When people talk about emotional pain versus psychological pain,
They're pointing to two different layers of experience.
Emotional pain is felt directly in the body and in the heart.
Sadness,
Grief,
Fear,
Anger,
Longing,
And joy.
It moves.
It has texture and sensation.
It rises and it falls when it's allowed to be felt.
Emotional pain is relational and alive.
When you stay present with it,
It tends to soften or complete on its own.
Psychological pain lives more in the mind.
It comes from meaning-making,
Interpretation,
And identity.
Thoughts like,
I'm failing,
Or something's wrong with me,
Or I can't handle this.
Psychological pain loops.
It tightens when the mind resists what the body is experiencing or tells a story about it.
A simple way to feel the difference is emotional pain says,
This hurts.
Psychological pain says,
This means something bad about me or my future.
One day,
I had this overwhelming feeling in my body.
It felt like stress and sort of like anxiety,
But not quite.
It was like my foot was on the gas and the break at the same time.
For a few days,
It felt like I couldn't catch my breath and I couldn't figure out what was happening at the time.
I kept trying to treat it like I would anxiety,
But nothing quite fit.
So then I started researching symptoms,
And the moment I saw the word hyperarousal,
I knew that was it.
What's really important here is this.
Hyperarousal is mostly a nervous system state,
Not psychological pain.
But when I named it accurately,
The psychological layer dropped away.
That's why I felt relief so quickly.
And actually,
It was immediate.
And it's because the mind stopped fighting the body.
I wasn't suffering because of the sensations themselves.
I was suffering because they were unnamed and therefore ambiguous.
Once the truth came in,
My system oriented and relaxed.
I honestly felt happy.
I want to share this because so often,
When we don't have a name for what we're feeling,
The mind will loop and loop,
And it exacerbates everything.
It can last for hours,
Days,
Or even weeks.
It isn't until we sit with ourselves and name what's happening inside of us that something can unlock.
Understanding will arrive,
And that's when we can move forward with compassion.
So if you notice yourself mentally looping,
It's often because something inside of you is resolved,
And a part of you is waving a red flag saying,
Look at me,
I need your attention.
And once that acknowledgement,
Validation,
And compassion are given,
Everything can relax and you can move through the moment.
It's almost as if the energies in our body need to be acknowledged to be heard,
And when they are,
They don't need to shout anymore,
Which makes everything less overwhelming and more manageable.
