agliophobia - the fear of pain

I hate the bumps in life - although I know they teach us things and cause us to grow and all that good shit. But they hurt a lot of times. They leave me bruised and a bit battered and wondering where that hard knock came from? I hit a bit of a bump tonight, a relationship bump, though I don't know how big of a bump it really is yet. But I already have a bit of a bruise, and my heart is feeling a little bit battered. My mind is arguing, telling me that it's all okay, that I'm imagining things to be bigger and worse than they are, that I need to just relax and give some room to breath. But my heart is hurting and saying, "This isn't right! I've been struck!"

I hate it when things seem to be going so well, I'm excited about something, I think I've finally found what I was looking for, and BOOM! Slammed with something unexpected and left aching and wondering what happened, how did I not see that coming? Again, my mind tells me that it's not that big of a deal, that I need to not dramatize it and make it sound so bad. I don't have the full story. I only know my side. I shouldn't jump to conclusions or let my imagination run away and make it seem bigger than it really is. But it hurts! I feel ignored and brushed off. I feel like I did or said something, but don't have any idea what!! Yesterday things were good, and today they are weird and abnormal. What happened between then and now that I don't know about?

So many questions. I hate that. I hate not knowing. It drives me crazy. I guess I'm a bit of a control freak. I can't stand not knowing and not being in control of a situation. I feel helpless and vulnerable. My heart is wide open and in a position to get hurt even more. But how can you live fully without having your heart wide open? I don't want to close it, hold everyone at arms length, keep the door closed on my emotions just in case I might get hurt. That's no way to live. But at the same time I feel so very vulnerable. When you open up to someone and start to care about them, it leaves you wide open to also be hurt by them. Yet life without caring is no life at all. I have to take that risk - but the fear of pain is oh so strong.

I've always been afraid of pain. Physical and emotional. I don't handle it well, and can't tolerate much. Pain has me running for something to numb me - an Advil, or a movie or something else to try and distract me. Tonight it was adult entertainment. But it only numbed it for a short while. Nothing, no matter how good it is in and of itself, is good to numb pain. The point of pain is to point out something wrong that needs to be dealt with. In the case of physical pain, it indicates something wrong with the body - something injured, or something not quite right health-wise. Something that needs to be healed. So it is with emotional pain. It also indicates something that needs to be healed. To ignore it and try to numb it will not make it go away. It needs to be faced. It's easy to see that and to say it, but how do I live it out? How do I face the pain, when it's pain I fear so much? How do I confront it head-on and find out how to heal it when it hurts so much I can't think straight?

There's another ditch that you don't want to fall into either. You don't want to wallow in the pain and give in to self pity. That's probably just another way of trying to numb it, really. Ignoring it won't help, but focusing on it won't help either. You have to acknowledge it, yes, and even grieve, yes. But you also have to let it heal. No self pity, no picking at the "scabs" and making it bleed more. Leave it alone, wash it, clean it, bandage it if need be, and let it heal naturally.