By Karen Stewart, MA

I am thinking of the words of the song, Are You Lonesome Tonight? I don’t know if Roy Turk wrote this song to process an actual breakup or not, but certainly his melody, lyrics, and Elvis’s rendition achingly convey terrible grief and longing.

Are you lonesome tonight?
Do you miss me tonight?
Are you sorry we drifted apart?
Does your memory stray to a bright summer day
When I kissed you and called you sweetheart?

Do the chairs in your parlor seem empty and bare?
Do you gaze at your doorstep and picture me there?
Is your heart filled with pain, shall I come back again?
Tell me dear, are you lonesome tonight?

Painful in so many ways—sadness, yearning, and later in the song it becomes clear there was deception and betrayal. The questions are directed to a former lover, but clearly, they are the singer’s painful feelings and memories. The person is alone with their pain.

I believe most of us are walking around carrying some kind of pain. We may experience the loss of a beloved partner, whether through a breakup or death. Many of us grieve parents, grandparents, children, friends, or other loved ones. Some of us have lost jobs or a place to live. Many of us have experienced diminishments to our health or way of life. We may have lost our innocence through betrayal or emotional, physical, or sexual abuse in a relationship that should have been safe. We all have our share of pain. Even if we have support at the acute time of a loss or other trauma, others move on, and we may find ourselves alone with our pain.

As always, I am thinking of you dear reader as I write this column. I am wondering what painful thoughts, memories, and feelings you carry. How do you cope? How do you manage? We may try to avoid and repress such feelings, but mostly they come back until we “process” them. Unprocessed feelings can affect our lives in ways that we may not realize. A rape survivor or survivor of child abuse may not be able to form relationships that are trusting and fulfilling or may be hypervigilant and unable to fully rest and relax. Holding back our emotions may cause us to feel blocked or stunted, unable to fully engage, experience and be present in our lives.

It Begins with Acceptance

We can process our experiences in many ways, but it always starts with acceptance. When she is upset or in pain Buddhist teacher Sylvia Borstein advocates saying: “Sweetheart you are in pain.” She offers to herself the kindness and compassion she would offer to a beloved friend.

We need to allow ourselves to admit that we are hurting, to let the feelings emerge and, if possible, allow tears to flow. This is no easy task. We often fear that we will be overwhelmed and not be able to recover. We may instead discover that acknowledging and accepting our feelings, no matter how painful or how long it takes, can bring a sense of relief and even a bit of peace. Instead of putting our energy into trying to block the emotions, we let the feelings flow. We focus on them, giving them our full attention, paying attention to where they are held in our body. We can hold feelings anywhere. Shoulders, neck, chest, gut and lower back are the most common places, but we can hold feelings anywhere.

As we sit with our pain, we honor and respect it and allow ourselves to experience it fully. We try not to get caught up in our “story” about what happened, but to stay with the emotions. Sometimes it is helpful to ask ourselves, “When have I felt this before?” Often a loss or really any hard thing that happens to us can bring up similar instances from the past. If we allow them into our awareness, we may experience further and deeper healing. Sometimes we can see a pattern, sometimes we can see a cause for what made those experiences especially painful.

After we have processed the feelings, they should quiet and we may have a feeling of calm and peace. Then we can distract ourselves. We can go for a walk, talk to a friend, read a book, whatever feels good. We rest in the knowledge that we are not running from our discomfort but have have accepted it and perhaps learned from it and we are ready to move on for now.

Sometimes, especially in the face of major trauma or loss, we may need to repeat the process multiple times over many months. The feelings can build up and need to be released or something may trigger them. I have heard many people talk about something as innocuous as seeing a particular brand of breakfast cereal trigger a flood of memories and emotions about a loved one. A rule of thumb is that major traumas take about three years to fully process. When I first heard that after the death of my father, I felt dismayed. However, I have learned that the process eases after the first six months or year and continues to get easier with time. Our life goes on and we begin to notice the positives and good around us. Three years may pass before there is a “new normal.”

Acknowledging Pain—Whether Large or Small

Some pain can be relatively minor: everyday hurts, slights and misunderstandings. Recognizing and validating those hurts is important. The goal is to sit with the experience. We may be able to step back and see the situation more clearly. We may understand why our feelings were triggered and how the event occurred. We can examine our perceptions to see if they were accurate or perhaps influenced by an old pattern. We can imagine how we might do things differently.

Sometimes things are completely out of our control, and we cannot change them, but we can change our reactions. For example, we may be insulted by someone and become angry and do something we regret. Next time it happens we can acknowledge our anger, but we might be able to choose a different action. No easy task, I know, but worth the effort.

Next time we will handle the situation better and if it keeps coming up, we will realize that we still have more to learn. Children are great teachers. They will just keep doing something that drives us crazy until we get whatever message they are trying to convey. In the meantime, we can learn all kinds of things about ourselves: Why does this drive me crazy? What is it in me that is triggered? Was I not allowed to do things like this when I was a child? Is the behavior harmful or just irritating? Does it need to change or just be understood and tolerated?

Hidden Threats

My life work professionally and personally has been dealing with inner experiences—that part of ourselves that is hidden, available only to us, unless we choose to share thoughts, emotions, bodily sensations. I believe that the most persistent, intractable and harmful thoughts and emotions are ones related to excessive anxiety, depression, self-deprecation, and self-harm. Often, we are loathe to talk about them and suffer in silence. Friends and family may have no idea that we suffer such pain. We may be successful, competent and have a good life and still feel badly about ourselves. We move through the world, engaging with others, working and playing and hiding our inner pain. Those kinds of thoughts and emotions require a different kind of treatment than what I described above. While anxiety and depression may have a genetic component, low self-esteem often has its source in our early experiences. I will talk about those feelings and what I have learned about how to cope with them in my next column for Health&Healing. For now, I hope you feel held in love by family, friends or something beyond as you accept, process and heal from your pain, not forgetting but integrating the experience.