Understanding Emotional Pain

Many people are familiar with Eckhart Tolle’s books “The Power of Now” and “A New Earth”. Tolle talks about how the ego and mind control our life and our consciousness. He also refers to remnants of pain in the body as the “pain-body.” Many other writers refer to the pain-body as emotional conditioning from childhood and less formally as our emotional baggage.


We have been talking a lot about childhood emotional conditioning, but haven’t defined what it is or where it comes from. Emotional conditioning is an emotional response to outside stimulus. The outside stimulus might come from a traumatic event such as physical abuse, accidents, deaths in the family, etc. Or it may come from sexual abuse; approximately 30% of all children in North America have suffered from some form of sexual abuse. These experiences have an overwhelming effect on a child, who’s brain is significantly smaller than that of an adult; and hence less capable of processing the thoughts, emotions and feelings from the event.

A second form of emotional conditioning comes from our parents or others who have a significant role in our upbringing. From these people we receive repetitive messages about what is appropriate behaviour and what is not, whether we are good or bad, whether we have succeeded or not. These messages influence how we judge ourselves and often become our own story as an adult.

These events and stories are stored in two ways; our memories and in the cellular memory in the body. The brain determines what events to store as memories based on the amount of emotional energy associated with the event or story. The situation might have been very pleasant and when the memory is recalled positive emotions are elicited. However if the situation was overwhelming there will often be resistance to recalling the event or the story because the subconscious mind is afraid of being overwhelmed by the experience again.

Psychology, counselling and coaching help people change the stories they have in their memories. As these memories are often recorded when we were children, the associated feelings remain stuck at a childhood maturity level even though our brains and bodies have matured. These professions work with people to shift their thinking, beliefs and perceptions to unlock old memories and look at them from an adult perspective.

Emotional energy held in the body is the remainder of any feelings we were not able to face in the moment they occurred. After each event, small remnants of pain are left in the body. Children in particular find negative emotions far too overwhelming and have limited capacity to stay present and feel the pain.

Unfortunately, this defence mechanism of not feeling an overwhelming emotion remains with us as we become adults. The tendency to suppress overwhelming feelings when they occur, results in a cumulative build up of negative emotion. If we were able to stay present and fully experience the feeling in the moment we could prevent this emotional backlog or baggage.

What kind of emotional baggage do you have? How big is your pain-body?

The size or intensity of your pain-body determines how much drama it causes in your relationships, at work and the rest of life. Some people have a very small pain-body, which is less dense in Tolle’s terms. Others have a very large pain body “waiting for the next event to react to, the next person to blame or confront, the next thing to be unhappy about.”

Learn more about how you can resolve your emotional conditioning, let go of emotional baggage and minimize your pain body in the next Catalyst LIVE! Teleconference, June 8 at noon.

Next Month we talk about How Emotional Conditioning Causes Health Problems.

Much Love,

Lynne Brisdon, PCC
http://www.livinginvision.com/


"Learning to feel better requires that you become better at feeling."
The Reconnections - Daniel Jacobs  E-Motions post