Validate your Pain

Logan Lerman has candidly penned: 'There is so much pain and I don’t know how to not notice it.’ This truth lays seeds of comparison due to which many of us tend to feel that our pain is not as big and thus not as important as the people around us. Grief then gets buried under layers of denial where it begins to rot into its more toxic form. The well-known five stages of grief places acceptance as the finale of overpowering pain. This acceptance is hindered by denial, anger, bargaining and depression. As often said, the first step is the hardest. The fundamental way to break through from denial of this kind is to validate your feelings, the good and the difficult, especially the difficult. This can be achieved by understanding grief itself. Viktor Frankln beautifully presents the essence of human suffering in his book ‘Man’s Search for Meaning’ by comparing it to the nature of gas. If a certain quantity of gas is released in a chamber, it will evenly and fully fill it, irrespective of the size of said chamber. Human suffering, great or little, fills the conscious mind, heart and soul the same way, making the size of suffering absolutely relative. Do not dismiss your pain, you need to accept it to begin healing it.