Book title: Get Rid Of The Pain In Your Butt Now!
Chapter 6 - Emotional Awareness
It is crucial that if your intention is to heal, to have
your body be pain free, that you now begin to become
aware of your external stressors, internal stressors
and when and where you feel physical pain. Start
becoming aware of the different emotional stimuli
that are going on in your life situations. Go back
over your personal Journey of Pain exercise that you
completed in Chapter 3. Think back to what was
happening in your life when you noted these
particular pain sensations. Were there stressful
career situations that you were involved in or were
you going through a financial or relationship crisis?
You may now begin to realize that you are a chronic
worrier, a perfectionist, or someone who is driven to
compete, succeed and be the best at whatever you do.
Take your time with this exercise, really put your
heart and soul into it. Make some specific
observations about what was happening in your life
and in your thought processes that were occurring at
the same time you were feeling pain. The benefits of
this awareness exercise will begin to be felt in your
body immediately. As you begin to realize how you
are being emotionally you are beginning to gain
valuable wisdom about your bodymind and how it
reacts. This emotional understanding and awareness
that you are developing by this new insight is the
knowledge and information that you will use to
completely heal your pain disorder.
Realize that how you are being emotionally
is not right or wrong---It just is how you are
being emotionally. Being aware of how your
unique personality interacts within stressful life
situations continues the healing process for you.
Emotions are energy. Each emotion is a
physical experience in your body. These experiences
are real physical sensations. Painful sensations are
produced when emotional energy is stored, blocked
and trapped in our body. This emotional energy can
be disguised as anger, jealousy, resentment, greed,
worry and other traits unique to your personality.
Think back to a time when you were having a
very intense, negative emotional experience such as
anger. What were your physical sensations? Were
you tight and tense in your body or were you relaxed
and peaceful? Was your breathing full and deep or
short and shallow? What particular physical
sensations were you feeling? Did you experience
tingling going down your leg or did you have some
tightness in your lower back or neck? Really get into
this moment and remember what and where you
were feeling sensations. What were you thinking
about? Were they positive thoughts or negative?
Were the thoughts taking you back into your past or
were they taking you into an imaginary future
event? What emotion do you think is acting out here?
Is it resentment, frustration, guilt, jealousy? Identify
what physical sensations you are feeling in your
body and where you are feeling them. What was your
thought process during this experience and what
emotions were you generating? Were you denying or
avoiding these feelings with an activity or some
thought pattern? This is the process of emotional
Get Rid Of The Pain In Your Butt NOW! 58
awareness. When you do this you are becoming
aware of the dynamics of emotional energy in your
bodymind. There are five parts to this awareness.
External Life Situation
Inner Thought Process
Emotion or Feeling
Physical Sensation
Repression Activity
Repression is the action you took instead of feeling
the emotion. Meaning if your emotion was anger you
may have started screaming at someone. If you were
thoroughly feeling frustrated you may have started
eating or drinking obsessively. If you were feeling
despair you may have decided to dive into your work
intensely focusing on a project. Whatever the
activity, it’s purpose is enabling you to ignore,
deny, resist or repress the emotion instead of
experiencing it. Becoming acutely aware of your
individual process continues the path of healing your
physical pain.
This is the part that I don’t like. I don’t want to focus
on all this emotional stuff?
You must ask yourself, do you really want to heal?
Not just have someone fix the problem! Do you
really want to get rid of your physical pain for good?
Yes, I really do.
The healing process continues by becoming aware of
who you are being, how you are behaving and why
you are reacting the way you do. You are not going to
be asked to re-live some dramatic trauma. Just start
to observe yourself right now, not in the past, and
not imagining some future outcome, just watch
yourself now and when you feel painful sensations in
your body just observe what you are thinking about
and how you are feeling. This is the emotional
awareness that is needed to end the pain disorder.
When you do this you are learning to be the
Observer, (you “watch”, “listen” and “feel” what is
happening in your bodymind.)
You are learning to recognize that there are
physical pain disorders that play a psychological
part in your bodymind. People who are not aware of
this or choose not to accept this fact will remain in
physical pain. This is so crucial that it is worth
repeating. You are now aware that there are
physical pain disorders that play an emotional
energy role in your bodymind. And since you are
aware of and accept this fact you are continuing on
the healing path and the elimination of pain.
The alternative to being aware of your
emotional dynamics is to continue in pain, to
continue to live your life unconsciously
diverting your attention to more thoughts, ideas, and
activities like workaholism, judging, drinking,
shopping or television. These thought processes and
activities become the compulsive way you live your
life. You have learned to avoid, resist, deny, and
Get Rid Of The Pain In Your Butt NOW! 60
suppress your feelings. This is the dis-ease that we
are creating that makes us unbalanced, that causes
the blocks, the stuck-ness, that ignites our system to
go haywire, to misfire in its communication and
result in pain.
Psychologists label this avoidance of emotions as
a defense mechanism. You can learn to identify them
in yourself and stop the repressing patterns. Many
people think that the problem is with external
stresses---job, spouse, house, and friends, so they
change careers, move to a different part of the
country or find a new mate. Changing your life
situation does not change the emotional
dynamics that are causing the physical pain.
It is internal stressors or our own unique
personalities and how they react to these outside
stresses that attribute to the creation of tension.
Traits such as perfectionism, conscientiousness, the
need to please others, controlling attitudes, and the
need to excel and be highly competitive are some of
these personal qualities. Quite often this type of
personality will put more pressure on them self to
perform than others would expect of them. Many
people have stressful jobs and life situations, but the
individual who then strives to be the best, perform
perfectly, impress others and be overly conscientious
of how others perceive them while at the same time
resisting or denying that this behavior is even taking
place within them are generating an enormous
amount of internal tension that is becoming stuck,
blocked and stored through repression.
Read through the following examples of ways
that people avoid experiencing their emotions. Some
you will recognize as familiar patterns in yourself,
others you may recognize as patterns in people that
you know. They both offer a perspective that can be
applied to help heal.
Low Self Worth
Feelings of inferiority or low self worth are deeply
hidden in many people. These feelings reveal
themselves in our behavior and generally invoke
action that over compensate for how we truly feel
about ourselves. If we feel weak, we act strong, if we
feel our life is out of control, we take actions to
control other people and situations. The need for
many people to be liked and achieve success is a
reflection of low self worth. When you feel worthless,
you are fearful of your life. This fear continually has
you trying to control your life as you think it needs
to be. Dr. Sarno found in patients with TMS that
they had the feeling that they had to accomplish
something significant or live up to some ideal role
such as being the best parent, student or employee.
Take a moment now to make some notes on your
own self worth. Do you try to impress or prove
yourself to others? Do you attempt to control other
people or situations? What is driving your need to
succeed? If you find that you can relate to some of
these personality characteristics, take the time now
to replay a situation in your life where you exhibited
these qualities. When replaying this experience, can
you feel painful body sensations? If so, where? What
were you thinking about? This type of emotional
awareness is the healing path to the elimination of
pain. Low self worth is believed by many mental
health professionals to be the core cause of anger.
Anger
Beneath every experience of anger is a large pile of
emotional experiences. Anger is absolute frustration
that you are not able to arrange your life experiences
or others, as you would like to. We get angry for
other reasons as well. Anything that makes us
anxious will tend to evolve into anger. Anger is
always generated when you are resisting what is
happening in your life. Most people who have angry
outburst think that they are expressing or
experiencing their anger. The outburst of slamming
doors, yelling and stomping is not experiencing the
emotion of anger. These activities are the defense
mechanism that is repressing the feeling. Instead of
really experiencing the feeling you divert your
energy to an angry outburst allowing the emotion
(energy) to be stuck, create a blockage or be stored in
the tissues of your muscles and nerves. This
repressed energy now goes to work dynamically
manifesting the biochemical process in your body
that results in physical pain.
Angry Outburst
The process would go something like this example.
You are at home working on an important project
that is due the following morning. Your children are
arguing and you ask them to please stop. The
arguing continues and you are beginning to become
frustrated. You start thinking about how you cannot
focus as intently as you would like and your mind
starts to visualize what will happen if you turn in a
less than perfect project. “I’ll look like a fool if this is
not completed”, “These kids are driving me nuts,
why don’t they realize how important this project is
to me?” “Ouch, here comes my sciatica pain again.”
STOP
Let’s take a look at where we are in this example.
The emotion that is being created is anger. The
accompanying thoughts are “I’ll look like a fool” and
“Don’t the kids understand how important this is to
me.” The physical sensation is sciatica pain.
This is the emotional awareness process. Now
we must experience the emotion of anger-really feel
it. So what happens next? You shove your project
aside and stand up feeling tense, the sciatica
running down your leg. You take a quick breath and
start yelling, “I told you kids to quit arguing, now
stop it or else”. You may stomp off now or slam a
door and yell again, right? Something like this? Your
definitely upset, tense, thinking angry thoughts, and
showing your anger by yelling, stomping and
slamming doors.
You just experienced your anger, right?
WRONG! You did not just feel the emotion of anger.
You just experienced an Angry Outburst. You acted
out your anger. Instead of experiencing or feeling
your emotion of anger you actually repressed the
feeling and went to your defense mechanism of
acting out the anger by yelling, stomping and
slamming doors.
This is the emotional dynamic that is causing
your pain. You repressed the emotion of anger and
acted out the experience instead of feeling the anger.
Anger Suppression
You may not even experience the angry outburst.
You may just internalize the emotion. Consider the
following example.
Your preparing to run a very important race-you
are shooting for a PR-you have some worries about
your training and are becoming anxious, as you hope
everything will turn out as you want, however, you
are also resentful of the challenges that you are
contending with in your life situations. You are
working overtime at your job because your wife is
having an abnormal pregnancy and is not able to
work. This means less time to train. You are also
losing sleep helping to take care of your other child
and you are rearranging your schedule to meet
everyone’s needs. What is happening here internally
with your emotions? You can’t get angry with your
child for being sick. You cannot resent your spouse
for her medical condition. You love them both. You
are being a good father, husband, and employee. And
you are determined to run a perfect race. This
example demonstrates that we have feelings of
anxiety, frustration, and resentment, leading to
anger and then guilt if we were to get angry. There
is no question though that we are really frustrated
that our life is not going the way we want. And since
you are not able to control many of the events—you
internalize the feelings. You have learned to repress
your emotions entirely and you may be unaware that
you are even doing it in many situations. This
internalization of feelings both consciously and
subconsciously stimulates the “tension”, initiating
the biochemical processes that create the physical
pain sensations we are experiencing.
Take a few moments to reflect on your personal
situations and make note of what frustrates you. Do
you resent your job? Are you angry at your bank
account? Do you try to control people in your life and
then become frustrated when you can’t? Have you
experienced anger at a situation and then felt guilty
about being angry? Do you internalize your feelings
as a way of repression? Do you realize that having
an angry outburst is not experiencing but actually is
the way that you avoid, deny and resist your
feelings? When you think about these situations
make a note of painful sensations you feel and where
they are located in your body. Also, make it a habit
to start asking yourself how you feel or what am I
feeling? Then be aware of the feedback you receive
from asking these questions.
Workaholism
Workaholism is an activity that is used to flee from
your emotions. It has become a drug that can mask
the pain of experiencing your feelings. This activity
is appealing to you because it allows you to focus on
work, something other than what you are feeling
inside. A workaholic will move from project to
project, job to job, career to career with the habitual
fixation to accomplish things. Every project, job or
career has the same urgency and importance. They
serve the same function—to provide a way to avoid
your emotions. Your focus is intently on
accomplishing, you have no idea what you are feeling
or what anyone around is feeling. You’re aware of
others only as a means to help you accomplish more.
However, this is only temporary. You may get
satisfaction from finishing a project, but soon your
compulsion sends you off to accomplish something
else. You cannot stop because if you do you would
have to feel what is urgently trying to get your
attention—your emotions.
It is easy to deny workaholism. You can justify
your compulsive actions to yourself as just striving
to be successful, not lazy or as being a responsible,
conscientious provider for your family.
Are you using work to avoid your emotions? Is
your work more important than family and friends?
Do you feel an urgency with every project or job your
involved in? Do you know other people who
demonstrate workaholic characteristics? Listen and
feel your answers to these questions. Try not to
dismiss this as a repression activity to easily.
Perfectionism
Perfectionism is a thought process that your life is
not perfect. It is a compulsive mind activity that
diverts your attention away from emotions. This
avoidance leads to repetitive organizing, constant
controlling and other obsessive work task. It is a
mind activity that continually judges your
circumstances and those around you to be imperfect.
It becomes compulsive because the more you judge
yourself and others to be imperfect the more
imperfections you find.
Perfectionism is an ideal example of resisting the
present moment. Instead of accepting your life,
where you are right now, your mind takes you to an
imaginary future- a future where everything is
perfect. This perfect future never arrives, as the
perfectionism cycle never stops. Neither do your
emotions, they continue to be felt as physical pain.
The pain continues because you continue to judge
yourself and others, you try to control and
manipulate circumstances, and you continue to
resist the present moment. Being a perfectionist
takes tons of energy away from you. You are giving
your energy to a false thought process. This is
energy that can be used to eliminate pain instead of
avoiding emotions.
Make a Not Perfect List. Include people, places
and things. For example, my husband’s physical
appearance; My son’s grades; My job; My financial
situation; Notice what physical sensations you feel
and where when you really think about these
imperfections. Do you know other people who are
perfectionist? What unique traits do they display?
Ideal Role Playing
Playing the role of the Perfect Father, Wife,
Entrepreneur, Employee, or Athlete is another
thought process that enables you to deny your
feelings. By living life through your ideal role you
strive to be perfect and control who you are and how
others perceive you. You ignore your emotions and
demonstrate behavior that you believe this ideal
person would use. These roles originate from low self
worth. When you feel worthless you are living in
fear. To avoid those feelings you create the ideal role.
These roles allow you to be safe and secure. If you
are playing these roles you do not have to feel your
true emotions. The Ideal keeps you insulated from
exposing your true feelings to your self and to others.
The true emotions that are striving to be expressed
in you are easily shielded, because the Ideal would
never have these particular feelings. When someone
plays the Ideal they are losing a tremendous amount
of energy. They are using this energy to appear to be
someone that they are not. They are using energy to
deny their emotions.
What ideal roles have you created? Super
Parent? Amazing Business Person? Best Husband?
Elite Athlete? Ask your self why you created this
ideal role? To be: Powerful? Admired? Respected?
Have Control? Hide My Fear? Ask yourself if the
Ideal is working? Does it allow you to be: Admired?
Powerful? Have Control? Hide Fear? Ask yourself if
you are being honest with yourself when playing the
ideal role? Are you avoiding your emotions by being
this Ideal?
Judging
Judging other people and things is a mental activity
that diverts your attention away from your emotions
and onto something external. It is mental activity
that is resisting the present moment. When you
judge something you are giving that person or thing
your energy. Judging others is a way to forget what
you are feeling. It is an opportunity to impose your
perfections and control over them. Judging is a
complex thought process of avoiding characteristics
in your self that you do not approve of. You become
angry with someone else instead of yourself. You
mock someone’s financial position instead of feeling
your disappointment about your lack of money.
Judging attempts to make you aware of your own
issues that are unresolved but the action of judging
prevents you from experiencing your emotions. It is
a defense against fear and feeling the pain beneath
the fear. Massive amounts of energy leave you when
you judge something or someone.
Remember a time when you judged someone?
How they looked or acted? What were your
thoughts? What were you saying about them? Is it a
possibility that you possess the same characteristic
that you were judging in someone else? Can you
realize how judging diverts attention away from the
present moment and who you are being? Do you see
that judging is a way to resist what is happening in
your life?
Power-Manipulation-Control
Striving to control, manipulate or demonstrate
power over something or someone is a thought
process that enables you to avoid your feelings.
Instead of feeling your emotions, you choose to focus
your energy on something or someone and you try to
change them. When you do this you give your energy
away to that person or thing. This type of mental
activity depletes you of energy. The pursuit of power
through manipulation and control creates tension,
stress and anxiety because when you engage in these
mental activities you are resisting what is. You are
struggling to change some external dynamic. These
struggles occur because you feel powerless and out of
control. Instead of feeling or experiencing why you
feel powerless you attempt to change all of these
external things and people so that you can feel in
control and powerful. These types of controlling
behavior are ways to avoid fear and painful emotions
and they require huge amounts of your energy to
keep them going. This is energy that you could be
using to eliminate your pain disorder.
Do you attempt to control others? How do you
demonstrate that you are powerful? Think about a
time you were in a struggle with a co-worker or
member of your family. Were you right and they
wrong? Were you attached to the outcome? Did you
need to prove you were right? What thoughts were
you thinking during this struggle? Were you aware
of your own energy/body during this episode? What
happens when you withdraw your energy—your
intention to control this other person?
Waiting and Searching
Waiting is a thought process that something or
someone in the future is going to save you—make
everything OK. Waiting is resisting what is
happening now. You are saying that my life today is
not OK, so I am going to search for someone or
something to make everything OK. You are waiting
for the perfect job or you are searching for the
perfect mate. This mental process is allowing you to
ignore the present moment. This waiting/searching
puts your attention and your energy on something
external in the future. The thought process is, I’m
not OK today, but someday I will have the perfect
job and then everything will be good. This dynamic
is enabling you to ignore your feelings of low self
worth, anger, and fear. You are giving your energy
away to some perfect future while you wait and
search. This search will never end because you are
focusing your attention on something or someone
external and in the future to fix your problems,
instead of experiencing your emotions. Waiting and
Searching is an exhaustive mental exercise that
depletes you of energy.
Make a list of what you are waiting for; Perfect
Job; Financial Security; A New Mate. Are you
searching for Fame, Respect or Power? What were
your thoughts? Did you feel that the new job would
make you feel better? More powerful, be respected,
or have control? Was the new mate the answer to
your problems? When starting a new search, were
you excited and compulsive only then to be depleted
once the search was over? Do you remember the
physical sensations you were feeling in your body?
In addition to these mental processes and
emotional dynamics many people use alcohol, drugs,
sex, food, shopping and exercise to avoid, ignore,
deny and repress emotions. All of these activities can
provide some temporary relief. These activities can
be enjoyable in moderation. When they are
continually used as a means of repression they can
become compulsive and addictive. Inner tension is
created as you avoid your emotions and put your
attention instead on these outside activities.
Grapping a drink, cigarette or buying stuff is
usually a response to some disturbing feeling that
we don’t know how or don’t want to deal with, so we
get rid of it with ways that we know will work. Your
feelings are striving to be expressed and you
continue to disregard them. Your effort to avoid
these emotional signals and the infinite flow of these
signals to you is the beginning of your compulsions,
obsessions and addictions. All obsessive-ness comes
from this refusal, denial and avoidance to accept
your emotions—that are desperately trying to be
experienced. Whatever or whomever the addictive
substance is-you are using it as a way to avoid your
feelings.
It appears to me that I do most of these “mental”
processes sometime. So does everyone that I know.
This seems normal.
You’re right! It is considered normal because almost
everyone is suffering from some kind of compulsive
identification with thinking. We judge, we like, we
dislike, we become angry and have an outburst, we
try to control. We resist our life as it is now and go
searching for something or someone to save us. This
is the disease. We use our mind to go back into our
past and dig up some hurt and then seek revenge.
We resist what is happening now so we judge and
use our mind to go into the future where the perfect
job is waiting for us. Our mind creates endless
conflicts and problems and then provides us with
compulsive thought processes and activities to get
rid of them. We resist and try to change what is
happening now in the present moment, instead of
accepting and experiencing what is occurring within
our self.
Observe your mind! See for yourself! Can you
stop thinking? Can you stop judging? Can you stop
the internal dialogue whenever you want? If your
answer is no, then your mind is using you! Have you
ever listened to the dialogue in your mind? The voice
that comments, complains, judges, compares,
dislikes, rewinds to the past, and then fast forwards
to the future. You’re correct that this seems like
normal behavior because almost everyone is doing it.
This is what is causing our pain—insane,
compulsive, unconscious, toxic, repetitive,
energy draining mind activity. We are constantly
directing our energy outwards towards external
things and other people usually in an attempt to
repress our own emotions. So we weaken our
bodymind systems with this outward energy
draining and then we cause havoc throughout our
complex internal communication system by ignoring,
denying, and avoiding our feelings. Our internal
information signals, (energy) become stuck, stored,
blocked and chronically dysfunctional in their ability
to communicate properly throughout our system.
Blood flow becomes restricted, less oxygen is flowing
to our tissue and the result is physical pain,
depression, and a feeling of energy-less-ness. As a
result we become stuck in this compulsive cycle
repeating the same old thought patterns, focusing on
our injured bodies, listening to the past conditioning
on physical dysfunctions and either waiting or
searching for the miracle cure or doctor to fix us.
Does this frighten you? Are you intimidated to
know that your mind is using you? Or is it a relief to
know that this insane, energy draining, unconscious,
toxic mind activity is taking place and you can
reverse it?
Yes it is frightening and yes I think it is a relief to
know that this is happening. How do I free myself
from this energy draining mental activity?
By freeing your self from your mind. By being
“present, aware, and conscious”. By realizing that
you are not your mind. You are not the perfectionist,
judger, controller and ideal role player. These are
thought processes that your mind is using to control
you! Your mind is using you because you are
completely identified with your thoughts, mental
processes, and mind activities. Take some time now
to digest this information. Let it really sink in.
You free yourself from this insane,
unconscious, energy draining, pain causing
madness and heal your body by being
conscious present and aware.
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Excerpt from Monte Hueftle's book
Posted - 02/27/2006 : 19:20:02
