The pain is not the problem

The two emotional coping styles that bring people to therapy

Image by Tyler Lastovich on Unsplash

Life is inherently painful. If we live long enough, we will not be able to avoid encountering grief, loss, fear, anger, and the whole spectrum of human pain.

You might imagine that people come to therapy seeking support for the pain in their lives, and yes, this is true to some extent.

But the pain is often not the problem.

The problem is the myriad of things we do to try to avoid or outrun our pain. The many different strategies we employ in our attempt to cope with pain.

While we were busy learning algebra, history, and the periodic table in high school, most of us weren’t well educated in how to meet our emotions. The assumption was that we would learn these skills at home, but in reality, most of our families were muddling through with only the dysfunctional coping mechanisms of their own upbringing.

Our default emotional coping styles fall on a spectrum, from, at one end, emotional avoidance to, at the other end, emotional fusion¹. Both can be problematic.

Those at the more avoidant end of the spectrum tend to lean heavily on distraction. They try to tune out what they are feeling through a range of means, like staying busy, scrolling online, using alcohol, food, or a range of other substances to distract, over-ride, or keep emotions at bay. These are sometimes the people who find it hard to sit still and spend quiet time alone. They might define themselves as ‘active relaxers’ or ‘workaholics’ who always need to be occupied with a task.

At the other end of the spectrum are those who tend to fuse with their emotions. When they experience an emotion, they can disappear into it, become overwhelmed by emotion, ruminating on it, and get lost in thoughts and stories about it. They lose sight that it’s a temporary passing experience, and may inadvertently trigger emotion on top of emotion – what’s known as secondary emotion - such as shame about their anger, or despair about their anxiety.

Some of us may recognise ourselves clearly at one end of this avoidance-fusion spectrum or the other. While some find they yo-yo between the two, avoiding until they no longer can and then becoming overwhelmed and immersed in their feeling state.

The work of therapy is often to find a third way. To find the middle ground between these two emotional coping styles. The place where we can meet our emotions and navigate our way through them, without becoming lost in the haze. Without either pushing them away or clinging to them.

Emotions are healthy, meaningful, experiential states, with an evolutionary function and purpose.

They are physiological messengers in the body designed to alert us to information about our environment (think anxiety alerting us to danger, sadness alerting us to loss, anger alerting us to mistreatment, etc.).

Neuroscientist Dr Jill Bolte Taylor describes research looking at the physiology of emotion². It shows that when an emotion fires in the body, the chemical cascade lasts for around 90 seconds. We often experience our emotions as lasting much longer than this, but this is usually because we are caught in the story, inadvertently firing the same emotional messenger on repeat, or adding secondary emotions to the mix.

In the therapy room, we listen to the messengers and practice bringing awareness, embodiment, mindfulness, and acceptance to the emotional landscape.

In practice, this usually involves slowing down, allowing our awareness to drop into ourselves, and noticing what’s arising. We try to stay present with just this one moment, and not allow our mind to race into stories of past, future, or doomsday scenarios.

We learn to hold our emotional experience with the spaciousness and reverence it deserves.

We learn to name and validate what’s arising, to recognise it as meaningful.

We learn to pause, sit with a feeling, notice the sensation arising in the body, breathe with it, and simply allow it to be.

We learn to let it move through like a wave - rising, cresting, falling, and releasing in its own timing.

We learn not to hold on to it longer than is needed.

We learn to create a space between feeling and response, in which we can choose the wisest course of action – which might be some form of self-soothing or emotional expression.

We learn to be held through this moment by the presence of a compassionate witness. We borrow from the capacity of the witness until we are eventually able to offer this compassionate witnessing to ourselves.

Often we need to re-learn the language of self-soothing that was innate as a baby, but got lost through society’s dysfunctional messaging. Our first language of self-soothing included instinctive patterns like rocking and humming, seeking safe touch, and reaching for what is warm and soft.

When we’re able to sit with our own emotions, we become better able to offer the same to others. To hold space for someone’s distress without moving to distract, escape, fix, or panic.

We live in a remarkably emotionally-phobic and emotionally confused world. Learning how to sit with ourselves with tenderness, and allow the ebb and flow of emotion to move through, is some of the most powerful work we can do.

It’s medicine that the world needs more of.

Thank you for reading. I’d love to hear whether this resonates with your experience, and where you see yourself on the spectrum of coping styles. Is this a useful way of thinking about how to approach emotional distress? I always take the time to read and respond to your comments and love hearing from you.

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1. The language of emotional fusion and emotional avoidance comes from the work of Steven Hayes who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT).

2. Taylor, J.B. (2021) Whole brain living: The anatomy of choice and the four characters that drive our life. Hay House Inc.