Every person is familiar with this feeling of longing, sadness, despair, when obsessive negative thoughts are overcome, and life seems to be a hopeless existence, full of fear and hopelessness. To relieve physical suffering, it is enough to drink pain relievers and then see a doctor. It is much more difficult to answer the question of how to cope with mental pain, because scientists have not yet invented magic pills that can heal the wounds of the soul.
What is heartache
Mental pain, or suffering, is a severe psycho-emotional state that occurs due to the inability to satisfy the most important vital needs of a person. Most often, the strongest emotional experiences occur after a loss, be it death or separation from a loved one, loss of a job, financial position, social status, or even a favorite thing. Sometimes the soul hurts because of the inability to get what you want.
Any situation that unsettles has one or another traumatic effect. The loss can last for years, and forever remain a bleeding heart wound. A person can completely lose the meaning of life, as the people say, put an end to himself. This condition can lead to sad consequences - drug, alcohol addiction, prolonged depression and even suicide.
How to deal with heartache the right way
Mental trauma leaves terrible traces in the human psyche. Even seemingly insignificant grievances can do great harm if they "step on a sore corn": they affect psychological traumas received in childhood, or recall tragic events that happened earlier. The best advice on how to cope with the mental pain that painful memories cause is to heal the trauma you once received. This process is slow and requires serious efforts and the help of a professional psychologist.
It is worth learning to treat your mental health with the same attention as your physical one. It is best to start healing mental wounds, as well as bodily wounds, as early as possible. If something terrible has happened in life, you need to make every effort to get through the grief correctly.
There is no need to suffer in silence with clenched teeth. Perhaps in films and novels such heroes look incredibly courageous, but in real life, unlived suffering remains a thorn in the soul and continues to plague the rest of his life, poisoning the soul and body and leading to illness and aggression. Experiences need to be extracted from oneself by any means. Give vent to tears, confess with a priest, speak out in a psychologist's office, cry on the shoulder of a friend.
Easter egg is an excellent self-help method. Its essence is to throw out all your experiences on paper, reaching your innermost thoughts. Pysanka helps to "give away" pain, to decompose it into its components, to understand the hidden motives of one's actions, to sort out the most painful issues. Information on how to write Easter eggs correctly can be found on the Internet.
After strong emotions slowly begin to weaken, you need to give yourself a nourishment, an opportunity to recover. To do this, you will have to learn to get rid of the past, start living here and now. There are some great and very simple techniques to help you focus on the present. To return to "now", it is enough to stop the mental flow at least for a moment, look around, see how amazing the surrounding world is, how sweetly the birds are singing and how beautiful the sky is at sunset. Such simple exercises help to realize the value of life and show an alternative to depressive states, not allowing them to take over consciousness.
The recovery process consists in finding a resource for later life in the tragic situation that has occurred. Correctly experienced suffering helps to gain invaluable experience and become a good help for new achievements. Remember, anything that doesn't kill makes us stronger!
There are simple ways to relieve pain and see life from its good side. If the trauma is shallow, it is enough to follow these tips to restore mental balance. Serious emotional experiences cannot be ignored, they must be treated with the help of a specialist psychologist. In this case, advice will be a good support for therapy.
- Take care of yourself. Find new interests and hobbies. Spend more time outdoors, go out into nature, stroll through the parks. Get enough sleep.
- Take care of your body. An excellent way to relieve pain is a relaxing massage, bath, spa treatments. In addition to pleasant sensations, these procedures have a beneficial effect on the body, help to release clamps and relax, and the body, as you know, is closely related to the mental state.
- Play sports. During physical activity, the body produces endorphins, which are responsible for the body's resistance to stress and disease and improve mood.
- Learn to stop the flow of obsessive thoughts. In this matter, meditation, yoga, breathing exercises are indispensable.
- Look for the positive in everything. As you know, every cloud has a silver lining, and the most desperate situations can turn into unexpectedly happy consequences. Of course, it is blasphemous to look for joy in the death of a loved one, but in all other cases there will certainly be positive moments that will open up new opportunities or at least give a reason to smile.
- Do not become isolated in yourself and your pain. Don't turn your pain into the meaning of life and into an ever-bleeding wound. Learn to ask for help. Try to communicate with kind and bright people. If the trauma is deep, work with psychologists, join support groups.
- Work on yourself. Suffering is a reason to think about your existence and about your soul. Having realized its deepest causes, you can understand what exactly led to such consequences and correct your mistakes. Life is just beginning!
Video: Advice from Alex Yanovsky "What to do if you are in pain"
Life cannot be lived without tragedies and troubles. Suffering leaves its mark on the soul of a person. But if you learn to deal with the pain in the right way, these scars will become a reminder of the experience gained and serve as a lesson in how to overcome adversity and emerge victorious from it.
Mental pain, suffering - every person experienced this torment. Resentment from betrayal, betrayal, injustice, grief, melancholy - all these feelings are associated with pain that cannot be relieved with the help of drugs.
Unfortunately, many people find themselves trapped in addictions in an effort to escape the pain that torments them. This applies to alcohol, drugs, gambling addiction.
Running away from problems is the lot of the weak. It sounds corny, but it is. Most people who are inclined not to take responsibility for their lives, looking for the cause of failure and mental discomfort from the outside, cannot survive the slightest pain and do everything not to feel it, which only exacerbates the situation.
On the other hand, mental pain pushes creative people to create masterpieces, for example, the most beautiful poems were written in a state of mental anguish, looking for a way out.
What to do when the soul hurts?
Let's look at several possible situations in which torment arises, and try to understand how you can heal mental wounds.
Hidden benefit
Psychological work with a problem begins with establishing its cause. If you are dealing with people who constantly “hit”, you may not need psychotherapy. It will be enough to change your environment. But if you deliberately end up next to such people over and over again, it makes sense to think about why you need it. What pushes you to such "self-torture"? Is there some hidden benefit for you?
It is very often the cause of severe mental pain. In this case, the treatment will be useless as long as there is a need to achieve hidden goals. In order to identify them and revise them.
Grief
Another common cause of mental pain is a prolonged experience, for example, from a person or from the loss of a close relative.
In these cases, the help of a psychologist is often needed, but the person himself can take steps to get rid of the problem.
First, you don’t need to feed your memories by looking at pictures of people who have departed or listening to sad music. Secondly, try to shift your attention to new activities, do what you like best, and most importantly, do not be alone.
When experiencing grief, there is a period when you need to endure the acute pain, let it go. A psychotherapist can help with this. If you are unable to forget the deceased person, try to mentally talk to him and say goodbye. Left alone, light a candle, think about who has left, release him internally, deciding to continue living. It often takes real courage to make this choice.
Bodily stress
Any phenomena of our consciousness, one way or another, manifest themselves at the bodily level. Acute mental pain results in areas of tension, or muscle tightness, in the body. For example, a hunched over, tense back, "hardened" shoulders, clenched jaws. Such manifestations are the result of restraint. Movement frees the body, returns life to it, and, as a result, the mental pain ceases to be unbearable, it “dissolves” and gradually goes away. Try to move more, walk, play sports, even if at first it will be difficult for you to force yourself to devote time to this. This will help you deal with the pain.
Working with restraint
We often hear: "Do not keep your grief in yourself, speak out, it will become easier for you." This is indeed the case. At the initial stage, a person needs to release negative emotions and share experiences with loved ones. If you have no one to talk to, you can do a simple job: take a piece of paper and write on it what worries you, torments you, from which your soul hurts. If you write sincerely and don't hold back, you will quickly feel relieved. This work is useful in that it helps to better understand oneself, and external experiences no longer seem so scary and insurmountable. By the way, after the completion of the work, it is recommended to destroy the leaflet. For example, it can be burned. This symbolic action will help you let go of negative emotions.
Defeat
Mental pain can also be caused by the experience of defeat in a business that is very important to a person. In this case, the memories come back again and again, a feeling of shame arises, thoughts of how to act are tormented. Such a state of mind will be cured if a person finds the reason for his defeat and builds a different course of action. It is necessary to stop digging and understand what led to failure, and what qualities in oneself need to be changed in order to avoid this in the future.
In general, the psychology of experiencing is built on looking for support in your mind, and only then working with feelings. is the master of himself and his life, which allows him to experience negative emotions without being captured by them. In addition, having learned to think and correctly build our life, we begin to work for the future, eliminating the appearance of mental pain and developing resilience in the face of a variety of life circumstances.
Heartache allows for new experiences and maturity. The main thing is not to be afraid to live in the present in its entirety, rejoicing, grieving, suffering, learning lessons and achieving new victories. After all, we all came to this world to experience the fullness of being, and not to hide in a cocoon of experiences. Think about it, you can live and continuously move forward, or you can "relive", that is, stay in place while life passes by. The choice is yours.
Last updated article 19.07.2018
Mental pain is the discomfort that a person feels inside himself, but it is not interconnected with any organ. Therefore, there is no medicine to eliminate such a disorder.
The severity of unpleasant sensations in all people is different, as well as reactions to a mental wound. Some, trite, reduce torment with the help of alcoholic beverages, while others run away from reality on the Internet.
A specialist psychotherapist will tell you how to cope with mental pain with minimal consequences for psychological and physical health. However, not everyone will go to the doctor for help, trying to solve the problem on their own. Thus, only aggravating the situation.
Development mechanism
Mental pain is a person's emotional reaction to a negative change in their usual way of life. Most often, it is preceded by a significant loss - the death of a loved one, betrayal or loss of social status.
A rapidly arising negative emotion, according to its assessment, is regarded by a person as a significant experience for him - a deep emotional feeling. It is of great importance for the full formation of the personality, being a significant link in psychological activity.
Most experts attribute mental suffering to subjective feelings. However, modern studies have made it possible to refute this statement - in the images obtained with the help of magnetic resonance imaging, foci of activation in the limbic system of the brain are clearly visible, as a response to the inflicted moral trauma.
In addition, severe mental pain can be perceived by a person as psychogenic - felt by him at the physical level. For example, pain impulses in the region of the heart, head, abdomen. It is not possible to establish the relationship with somatic pathologies, as well as to confirm them with instrumental examinations. Therefore, no medicines are able to cope with mental anguish. Only a highly qualified psychotherapist can help.
Causes
Mental anguish can appear for other reasons:
- a constant feeling of fear - living in a family with an accentuated personality prone to physical violence;
- long-term suppressed emotions of anger - a highly paid job under the guidance of a personally hostile leadership, when the “tyrant boss” gives directly contradictory instructions, demanding to perform such a volume of duties that is beyond the power of one person, as a result, and is formed in conjunction with mental suffering;
- deficiency in the body of certain chemicals - neurotransmitters, which can be expressed by hyperexcitation of brain structures, depletion of their ability to compensate;
- a failure in the activity of endocrine organs, provoking the constant production of hormones of anxiety and stress - hyperthyroidism, pheochromocytoma;
- self-obsession of a person on his own troubles, - looking at photographs of a deceased close relative, returning to memories of happy moments in the past;
- a subconscious need for gaining benefits - mental pain serves only to disguise a person's selfish motives, a desire to receive material benefits from others or increased attention in response to the demonstrated torment of the soul.
Putting everything in its place - to establish the true reasons for the deteriorating health and suggest how to get rid of mental pain, only a competent psychotherapist can do.
Pain in the soul can also arise from parting with a loved one. : psychiatrist's recommendations.
Symptoms
Many people describe their negative emotions and worries this way: for them, mental pain is an unpleasant, intense feeling of constant melancholy and excruciating inner suffering.
At the peak of psychological discomfort, physical disorders may even appear - asthenia with persistent dizziness, migraines, palpitations and nausea, or sleep disturbance, lack of appetite.
In some people, the mental pain of love, or rather its loss, may even exceed in severity and intensity the sensations of a burn, injury, or a broken leg. The situation is aggravated by the fact that it is necessary to hide your feelings from others, to maintain a "social face".
Latent internal processes can result in the following somatic signs and physiological symptoms:
- a feeling of pressure behind the breastbone;
- a fossil somewhere in the chest, head;
- unpleasant constant burning sensation, coldness in the chest;
- stitching, pressing impulses in the heart;
- discomfort, cramps in the intestines - the upper or lower abdomen, at a certain point;
- the constant presence of nausea - rolls in waves or is felt every minute;
- disorders in the cardiovascular system - a slowdown in the pulse - bradycardia, or its increase - tachycardia, fluctuations in blood pressure parameters.
However, the physical manifestations of mental anguish, especially if they are not so clearly demonstrated, may be ignored by others, while emotional manifestations are more clearly tracked. Depression, depression of mood, apathy, anxiety, lack of interest in all current events, "stiffness", "numbness".
Sometimes sensations are so exotic that they can already be perceived as signs of psychopathies that have arisen - the heart was ripped out of the chest, everything inside burst and drenched in blood.
How to deal with pain in the soul on your own
Since people are socially dependent beings, most often the pain in the soul arises from the breakdown of relations with a loved one. Emotional disorder can be so intense that it affects the activity of internal organs - the heart, nervous system, gastrointestinal tract.
Mental experiences go through several stages, each of which will have its own emotions. The emotional pain after parting with a loved one begins with the stage of denial - an unwillingness to understand that the relationship is over. This is expressed in the constant return to thoughts about the beloved and the desire to see him.
Since no meetings take place, emotions move on to the next stage - resentment and hatred. The abandoned half strive to throw out the pain with a failure, taking revenge in all available ways. Such actions bring relief, but only for a short time. And only then comes the stage of accepting the gap, when emotional experiences lose their intensity, decrease.
To speed up the process of psychological recovery after breaking up with a loved one, experts have developed several recommendations on how to relieve mental pain at home:
- switch to other activities - do charity work, join a hobby group;
visit art exhibitions, film premieres with friends more often; - accept the breakup as a fact and end the relationship, getting rid of all things that may remind of past events;
- start visiting a fitness center, swimming pool, gym - physical activity helps not only to relieve nervous tension, but also gives a feeling of joy, self-satisfaction;
- to restore old relationships with old friends and visit them - communication with once acquaintances, but people who have managed to forget, learning new events in their lives, all this helps to distract and experience mental discomfort.
There is no single scheme of how to survive mental pain - each person has to experience various methods and techniques of dealing with the torment of the soul, choosing the best option for himself.
If a person has mental suffering, it is necessary to carefully analyze the situation and his own feelings, to find out what could have caused them. So, family grief - the loss of a loved one, divorce, a serious illness, require a certain time interval to adapt to new circumstances. You should not rush or rush yourself.
Lacking special skills, many people, after listening to the advice of outsiders, try to drive out of themselves mental discomfort, constantly recalling unpleasant events, "sprinkling salt" on the wounds of the soul.
Daily dramatization only aggravates the frustration, not relieves the anguish. Subsequently, it takes much more time and effort to overcome mental anguish - it is better to just speak out once and try to accept the event in your life as it is.
Someone is simply exaggerating their own suffering - fighting with "windmills". Whereas after reassessing what is happening, you can understand that the troubles are quite solvable. They are only part of the complex mechanism of the universe, and against the background of the movement of planets in space, they are not at all significant for humanity. By minimizing your own troubles, it is much easier to deal with them.
It is imperative to believe in your own strength, in the possibility that you will be able to “make friends” with the problem and overcome it. Having spent time on a thorough study of the situation - together with his best friend, a psychotherapist, having understood what exactly can be done, a person is thereby already taking steps for his mental recovery.
Another direction in the fight against mental discord is to rethink your lifestyle. Active physical work helps to break out of the bottomless abyss of melancholy and depression - to carry out a long-planned renovation in an apartment, start attending yoga classes, a swimming pool. Attention should also be paid to the diet - to enrich it with vegetables and fruits, useful microelements and vitamins. Sleep is an equally important component of health. It takes about 8-9 hours for the brain to be able to calm down and process everyday events.
Helping the soul to overcome discord is within the power of every person. It is only necessary to set a similar goal for yourself, as well as to listen to the opinion of experts in this field.
You cannot live without mental pain; sooner or later it will make itself felt. It can be provoked by any event that no one expected, and for which no one was preparing. She strikes a crushing blow, breaking everything that was familiar and seemed so reliable. Mental pain is the most terrible and destructive of all that can harm a person. Because it is inside and you cannot run away from it. She would have to face it anyway. You can distract yourself from it, but only for a while. Very soon she will declare herself again, which is why it is so important to learn how to cope with it, and even better to avoid it by any available means, although it is very difficult. But nothing is impossible for one who believes.
Dealing with heartache
When the soul hurts, it ceases to please the world around us, what seemed wonderful yesterday, today only aggravates the pain and causes suffering. And, even having managed to forget for a minute, people very soon remember her again and again. And no matter what they do or say, no matter how distracted and try to forget, she does not go anywhere, but waits in the wings to grab attention again.
And here it is important not to run away and not fill the whole day with business, but to find time when no one will interfere with putting things in order in your own soul. For the daily bustle, grandiose plans or a desire to get through this day faster, most never look into their souls at all. It does not occur to them or they are very afraid of it. Their head is busy with something else, but not with the fact that order should be not only at home, in the workplace, in the family, but also in their own souls. But that doesn't protect them from pain. All the same, she will remind you that she also needs attention.
And if at first it will be just a feeling that something is going wrong, then as soon as an unpleasant event occurs in life, pain will fill the soul, which has been abandoned for so long. And it will be possible to get rid of it only by understanding what led to this, what became the reason for its appearance.
Because you can get rid of something only by finding the source. And to do this when all the negativity that occurs in a person's life has accumulated in the soul is very difficult. Any information, especially negative, leaves its mark. And so that this does not affect the general state of mind of a person, it must be pondered, drawn conclusions and released. Instead, people absorb everything they see and hear without even trying to analyze and assess what happened. And then they wonder why they lose their nerves at the slightest failure. But the soul simply did not have the strength to calmly react to everything. Too much negativity is pouring on her already.
TV with its terrible news and stories, disrespect, inattention, lack of money, never ending household chores, problems not working, quarrels, unfulfilled dreams of career growth, fear of making the wrong choice, difficulties in relationships, lack of understanding in the family or loneliness - all this leaves wounds and clogs the soul with negativity.
And instead of finding the source of the pain, understanding what provoked it, and how to get rid of it with the help of the available means, the person does not know where to start. Everything that he so carefully tried to ignore seemed to fall on him. And wherever you look, there is no way out.
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Because at one time he did not want to analyze what was happening, did not adhere to hygiene when choosing programs, news or films, refused to deal with what did not suit him in life, constantly avoided finding out relations with those who offended or caused pain. And now, when the thicket of patience is overflowing, there is no strength to pull myself together. Life has turned into a strip of obstacles that are increasingly difficult to overcome, and there is no end or edge in sight. Mental pain becomes a constant companion that does not disappear anywhere, no matter how hard you try to pretend that everything is normal.
But don't despair. It doesn't matter why the soul hurts, the main thing is that no matter how bad it is, you can cope with it if you understand that it's time to stop listening to those around you, whoever you are.
Do not rely on them in everything and think that you can be happy if someone is with you. You must seek support exclusively within yourself. It's great when someone who supports you is nearby, but until you believe in yourself, no one will solve your problems that prevent you from enjoying life. Only you are capable of doing this, realizing that it is within your power and no one else can.
Take it for granted that there is and will be negative. Yes, he knocks down, sometimes causes unbearable suffering. But only you decide how it will affect you. If you are responsible for your life, then you yourself decide how to react to what is happening. Otherwise, you put your destiny in the hands of those who hurt you, willingly or unwillingly.
Top 7 how to deal with heartache
The one who is attentive to himself and realized that his soul is a temple, and it requires attention no less, and sometimes more than the body and even more so than those around him, never experience crushing blows. Yes, no one is immune from crises. At a certain age, some earlier, some later, everyone rethinks their life and - this is absolutely normal. People should think about, evaluate and analyze the path they have traveled, draw conclusions, evaluate actions and achievements, decide what to do next - go towards their goals, create new ones, or even take a break and devote time to themselves and those who are around, before it's too late ... As the saying goes: you cannot earn all the money and you cannot achieve success in everything.
Those who have not deprived themselves of the right to do what they consider necessary, endure such periods absolutely calmly, and cope with mental pain much faster than anyone else. Because I learned not to react to negativity, hurtful words, actions and indifference from others, I taught myself not to wait for anything and not to worry when something failed, because something else will turn out. To achieve such spiritual harmony, you must not brush off your emotions, feelings and thoughts, but believe in yourself and listen to your own desires.
You need to believe that you deserve the best and there is no one who would have the right to question this. Because a strong person knows that it is impossible to hurt someone who carefully guards his peace of mind. He will never do anything that can disturb him and will protect himself from any situations that may cause pain.
Often times, heartache arises from the fear that you are not good enough to never be happy. Therefore, stop thinking about what you are missing and what else you need to fix in yourself in order to become happy, it is better to think about whether you are going that way. Are you moving there, are you sure that you are doing everything right, is the current situation joyful, are you satisfied with your work, family relationships, health, people around you?
Analyze and don't be afraid of the conclusions you come to. The main thing is to understand that you are aware of what you are doing and will be able to protect what is dear, and do not retreat under the pressure of others. Stop considering someone better than yourself. Better to look for ways to fix what you are not happy with.
Your task is to listen to your inner aspirations and dreams, and not satisfy someone's needs. Learn to respect yourself, then those around you will begin to respect you. And when you feel that your interests are met, and you do what your soul tells you, any pain will disappear. After all, it arose because you lacked something. And when you regain your self-esteem and use the right to decide for yourself and understand what you want, you will only have to receive it.
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People who have a noble goal, be it helping the disadvantaged, serving the Motherland, protecting their rights and the rights of those who are not able to stand up for themselves, who know what they want, understand what is important to them, do not compromise with their conscience , is able to admit mistakes and correct them, if possible, never suffers. They don't have time for this.
There is nothing more terrible, dangerous, exhausting and life-breaking than mental pain. It is she who makes people do things that they would not have thought of before. It is not easy to get rid of, it is difficult to heal, but there is always a chance to learn important experience from it and move on, becoming wiser and stronger. And the main task for any person in life, no matter what anyone says, is not gaining wealth, power or fame, but the ability to live in harmony with your own soul. Without this, you simply cannot become happy.