( Part 3 )
now what is actually a wound ? what causes emotional pain ? IMO it is a disconnect between expectation and reality so to speak.
let's say you tried to talk to a girl and she rejected you. it hurt - but why ? nothing actually changed. literally everything is objectively exactly how it was before you saw the girl - only thing that has changed is your mind. so what is it that is hurting ?
well in your mind you were worthy of a nice girl and reality has shown that you are not. but your mind is refusing to accept this. so now in your mind two incompatible states exist - one of what you used to believe and want to continue believing - namely that you are worthy of a nice girl - and one of reality that you are not. you can't reconcile the two and you don't want to give up the fantasy thus any time you remember what happened it hurts and you try not to think about it by distracting yourself with something else.
but distracting yourself won't make the disconnect go away. the disconnect is the wound. it needs cleaning and stitching up. to do that you would have to reflect deeply on what has happened and why and it will be horrible but your ultimate goal is to close the gap between how you feel ( every woman must want me ) and how things really are ( only women i don't like want me ).
of course this is just an example. maybe the disconnect is that you believe something was somebody else's fault but deep down you know it was your fault. this is making you feel shitty so you avoid thinking about it.
whatever the case may be the goal is still the same - close the disconnect between how you are trying to feel and what the reality is. this requires facing the pain rather than running from it.
the problem is that a lot of times we don't even realize we are running from it. our brain will instinctively try to find something less painful to think about and we usually have a lot on our hands so this won't be that hard. but the sooner you clean / stitch up the wound the better off you will be in the long term. that means that when you are initially hit with that pain assuming you're not in the middle of anything important you just go to bed to avoid any distractions and allow your brain to process it.
sometimes the brain will do the work by itself. other times it will either try to think of something else or go to sleep and you may want to actively remind it why you're in bed - that you have a specific goal of looking at a particular something that is bothering you.
the good news is that once you have completely processed the Trauma and accepted all the painful but obvious lessons you can now move on with your life and not be afraid that something or somebody will trigger you by sticking their finger into your wound.
think of all the unprocessed Trauma like a To-Do list for your mind. the more you keep putting it off the longer the list gets and the more miserable you feel just by contemplating the existence of that huge list. by contrast if you simply do the things on the list it goes away and you can enjoy yourself without any kind of anxiety in the back of your mind.
so yeah i agree avoiding those dark thoughts is just another form of procrastination.
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