“Some people think to be strong is to never feel pain. However the strongest people are the ones that have felt pain, understood it, accepted it and learned from it.”
– Charlotte Dawson
We often think we will be Happy when we get what we want, but actually, it’s the other way around. We get what we want when we learn to be Happy.
The really bad news is that the first step in learning to be Happy is feeling the pain. Not a lot of people want to do that. I believe feeling the pain is the first and most important step on the journey to achieving Happiness. If we don’t allow ourselves to feel the pain, any other Happiness practices are just papering over the cracks.
I’ve experienced depression on and off for nearly 30 years. Every time I think I’ve finally conquered it, it rears its ugly head again.
Despite having a regular Happiness routine, there are times I still feel depressed. Sometimes this is triggered by not sticking to my routine, especially if I’ve deviated from my eating plan and indulged in too much sugar and alcohol. Other times it’s triggered by trying to do too much. It’s often my intuition’s way of letting me know that something’s off. The state of the world and the fear and division doesn’t help. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to be for any reason at all.
It’s okay not to be okay and to allow ourselves to feel the pain. I believe this is probably the most crucial Happiness tip of all. It’s also probably the one thing we don’t want to face or acknowledge. We want to cover our feelings with affirmations, gratitude, meditation and other Happiness techniques, but I’m starting to believe that those techniques will not fully work until we have laid the foundation of allowing ourselves to feel the pain.
Allow Yourself to Feel the Pain
In my experience, one of the best ways to deal with painful emotions is to allow ourselves to fully feel them. While it helps to feel the pain, at the same time, don’t dwell on it. Feel it, really feel it – but don’t get caught up in thinking about it. Don’t get out a sleeping bag and tent and set up camp there. Feel it in your whole body and then let it go.
Allowing ourselves to feel the pain is an essential part of the healing process when we feel low, depressed or even when we’re grieving. It’s often fighting the pain that causes the most problems. What we resist persists, as I learnt when I did my Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP) practitioner training.
When I feel emotional pain, it’s helpful to close my eyes and fully immerse myself in it. It’s good to notice where in my body I can feel it. The more I allow myself to focus on the pain, rather than resisting it, the pain becomes difficult to grasp, much like it would be trying to grab hold of a cloud.
Don’t Beat Yourself Up
I have a habit of beating myself up when I experience depression. I feel that as an ambassador for Happiness I should be walking the talk and so I feel like a hypocrite when I don’t feel happy at least 70% of the time.
My friends and followers often reassure me that I’m the perfect person to be helping others as I am living my experience. I am real. I am authentic. People tell me they can relate to that.
A few years ago, I was starting to believe this when I was hit with a bout of crippling depression. Usually when I have a period of feeling low it passes within a day or two and normal service can resume. This time it lasted for a few weeks, which, once again, led me to questioning my ability to help others. “It’s all very well feeling low for a day or two,” I thought to myself, “but this prolonged low mood is unacceptable.”
I sometimes feel that I’m not happy enough or spiritual enough, and that’s why I still feel depressed sometimes. I felt comforted by a video from law of attraction teacher and author, Abraham Hicks which helped me look at it from a new perspective. They suggested the opposite, in fact. In the video they propose that the higher our vibration, or the better we’re feeling, the harder it is when we lose that momentum. They use the metaphor of a car crashing into a tree or wall: If a car crashes into a tree at 5 mph it will feel a lot different than if it crashes at 70 mph.
Comments from well-meaning friends can lead to further self-doubt. Friends often say, “What have you got to feel down about? You have a great boyfriend, a good job, a nice home.” I gently reply that “mental health doesn’t work like that.” I feel that if people have never experienced mental health issues or depression, and sometimes even if they have, they find it difficult to understand.
Look for the Lesson
From what I’ve seen, there’s always a lesson, a silver-lining, a blessing in disguise. When I was in 12-step programmes one of my sponsors used to call them “crap-wrapped miracles.” We can ask ourselves what we need to learn from this experience. How can we use what we’ve learned to help ourselves and others? In the Buddhism I practice we call it turning poison into medicine.
Ask, “How can I turn this into a positive?” I usually write a blog post about my problems once I have processed the feelings, in the hope that my experience will help others.
As a result of a bout of depression a few years ago, as well as lockdown, I learned to stop striving. Instead, I started to really enjoy my life as is. I realised how lucky I was: I had an amazing boyfriend, a great job, wonderful friends and I lived in a lovely house. We lived in the beautiful county of Suffolk, and we regularly went on holiday. I had a good life. I realised I needed to learn to slow down and enjoy it.
It also increased my passion to let the world know that it’s okay not to be okay and help others learn from my experiences.
While feeling the pain can be a very powerful technique, it doesn’t always work immediately, as I found in many episodes of depression. Sometimes we are not ready to deal with the pain, these methods don’t immediately work or can seem overwhelming. Read my blog post about what to do when feeling the pain doesn’t work.
Fed up with feeling fed up? Take action to learn to be Happy and get what you want with the the book Happiness Club: Learn to Be Happy and Get What You Want and Happiness Club membership programme. Sign up now.
If you prefer to hear me read this post on YouTube you can do so here Feel the Pain.
This post was originally written for Happiness-Club.co.uk a few years ago and I have updated it in 2024 – 2025 for the book Happiness Club: Learn to Be Happy and Get What You Want and the Happiness Club membership programme.
