Why Deep Pain Forces Us to Confront Our Deepest Buried Emotions

We spoke for over an hour, and it wasn’t surface-level conversation. It was about pain, what we’ve both been through, and the truth that I still had not fully processed the deep emotions that continue to keep a powerful hold over me. It has forced me to realise that although I’ve spent time reflecting, I haven’t truly sat with everything that’s there.

I’ve faced things, and I’ve worked through a lot, but there’s a deeper level to this. One that isn’t about understanding the pain, but actually allowing it to move through me. How deep do I dig and how far back do I go? There is a lot of talk about childhood trauma. The truth is, there is still a lot in me that I haven’t allowed myself to fully experience. And I can feel now that there is a reckoning of sorts, something that can’t be bypassed anymore.

When I really look at it, the layers are clear. There is the pain of my mother emotionally abandoning me when I was a baby, the anger I have toward a family member, and the deep sense of fury at my ex for walking out. Then there is also an anger towards myself as well. Each one carries its own weight, but together they form something much heavier. Something that gnaws away beneath the surface.

What struck me was a memory from when I was about eleven years old. An older boy at school hit me, hard, and it hurt enough that I cried. But it wasn’t the physical pain that stayed with me, it was the look on his face, the way he saw me in that moment, as if I had become weak and no longer worth respecting.

Without realising it at the time, I made a decision. That crying was not something I would allow myself to do again. It felt like a line had been drawn, and from that point on, I would hold things in rather than risk being seen that way again.

Looking back now, I can see how much that single moment has shaped me. It taught me to stay in control, to push through, to bury any negative and dark feelings. And now, years later, I find I’m trying to find access something that I trained myself to shut down.

There is a deep sadness in me that I know is there, but I haven’t been able to fully release it. I can feel it, sense it, but it hasn’t moved in the way I know it needs to. I suspect it’s because I’m only now starting to give myself permission to go there.

Alongside that sadness is fear, particularly around finances. It shows up physically in my body, a tightening that comes without asking for permission. But I can now see that instead of pushing it away, I need to sit with it and speak to it directly.

I’ve found myself saying, I can see you, I know you’re here to protect me, and I appreciate that. You don’t need to leave right now, but when you’re ready to, I’ll be okay. That shift alone feels significant, because I’m no longer fighting it. It moves me out of resistance and into something closer to acceptance.

One of the other things my cousin said stayed with me. He spoke about how we can believe we’re connected to something greater like universal energy, or something beyond ourselves, and yet we can still lose trust when we face challenges in our life. In those moments, it’s not that the connection is gone, it’s that we’ve lost sight of it.

I can definitely feel that in myself. Mostly I have deep trust that everything is unfolding as it should, and then there are moments where fear takes over and that trust disappears. It’s a strange contradiction, but also a very human one.

What is clearer to me now is that none of this can be resolved by thinking my way through it. The answers I’m looking for aren’t going to come from analysing the past or trying to force meaning onto it. They will come from being willing to sit in the darkness to face what’s there, without trying to change it.

There’s a part of me that wants to find the lesson, the gift, the so-called reason for everything that has happened. But I don’t think that is the work here, maybe it comes later. But I don’t think it’s something you arrive at by searching for it. Instead I feel it’s something that reveals itself once the emotion has been fully processed.

For now, the work is about sitting with the pain, the anger, the sadness, and not trying to escape them. It’s about allowing them to be there without needing them to go away.

By sitting with the darkness, the light becomes brighter. Not because I’ve chased the light, but because I’ve stopped running away from the real honest painful work that will not go away until I confront, feel, and accept it as it is. Then, well who know’s. But there is something honest in that, something that feels real.

Maybe the question isn’t how we get rid of the pain. Maybe it’s whether we’re finally ready to face it.