes simply in the form of persistent inability to feel truly happy).

My approach to fresh emotional pain has always been to aim to take as much a break from it as possible. In other words, to give our mind a rest. One might ask how much help this apparent attempt to, at least temporarily, escape emotional pain might be. After all, after taking that "break" from it we always find it is still there.

Actually, however, "giving our minds a rest" from it (even for short periods of time, and even though it will remain) does help. When we are in pain we are essentially "operating under the influence" of a brain/body chemistry that, at best, makes us feel numb and, at worst, can have negative effects simply by virtue of our remaining in a "negative mode" for too long. No matter how awful our pain is, if there is some way to take that little break from it, it gives us a chance to at least some of the negative "chemicals" affecting us. Getting out and having a nice, pleasant, talk with a friend will change our chemistry, at least to some degree. So will having a good laugh. Even the smallest breaks away from thinking about the emotional pain can add up to more time spent each day, with at least a little more "positive" influence in terms of our chemistry. The more time positive time we're able to "patch together" for ourselves, the better (when it comes to giving our pained minds a little more chance to rest and heal). Even the most seemingly insignificant positive feelings/experiences can play a role in nurturing our "emotional energy" and contributing to the eventual re-building of a more normal level of it.

Based on my personal experience, I've found that when there have been those times when a lot of significant sadness takes place over a period of time, particularly when joyful (or even pleasant) experiences don't come anywhere near to matching the amount of sadness; it can feel as if our minds our filled with nothing but grayness. If we begin to have pleasant or happy experiences we may notice that they seem to "move in and displace (or at least "push to the back of our mind) some of the gray". If we don't find enough of those (even small) pleasant/happy experiences it can seem as if the gray feelings in our mind continue to dominate our thoughts/feelings, even if that grayness seems to grow stale and "harden". So, as with fresh emotional pain, the first step at feeling at least somewhat better when we have "older" emotional pain can be to seek out those pleasant, "emotional-energy-nurturing", experiences. This is, of course, not a quick way to feel completely better or to end all the emotional pain.

The immediate, and small, help of finding a way to get our mind off the pain can offer that short-term, helpful, break from it. Without seeking out those small joys in life, however, just taking a break is not usually enough to facilitate any "healing".

Each individual has his own set of things that contribute to that feeling of having one's "soul nurtured". For many it is a certain kind of music. Fresh air, pleasant social experiences, aroma therapy, exercise, or any number of other things in life can contribute to a sense of feeling a little better in spite of it all.

Such an approach to emotional pain can seem absurdly over-simplified, and it's important to point out that such an approach is not, by any means, a magic cure. People who feel their emotional pain is simply too much to deal with often benefit from seeking professional help, although we live in a time when professional help is often a matter of prescribing anti-depressants. I, personally, have known several people who sought professional help and tried medications for a while, only to discover they didn't seem to help.

Sometimes, "un-magic" and slow as it is, learning to find those things that help us find some small, pleasant, experiences/thoughts helps us to develop better coping skills; and, when all is said and done, developing good coping skills is sometimes the thing that makes the difference between emotional pain that is awful and emotional pain that is just unbearable.

Below are comments and personal observations as a follow-up to the above Hub.  The following is a general picture of emotional pain and the some of the most common causes of it.  Some of the following remarks are quite casual, but the material here is, after all, casual.  I'd like to mention here that I didn't intend to spend a whole lot of time on Hubs about dealing with emotional pain or grief.  Originally, I just thought I'd make use of some personal experience by trying to share what I learned from it with someone else.  The information here isn't entirely without foundation in reference materials, although at this point what is presented is presented from assimilated knowledge (and, of course, personal experience; or at least exposure to, people experiencing difficult times).

In any case, what follows here are just observations and thoughts on the matter of dealing with emotional pain.

Not All Emotional Pain is Equal

There is sadness and emotional pain (the "run-of-the-mill" kind, even if it's extreme when someone is going through it) that is clearly huge and overwhelming grief/sadness - but not necessary "horror". Then there are things that can happen in life that are complete and utter horror (and I'm not just talking about "blood and gore" horror - just emotional horror). They are those things that are too much for any one individual to deal with (even if that person usually deals with even extreme grief quite effectively). The Nature and degree of emotional pain to which I was (perhaps ineffectively referring) in the Hub is the kind to which Nature tends to offer a modicum of relief from by causing people to become numb. By virtue of its intensity (and perhaps complexity) the kind of horror/pain to which I'm referring isn't something that can be accommodated, and processed, by the usual means of processing even substantial grief. In fact, the kind of horror/grief I'm talking about is the kind that isn't ever going to go away. It's the kind people learn to live with by coping with it and taming it, and by finding a way to feel happiness in spite of it.

One Size Only Fits All Some of the Time. The Rest of the Time No Size Seems to Fit

The world is full of people who never show up at psychotherapy with conditions resulting from (even) horror, because a lot of people do find their own ways of coping and processing things in ways that are often not even acknowledged (or sometimes, maybe) understood in expert circles. This isn't an anti-expert Hub, by any means; and I'm the first to believe anyone, who has trouble coming up with the coping techniques that will help him come through (or live with) horror without conditions resulting from it, seek help from someone who offer help. The trouble is, a lot of people have tried getting professional help, to no avail; and a lot of others are "the sort" who find their own way but haven't had enough experience to have built up a variety of coping techniques that work well. This Hub was a lot of them, because only someone who actually experiences the degree and type of serious loss/horror that I had in mind when I tried to answer that person's question would know what it feels like to have to have a such a varied mix of huge "horrors", each with its own varying degrees of pain (both manageable and unmanageable, at least for awhile).

This may just be me (but I don't think I'm alone in being the kind of person I am), but I've often viewed emotions as being similar to fires: There can be a small one that gets started, and if it gets enough oxygen it turns into a raging, out-of-control-flame that destroys everyone and everything in its path. On the other hand, there are times when smothering a small flame as soon as it's clear it's getting out of control means the fire is out. With "emotional pain fires" might another one crop up later somewhere else? Yes - but then dealing with that one the same way gives a person that much experience dealing with his emotions (taming them). The person gains confidence in his own ability to manage his own emotions without being destroyed by those fires or too badly scarred by them.

There are things that can go on in people's lives that are, in fact, far too much for one person to be able to process at one time. I think of those times when we hear that someone has had some horrible thing happen in their life and have been hospitalized and given medication. I know whenever I've heard of these incidents on, say, TV news, I've often thought, "Oh, I'd need to have that kind of medication for however long as well."

I know, too, there are people who aren't able to successfully "smother" their emotions and who, instead, find life so unbearable they take their own lives. Then, too, there are the people who aim to "get away" from unbearable thoughts by using alcohol or drugs to do it. In my own life, I've heard more than one person say that the only way they kept from immediately killing themself was to drink or use some drug. There are people who have done their "immediate grieving" when something awful happened, but who are left with unbearable thoughts nonetheless.

Different Types of Emotional Pain - Grief, Childhood-rooted, Abuse-related, Etc. Etc

Grief and Loss

As I mentioned above, there are different types of emotional pain. There's the emotional pain that comes from losing someone close. Depending on how close we were to that person and/or the circumstances surrounding their passing, how long it takes to process the grief can vary. Even if this is an overwhelming kind of grief, it is usually a fairly "standard" kind of grief that is processed in fairly standard ways (leaving room, of course, for individual differences when it comes to how people process their own grief).

Health Problems

Losing someone (or several "someones") close isn't the only possible source of emotional pain, needless to say. Living with, or watching someone with, catastrophic illness or long-term medical problems can bring its own kind of emotional pain. Serious health problems (one's own or those of someone one loves) can bring a whole range of grief and emotional pain that can be difficult to neatly categorize as "one source". The combination of how such health problems affect one's own life, and how they affect the lives and relationships of those who love them can make this kind of emotional pain fairly layered and complex.

Childhood-rooted

Emotional pain, however, can also stem from something in childhood that may not have been one, big, loss that felt catastrophic in someone's life. Some childhood-rooted pain can come from varying degrees of abuse, but some can come from having otherwise loving parents who, for some reason, made their child feel as if he wasn't loved quite enough (or was loved in a too-smothering way). I'm guessing that much childhood-rooted pain can be effectively processed with the right therapy. I'm also guessing that it may well be people who suffer childhood-rooted pain that most need therapy, simply because they may not have been given the best emotional foundation on which to build the kind of coping skills required for dealing with some of the things that can happen in a life. On the other hand, with some less than ideal childhoods people sometimes learn coping skills earlier than someone else who had no real need to develop them may. The aim here isn't to dig up every possible kind of childhood anyone could ever have and make assumptions about how well anyone can deal with emotional pain. Not only is not all childhood-rooted pain something that inevitably leads to serious mental health problems later, but neither is all childhood pain caused by parents or forces beyond human control. Siblings or other family members, school experiences, or "general attitudes in society", can contribute to some serious childhood pain. So, not all emotional pain from childhood and/or youth is equal.

I would like to mention, though, that as a young adult I knew my share of other young people who had been spared some of the need to develop some of the coping skills I'd had to. I had a great childhood and teen years, great family, and no loss or emotional challenges that were any more unusual or bizarre (as some of my later losses would be); but there was a little more illness and/or some "emotionally challenging" situations/events than a lot of kids have. In my twenties I'd look around at some other people in their twenties and realize that some of the grief/emotional challenges I'd had in life had actually helped me develop some good techniques for a person as young as I was. Up to a point, some emotional pain can, in fact, make us stronger (even wiser). I'm guessing we may be better off if any emotional pain in childhood is restricted to being of the "least major variety" and/or if emotional pain and challenges wait until we're at least out of our most formative years.

Abuse As An Adult

Yet another kind of emotional pain can come when people have suffered abuse in adulthood (as in the case of battered women). Without attempting to analyze all the ways battered women may share similar kinds of damage and loss, it's probably safe to say that not all battered women are equal. Besides any differences in the nature of abuse, or in the length of time it took place; there may also be differences between women who entered abusive situations with less self-esteem/self-respect than those who entered those situations with more. Contrary to the popular (and probably not incorrect) belief that women with low self-esteem are likely to be attracted to abusive men, it is now known that strong women with high self-esteem can actually be more likely to find themselves with an abuser than a lot of people would assume. Further, while the woman with little self-esteem may soon accept that she's as "worthless" as her partner would have her believe; the woman with high self-esteem may not so readily accept her partner's assessment of her. This doesn't necessarily mean, though, that damage to her self-esteem won't happen in a different way; because the strong, capable, woman with high self-esteem may hate herself for being ineffective when it comes to stopping the abuse. The difference between the two types of women may be that the low-self-esteem woman actually needs someone else to help her see that she's not worthless. The high-self-esteem woman may have known all along that she isn't and may be fine once the threat to her has been removed, and once she's had time to step back and remind herself that the sense of helplessness she was feeling had nothing to do with her being "ineffective as a person".

Ironically, perhaps, abuse victims may experience far more pain when they do seek help and/or try to get themselves out of the relationship. Whether child, young or middle-aged adult, or victim of elder abuse; there can be far more emotional consequences (at least for some people) from asking for help from people/agencies outside the relationship; and discovering that, not only isn't there any help in stopping the abusive situation, but the people a victim trusted (even when she never really trusted her abuser) to help were unwilling or unable to help. The emotional pain caused by abusive situations can be worse in another way too: Sometimes a person is not the only victim of the abuse, and it can be far more painful to watch one's loved one(s) be treated abusively and with cruelty than to endure it oneself.

The Less Obvious Sources of Emotional Pain

For all the above, obvious and almost easily understood (at least with a certain amount of exposure and/or study) sources of emotional pain, there are, perhaps, an infinite number of sources of pain that aren't quite as easy to see. Some of those less-than-obvious sources of pain may be secondary consequences of a larger, more obvious, source. (It can be fairly obvious to most people that losing a spouse is going be a big source of emotional pain. What may not be obvious are some of the more secondary sources of pain that stem from, but aren't directly related to, something like the loss of a spouse. As with so many other things, not all cases of being widowed are equal, any more than a lot of other sources of emotional pain are.

In a time when so many people have found themselves in serious financial difficulty, and so many have lost homes, it can be tempting to view money problems and/or losing a home as "a matter of money" or as "only losing a building". With so many situations being a matter of individual circumstances (even if some aspects of the loss are in common with others in similar situations), it isn't always possible for the person who is not in any specific situation to have any idea of the many, many, resulting (but "secondary") sources of emotional pain that can actually be far worse than the "primary" source of pain or loss. A person may (for the most part) be comfortable coming to terms with something like long-term job loss, for example. Adjusting to having to move may even be something a person, or family, can do without more than "the standard" amount of emotional pain. Not being able to spare one loved ones pain that "most people don't have to live with" because of money problems can be far more difficult a pain to process than "the main problem" is. Outside observers may be well aware that someone is going through "a rough time". What those outside observers can never truly understand are often all the ways that "main problem" creates extreme emotional pain for someone going through it.

Is Anyone Responsible for Loss/Pain?

Sometimes nobody is at fault for one source of pain or another. Sometimes the person who experiences it knows it is his own doing that led to his situation. Then again, there are times when someone is at fault, and the person/people who caused the situation is/are not the person who must endure it. When nobody could have done anything to prevent a situation, it may be at least a little easier for the victim of it to come to terms with it.

When it comes to a source of pain that someone knows he has brought on himself, how well that person copes with it may depend on how emotionally mature he is, and how well he's able to process warranted, or unwarranted, feelings of guilt. How many people suffer as a result of his actions/choices may make a difference; and how much the person cares about those who pay for his actions/choices may make a difference too.

When it is someone else who is responsible for a person's loss(es) issues of wanting justice, or at least acknowledgment, can come into play. It may easier to live with not having justice "for oneself" than it is not seeing justice for loved ones. There are, of course, people who will say, "Let it go. That's healthier." One issue with this kind of thinking, however, can be that "letting it go" is easier to do when the only one hurt, or in pain, is a person, himself. If/when loved ones have also been hurt, "just letting it go" can not only feel like betrayal of loved ones who have been hurt; but it can be more a far more excruciatingly painful thing to stop "living on" one's anger and love for those who have been hurt, and, instead, accept that loved ones and/or relationships with them will forever be damaged or destroyed by someone who essentially never cared about those loved ones. In other words, sometimes it is anger and/or sense of purpose or sense of justice on which people continue to remain strong and to function. Without those, some already damaged people are likely not just to be damaged, but to feel (essentially) destroyed. No "destroyed" person is able to have a healthy relationship, so sometimes a person may know that allowing himself to be, or feel, destroyed just isn't an option.

From Every Big Source of Emotional Pain There Are Seemingly Infinite, Hidden, Sources of More Pain That Arise

Regardless of the main cause of emotional pain, and regardless of whether the main cause is a matter of one, big, event or else many smaller events/situations (or both, or multiplied), there is never really any way one person can understand what another person is going through. Even people who have gone through similar experiences have a different set of dynamics in place (and that set of dynamics isn't always a matter of how well someone can figure out how to cope, or how strong someone is).

On "Burying" and/or Living With Emotional Pain - And Exactly What Is "Burying"?

Not much more elegant than the cake/frosting analogy might be the following one: Imagine having a nice, happy, home and having someone come along and dumping into the living room some big, ugly, eyesore, of a piece of junk. This might be compared to the single-issue/single-event cause of emotional pain.

Suppose you can't just remove the piece of junk, and you can't get anyone else to remove it for you. How do you deal with it? Maybe you hope whoever/whatever dumped it in your living room will come along and take it away. Maybe a part of you knows that, with time, it's going to go away. On the other hand, maybe you decide to try to dismantle the thing, piece by piece and with or without help, and start to get rid of it, little by little. There's the chance, of course, that you may just kind of know it will always be there in your once perfect living room and you decide you'll just get used to it. There may even be times when you decide to throw a pretty tablecloth over the top of it, put a vase of flowers on the whole business, and try to make something positive/attractive out of it (if only for awhile). One way or another, this monster piece-of-junk in your living room presents its challenges. Sometimes it gets in the way of doing some things. Sometimes you can ignore it. An experience I had with this kind of situation was after my mother died. As I mentioned in another Hub, I discovered that my dreams seemed to be processing the more hidden issues, layer by layer (according to how "obvious" the issue had been to me, and with the more hidden issues under the more overt ones). Essentially, it sure felt to me as if I was dismantling one of those "big, ugly, pieces of junk" that had been brought into my previously nice home.

The trouble is that sometimes emotional pain doesn't come in the form of that one, big, eyesore, piece-of-junk. Sometimes, and in some lives, it would be better analogized by imagining a giant dump-truck showing up and unloading all kinds of ugly contents (big, small, hazardous in different ways, etc.). Imagine that, for some reason, there is no option to just clean up the mess. Imagine, instead, that there is something that prevents you from being able to get any of it out of your house. Now, imagine that, as you stand in horror and shock and watch what's happening to your home, another truck or two comes along and does the same thing. What you don't know is whether anyone will come along and take away any of the stuff, or whether there will come a time when you're able to remove it yourself. All you know is that, at least for now, the junk fills your house, and you can't get rid of it.

How would you deal with that? There's a good chance your first step might be to at least organize the junk. Your first aim might be to push as much of it as possible against the walls, so you could at least have some floor space. Imagine, though, that you may find that the junk covered up some windows or else some beautiful artwork hanging on the wall. Maybe you let some of the junk stay in one section or another of the room, away from walls and windows.

Suppose, too, that once you've sort of organized the mess in your house, you notice that you're no longer preoccupied with "at least organizing it". It's as organized as it's going to be (at least for now), and that's when you may decide to start leaving your home more, just to get away from it. That's, of course, "escaping" it. Escaping isn't particularly useful, though, because it's always there and waiting for you, whenever you decide to return.

Particularly if you're someone who is disturbed by this kind of clutter, you may decide that (since leaving doesn't help for too long) throwing a big tarp over the "the whole business" may at least make you feel a little better. This, of course, is "burying" the mess. The trouble with burying it under a tarp is that it's still there. Your home and your life are still plagued with it. Even if the tarp reduces the disturbing "visual overload", it sure doesn't make the room look pretty. Imagine that you reach the point where you feel like you've done everything you can do, in view of the awful situation. Or, suppose there just weren't a tarp big enough to cover the mess; or else that, for some reason, even if you tried to cover it all up stuff kept poking through. What then?

On top of all that (pardon the tarp-related pun), you just know even if you manage to cover up all the ugliness with that tarp, if you do that you won't have access to the stuff in order to, maybe, organize it or somehow otherwise improve your situation.

Since you've seen that there are only minor ways that make things seem any better, and since you've seen that even steps only help for a short time; you probably decide to think of all the small things you can do to improve things in as many ways as possible (and for as long as possible) without resorting to the tarp or moving out to a high-priced hotel.

Since you've discovered that leaving for a little while helps, you may decide to make it a point to leave for a short time each day (without expecting the problem to have magically disappeared when you return).

You might open all drapes and curtains, because sunlight makes everything less depressing. Maybe you open the windows, because fresh air makes everything feel and smell better. Maybe you've noticed that the junk looks better if you stack what you can stack in neat piles. Maybe, too, you decide that it's better to have one wall covered with the stacked-to-the-ceiling junk than it is to have all the walls covered halfway up (so you free up the wall with the artwork on it, and decide to cover up a different wall and try not to look at it too often). You reach a point where you've done just about everything you can possibly do to make your living space more normal, more attractive, and/or healthier. Maybe you do pick up a couple of the particularly ugly pieces of junk and store it in a trash bag, or behind a couch. Maybe it seems ridiculous to you, but what you haven't tried yet is going out and bringing in some new, beautiful, things.

Those new things can't be big (obviously) because you don't have the room for them. Besides, you aren't about to spend a lot of money trying to make your living space beautiful; because you know that as long as the junk remains, that would be a big waste of money. Maybe, though, you decide to buy a couple of cheerful, flowering, plants and put them on those sunny window sills. Because it takes no space to play beautiful music, maybe you go out and buy the most beautiful CD's you can find. Burners for scented tarts might add to your days, so you might buy a collection of scented candles and tarts.

There's the chance you'd realize that you can have a spot or two that are attractive by making sure a table or two have clean surfaces. Most likely, you'd make sure one of the chairs you like best would remain clear for your own (and maybe a guest's) use. Maybe, too, you'd discover that some of the pieces of junk could be dismantled and stored in a way that took up less space.

No longer in shock and horror at what had happened, you would most likely discover that, with those small steps you were able to take to make yourself feel a little more normal (even happier) you'd eventually discover that you'd found ways to have a lot of things people need in your day-to-day life to be happy - even with all that junk you were living with. You might even discover that, with all those pleasant things you'd managed to have in your (now uglier home), you had actually gotten over that shock and horror, and had actually found a way to be mostly happy in spite of all that junk in your life.

The fact that you brought in the flowers and the scents, or that you made sure the artwork-wall was left exposed, doesn't mean you weren't addressing the main problem of the junk. It means you were addressing it in the best way that you could at the time (at least as far as I'm concerned). The fact that you've learned that it helps the atmosphere seem better when you open the curtains and windows, or the fact that you've learned that you can have a sampling of "normal" when you take your morning walk isn't necessarily a sign that you aren't addressing that big junk-problem you have. It can be a sign that you are, in fact, not letting the presence of that "eyesore-junk" rob you of yet more of normal living than it already has.

Suppose, now, your neighbor comes for a visit. She, herself, has had her experiences with eyesore-couches or kids' rooms full of junk. She knows how to deal with the usual kind of eyesore or junk problems. She's actually had someone dump of those single pieces of "eyesore-junk" in her own house, and her way of dealing with it (as some many people's way usually is) was to gradually dismantle it, leaving only remnants of the junk behind. Your neighbor has not had the experience you have. She doesn't know there's such a thing as having all that junk dumped into a home, with absolutely no option of having it removed. Your neighbor notices that vase of flowers you have on your clean table and wonders why you think those flowers will help the disastrous-looking house. She wonders why you take that hour-long walk each morning, and thinks it's your way of avoiding the clean-up work you ought to be doing. Your neighbor doesn't know how hard or how long you've working to try to improve the situation. All she sees is the mess as it is now - not as it used to be, and not how much thinking and working and planning it has taken you to get it to be at least as "sort of reasonable looking-ish" as it now is.

Your neighbor doesn't know that so much can ever be dumped into a life without hope of having it ever lifted away. She doesn't know there's such a thing as sorrow and pain that isn't ever going to go away. You can't possibly explain it all to her, because for every sentence you can think up to say there would be an encyclopedia's worth of additional story that needed to accompany it, if the sentence weren't to be misinterpreted or misunderstood. Also, you can't explain it to your neighbor (no matter how close a friend she is), because you know (KNOW) that even trying to say some things is going to get one of those smoldering, small, fires you have going fanned into a raging, out-of-control, fire that there aren't enough firefighters in the world to ever put it out.

When monsters and dump-trucks decide to make a stop in one's life, it is they who decide that a person's life can never be what it otherwise would have been (or what most people's can be, no matter how much "normal" sadness shows up in their life and in a normal way). Neighbors often have a way of just taking for granted that all the usual rules for tackling a project apply. No matter how many people in the world have monsters or dumptrucks violate their lives, I think it still remains a minority who truly understand the degree, complexity, and permanence of what is left behind.

It's easy to imagine that this friendly neighbor would be thinking, "The only way to improve things here is to look at each of these pieces of junk, decide what must be done with what, and deal with it all." Again, what she doesn't know is that there won't be any getting rid of any of that junk, at least not as a result of what you, the resident of that house, can do. It may be natural for your neighbor-friend to assume that dealing with a lot of different sources of pain is pretty much the same as dealing with a single source - only multiplied. Too many complex and multi-level sources of pain aren't necessarily only a matter of a single source magnified or multiplied. When so much has happened in one life, it isn't even a matter of untangling a mess, sorting it all out, and addressing it. The very nature of some of the elements involved can become changed as a result of being mixed with a lot of other elements.

Not all emotional pain is a matter of the past. Some remains a matter of the present. An example might be this: Imagine knowing that your child is being hurt by someone non-stop. Imagine there's no way for you to stop what's happening. Your pain will be unimaginable, and it (like that imaginary junk your house) will remain unless and until whatever is going on is stopped. Even afterward, however, a lot of your own pain isn't going to go away. Someone can tell you it's all "attitude" or "way of thinking", but anyone who is a loving parent would know that some emotional pain isn't fixable with "the right kind of thinking" or "the right kind of processing". Some is the kind people must live with (just like that imaginary junk in the imaginary house). If a loving parent lives for x number of months or years, knowing his child has been hurt throughout that time (and that he's also living with consequences well beyond that time), every time that parent pulls out that piece of "junk" and tries to process it, he will feel the pain as if it's brand new (especially if it's of the variety that was caused by someone who simply doesn't love the child, or love him as much as the parent in question does). If that parent has two kids, he'll feel the pain twice as much. If he has four kids he'll feel it four times as much. If that parent sees the long-term consequences of his child's hurt on a regular basis, the pain isn't a matter of the past. It's a matter of the present. This example isn't anywhere near as simple as it may seem. Some would say that in order to make the pain at all bearable a parent would need to "stop caring so much".

The parent who truly loves can't stop caring as much (unless, I suppose, he becomes so emotionally destroyed he is incapable of loving the way he once did). The parent who doesn't know that kind of pain after seeing a child hurt also doesn't know that kind of love. Some people may not be able to recognize some kinds of hurt to their children, so they remain blissfully ignorant. Others' children haven't, fortunately, been hurt to an equal degree that the person in question's child has been. The point here is that this is, in fact, a kind of pain that will never get old and never go away - and it's only one example of one type of pain that isn't going to go away.

Time can help some "in-the-present" pain if/when that pain eventually becomes primarily a matter of something that happened in the past. My own theory (for whatever that's worth or not worth) is that time, alone, is not enough. People with poor memories may actually have some advantage over people with excellent memories; but even if that's true, I don't think the passing of time, by itself, does more than allow old pain to become stale. That's why I believe it helps to do those things like (in the imaginary junk scenario above) finding those pretty flowers, sunshine, and fresh air can help. Things like that can be emotionally nurturing in minor ways, but better minor ways than no ways.

After some terrible events/situations, some lives just kind of automatically pick up some substantial, emotionally replenishing, events or circumstances. It isn't that way for everyone who goes through a lot of awful experience, though. There are only so many "big, wonderful, nurturing" events that are likely to happen in most lives. A group of people who come immediately to mind are very elderly people who have suffered a lot of loss and who don't have a lot of years ahead to get over that loss. Between medical conditions that can cause, contribute to, depression in geriatric patients; and the chances that an elderly person may experience more loss in a shorter space of time; it's easy to see what addressing grief and depression (or at least apparent depression) in elderly people is a concern for so many people. At the same time, some of my concerns on behalf of elderly people who are believed to be depressed include the matters associated more with loss and grief (or other causes of emotional pain) but that aren't, specifically, linked to age.

"Emotional Depletion Points"

In another odd way of trying to describe my own thoughts on this matter, the way it seems to me is this: If a person starts out with, say, 150 "emotional-/mental-energy" points (and maybe the average number of energy points for most people is, say, 120); one of those imaginary dump-trucks or two can generally deplete a person's supply to be more like minus-80. Having been knocked down to that minus-80, it shouldn't be difficult to see why that person wouldn't have the energy to figure out some "Superman routine" in order to deal with the junk that got dumped. That person with minus-80 may find ways to start scraping up some "new, emotional-energy points" in order to perform the minimal amount of daily functioning (or even more than that).

It seems to me that it would only through having the time to build up yet more "points" that a person would even be able to THINK about trying to deal with the dumped junk (even if it were the kind of junk that could eventually be cleared out of a life). The individual who knows how to take those small but positive steps to improve the junk situation has a long road ahead, as well as his work cut out for him. Still, human resilience being what is so often is, a lot of those steps come naturally (especially to the person who feels so limited/crippled by all that junk). Mentally healthy people (even when unhappy) tend to gravitate toward happiness, or at least seek it and find at least a little. The point is, sometimes when a person doesn't seem to making "progress" as soon as he, or someone else, believes he ought to be, nobody (including the person himself) sees how much progress he has actually made, and continues to make, in learning to live that junk that was dumped into his life. Some would say that this is too difficult a job for anyone to attempt to tackle on his own. Personally, I tend to think this is a job can only truly be tackled by the person who, himself, must find his way to living with and/or getting beyond some degrees or amounts of junk.

Attitudes About Unhappiness and How to Deal With It or Treat It - Just Personal Thoughts

Human nature drives a lot of people to naturally find their own ways of getting through things, or living with them. For many people, however, even the wonders of human nature are not enough. One of my biggest concerns on behalf of people suffering with emotional pain is that many people aren't confident enough, or patient enough, to trust their own nature in trying to deal with pain.
Some may want more unencumbered happiness than they're ever going to find. Others may want too much happiness too soon. In the completely reasonable belief that experts know more than anyone else knows, some people do seek the help of experts, only to discover that they couldn't get the kind of help they hoped they could. Obviously, people with mental health conditions other than "just being unhappy" are more likely to be helped by doctors and, in fact, usually need the help of a doctor if they want any solid help with their condition. The trouble is, though, that sometimes the people who are overlooked (or not even acknowledged) are the people who are generally quite mentally healthy, with the exception of being unhappy for good reason.

My personal belief is that there are times in life when we must make a certain amount of peace with unhappiness and know that part of life is sometimes being unhappy (even being VERY unhappy and for quite a long time). Nobody likes being unhappy, but it's a very normal and appropriate response to some events in life. It may be a "mental-health matter", but it isn't a mental-health disorder. There are times when unhappiness may last longer than would seem appropriate for the kind/degree of event, circumstances, or loss. The person who is mentally healthy knows how to find some happy moments, even in the midst of unhappiness. I'm not suggesting people "embrace their unhappiness" (not by a long shot). I'm suggesting that keep fighting it, the same way they should keep fighting, say, a physical disease that may strike them. I'm also saying, however, that when some kinds of emotional pain impose themselves into someone's life, there are ways to live (and even reasonably happy) around that pain and/or in spite of it. There are not always ways to make it leave before something happens (whether that's a certain amount of time that has to pass, or some event/action/results the individual in pain must first see/accomplish).

A bone of contention I have with the way some people in today's world think, though, is that while it isn't hard to find someone who will readily admit that there are some losses people won't ever truly get over; the same people who can easily understand that are often also the people who set time limits on emotional pain with which they, personally, have no experience. It can often seem as if some people have a specific set of types of losses to which they, themselves, will assign an appropriate amount of time for processing; and if loss/emotional pain doesn't fall into one of their fairly limited number of situations they don't even realize the extent to which one of those "non-listed" situations can affect a person.

There are people who believe that nobody should remain unhappy "longer than is appropriate", and who believe if it's deemed someone does it's worth seriously considering medication. I may far too unfamiliar with exactly how some medications work on a person's system to have an opinion solid enough to express here; but I can't help but wonder if an irony is that while many professionals lean toward prescribing medications that could potentially interfere with the natural process of getting past emotional pain, some of those professionals may be the very same ones who also advise people to confront their grief and go through any pain associated with doing so. I'm not saying, of course, that dealing with one's grief head on is a bad thing. Aside from what I think, I don't have the credentials in the field to have a right to such an opinion. I don't think it's an unreasonable question, however, to ask whether it is always wise to allow medications like anti-depressants to be introduced when there's the possibility a person's chronic unhappiness is nothing more than a healthy and appropriate response to extreme loss or grief. At least seven people in my immediate circle of family/friends have sought professional help in times of major loss/sadness in their life. Six of them were prescribed anti-depressants and said they "didn't help" and/or "made it worse". The seventh person was someone who had financial problems and a marriage that was ending. She had health problems, and a mother who had Alzheimer's Disease progressed enough that my friend was facing the decision to move her mother to a facility (rather than keep caring for her, herself). Oddly (as least to me) this seventh individual said medication did help her. My question has always been, however, whether the healthiest approach to treating this kind of stress and unhappiness is to use medication. My other question (with regard to a situation like this) is whether it is, in the long run, there may at least be the possibility that someone like my friend may later face consequences as a result of "shifting out of" normal sadness-processing. It's not for me to say she would, or did. It's just a question I think people should be asking.

Professionals Don't Always Get Things Right - And Sometimes Shouldn't Be Expected To

Several years ago news reports came out that said so many doctors were treating "plain, old, unhappiness" as if it was depression. Whether there is technically a difference between the biochemical changes that take place when one is simply unhappy because of a lot of loss, I don't really know. If any of those changes are identical to those seen in depression, I suppose there may be some sense in treating unhappiness as if it was depression ("with no apparent cause").

Having experienced the natural process of working my own way back after having both monsters and dumptrucks bring the unbearable into my life and my children's lives, there's a part of me that wonders whether interfering with that process may pose unexpected/more serious consequences to the person who isn't "depressed for no apparent reason" and is, instead, just awfully unhappy and in the process of finding his way out of that unhappiness. There's a part of me that sees the important role of that numbness that happens when we are in grief or sorrow. I've always assumed it's Nature's merciful way of not letting us having to deal with more pain than we can really deal with, at least not until we're ready to deal with it. One question I have is whether, in the case of the person who may take years and years to get anywhere near beyond the immediate experience of having monsters or dump-trucks show up; whether long-term sadness (that is an understandable and normal response to awful events/circumstances) is more likely to be seen as "depression", just because it has lasted for a long time.

Another condition that is said to often be misdiagnosed as depression is exhaustion. Long-term stress/distress can lead to a body's essentially "running out of the juices required to keep going". While there has apparently been some disagreement about some aspects of the exhausted condition now called, "adrenal fatigue", there really isn't a lot of disagreement about the effects of long-term stress/distress on the body's functioning.

Apparently, while some conditions can clearly be separated from others; there can also be overlap between some of them. There are different "levels" and types of unhappiness and emotional pain can be anything, really. It is only the severe kind of emotional pain being addressed here, whether or not that is the kind that will persist "for the long haul" (but will subside, at least to some degree) or forever. The presence of unrelenting, long-term, unhappiness can obviously go hand-in-hand with both depression and exhaustion. Some people, however, may be a little to ready too dismiss even "dramatic" "good reason" for unhappiness than I think, maybe, they should.

What I do wonder is whether a tendency on the part of some patients to dismiss sources of unhappiness outside themselves, and sometimes seem to paint a picture that doesn't include all the things that are really included in it; places doctors as a disadvantage when it comes to identifying a patient's actual problem(s).

A NOTE ABOUT COMMENTING

I sincerely appreciate all the heartfelt comments and contributions that readers so often share with other readers. So often, it can help someone just to know he's not alone in what he's going through, or gone through. I wrote this Hub in response to an online question. Whether or not it even partially accomplishes my aim to offer something even just the smallest bit helpful to someone grieving, I don't know. That was the aim, though.

These days, with over 300 Hubs and over 1000 other pieces of writing on other writing sites (and with all that writing being a "spare-time thing" for me), I'm not able to personally respond to comments on some Hubs (like this one) that have comments that call for a carefully thought out response, rather than a quick "thanks for reading".

With most of the things I write in my spare time, it's about the writing. With a few of those things I've written, it's more about trying to reach out to people, "person to person", in some attempt to somehow offer something that might be helpful or useful to them in a difficult time.

The people who are interested in reading something on this subject are people who deserve a better, more well thought-out, response than a quickie, "thanks for reading". Comments from readers remain welcome and deeply appreciated (on behalf of anyone who may benefit from reading them). I do regret that I'm no longer able to personally respond to each comment.

Again, sincerest appreciation to everyone who has taken, or takes, the time to contribute his own thoughts here for others.

                                                                         Lisa