What causes emotional hurt/pain?

I was thinking tonight about how hurt is what stimulates anger/depression but what causes hurt/emotional pain? I have come up with hurt being a negative belief that we hold against the image of ourselves of that which we think we are.

What do you guys think is the cause of emotional pain?

reply to post by Ralphy


Wow, good question; original.

I've never really thought about it, but at first glance, your own ponderings about it seem to make sense.

I'm trying to think the last time I had my feelings hurt. I tried so hard to please someone with doing some things I took pleasure in, and really worked hard to accomplish, over a period of time. (My nephew). Turns out, the person wasn't pleased. In fact, he was critical. I felt very hurt. I cried, when I was alone.

So, in fact it was, perhaps exactly as you said. It contradicted the image I had of myself doing these things, and squashed my little thoughts that I was doing good. And part was disappointment. That I tried to please someone, but had obviously failed. (Is that self-pity?)

This is complicated now that I consider it. I'll definitely have to ponder this some more. Am curious to see what other members have to say. If I have any worthwhile epiphanies about it, I'll post them.

Expectations.

If one's expectations are under met it's percieved as bad.
Say someone starts a thread with an idea they can't wait to discuss and get ideas on.
Then the first 5 responses troll them in the dirt. It hurts.

Having one's expectations over met can be weird too.
If someone makes a goofy thread to ridicule people, and then
the first 5 responses jump onboard, love it, and start pages on the subject,
the original poster may feel a general disappointment in humanity.

It all comes down to expectations.


David Grouchy

p.s. If anyone is interested in the cure I only take payment in cash and in person.

reply to post by Ralphy


The "I" (ego/mind). Pain is just a thought. Find where this "I" rises from with "self-enquiry" until only the true self (consciousness/awareness) remains and then just be.

If you have trouble finding the true self, you may need to use a meditation practice to calm the constant rushing of thoughts. Then "self-enquire" on who is the meditator ("I" ego/mind).

"Who am I?"...

reply to post by Ralphy


My girlfriend and I just broke up last week and i saw her for the first time today to basically say goodbye. Theres obviously the physical sense that is present through your body when you go through hurt feelings/emotions/etc. But i think the pain that you feel deep inside is your soul crying out. At least thats what i am feeling right now. I honestly feel like two separate entities at the moment. Maybe its just the break up but its the craziest feeling ive ever had.

Originally posted by Ralphy
I was thinking tonight about how hurt is what stimulates anger/depression but what causes hurt/emotional pain? I have come up with hurt being a negative belief that we hold against the image of ourselves of that which we think we are.

What do you guys think is the cause of emotional pain?

I know a lot about the mechanisms. Dianetics is an interesting book on the subject. If you read it, buy at a 2nd hand book store because the COS really lives up to it's reputation. If you contact them, they will never leave you alone. The idea of how emotional pain causes innocuous stimuli to be perceived as aversive is very good. Not every jot and tittle is true, but in broad strokes, yes, I can see it. If it weren't for those mechanisms, there would be a lot less emotional pain experienced. Negative self images can be formed by various kinds of pain, trauma, loss, or fear of a loss, especially if spoken language is present during the experience.

A good article on the developmental aspects (has nothing to do with scientology):

Dr. James W, Prescott, Neuropsychologist

On the treatment of irrational negative emotion with implants (treatment-resistant patients including the criminally insane):

Dr. Robert G. Heath

Originally posted by MonkeyWrench30My girlfriend and I just broke up last week and i saw her for the first time today to basically say goodbye. Theres obviously the physical sense that is present through your body when you go through hurt feelings/emotions/etc. But i think the pain that you feel deep inside is your soul crying out. At least thats what i am feeling right now. I honestly feel like two separate entities at the moment. Maybe its just the break up but its the craziest feeling ive ever had.

The vagus nerve runs through the digestive tract. They call the vagus nerve the "enteric" (stomach) brain. That's one reason that you feel like you've been punched in the stomach during/after such a loss. I've been there several times, for no good reason. I'm sorry you're going through that, I know it's no good.

I remembered the following article and thought it was interesting. This was a study showing that acetaminophen and other OTC pain pills might be effective in damping emotional pain and rejection. The pain centers for physical pain as well as emotional pain are close..."neural overlap" is what they call it.
From the article:
According to the academic paper detailing the experiments: “…findings suggest that at least temporary mitigation of social pain-related distress may be achieved by means of an over-the-counter painkiller that is normally used for physical aches and pains….
biopsychiatry.com...

I really think that it is our soul hurting. The body doesn't feel pain, but our soul does.

I think it is proven by the people who have had 'hard lives' looking 20+yrs older than they are.

P.S. I am not religious at all.

reply to post by grizzle2




Yes I am aware of that nerve and yes the feeling isnt very comfortable nor admirable. Thank you for relating star for you because i can. haha

I think that love could be an answer to that question. Without the ability to love you wouldnt feel emotion pain/hurt would you? It seems to me it would be connected. But really who knows?

To overcome emotional pain requires honesty. Hardest of all is honesty with the self. I went through a period where I almost could not face myself - an unbearable extestential pain brought about by suffering as a result of my experiences from being deployed to war and my return to a bad marriage. In order to escape the marriage I managed to manifest a severe physical illness.

I am better now, and continue to improve - but I have done much work in regard to being honest with myself.
I did not drift into depression - I drifted into illness . . . but the root was a "loss of voice" a loss honesty with the self.

Journaling was my salvation, followed by meditation - and finally for mind body healing - yoga.

Originally posted by Ralphy

What do you guys think is the cause of emotional pain?

Most of it is simply biochemistry; often misapplied, and at the end of the day, when all of the chemical mess is sorted (if ever it is), it is usually about perceptions (real, unreal, and often instinctively driven) regarding survival/procreation. The most common "emotions" at the root are desire (thwarted, or somehow unrealized, and not necessarily sexual), and shame.

There are those times however, when I think The Soul is what hurts. There are no words for this.

reply to post by ladyinwaiting


Well you sound like a wonderfully honest person to get where you are ! and my hat is off to you ! Just keep trying and i am sure you will make, inroads ! thank you for your post ! obviously a nice person. Regards Nicknav.

Originally posted by Ralphy
I was thinking tonight about how hurt is what stimulates anger/depression but what causes hurt/emotional pain? I have come up with hurt being a negative belief that we hold against the image of ourselves of that which we think we are.

What do you guys think is the cause of emotional pain?

Contraction of the life force.

CHAPTER 26 Undermine the Tendency to Create Emotional Dissociation SRI DA AVABHASA: As My devotee, you should not indulge any separative activity in yourself at all. You can all see what separative activity is. It is when you withdraw from somebody. Is there anybody here who does not know what that is like? Everybody here knows that? Then you have received the initiation! That is the avoidance of relationship. Before you do that, before you withdraw from somebody, notice that the person is already right there. Your relationship to the person already exists. Therefore, all withdrawing from that person is felt by you as pain. You suffer because you withdraw your life-force from them, and you likewise feel confused and upset. Do you see how all of that is the life of suffering? Then do not do that anymore! Instead, live in relationship to others. Do not tolerate any withdrawal in yourself. Maintain your contact with that other person and deal with all the forms - even the subtlest forms of that withdrawal in yourself, from this same point of view. And do not dramatize it anymore. You must not forget. Never allow your "consideration" to degenerate into "let's pretend" and mere positive affirmation. There must be a real and direct feeling association among My devotees and a constant feeling practice of love-surrender to Me. You must literally practice this heart-felt surrender at all times, and you must literally oblige one another to do this practice. * * * The commitment to subjectivity is the withdrawing of life energy, the withholding of feeling-attention, the failure to love. It is just as much a failure to love as all the outward, wild, gross activities people tend to do. Generally, however, people do not regard the failure to love to be a "sin". They think that "sin" is the indulgence of - the senses, and they think that otherwise their subjective orientation is in the God-ward direction. But that is absolutely untrue. Subjectivity is just the other side of the body. * * * Love is unobstructed feeling-attention. It is human relational intensity - free of the recoil of egoic "self-possession", reactive or negative emotions, and absorption in the subjective stream of thoughts and images. In general you tend not to engage the emotional dimension at all. You avoid it. You play the game of emotional dissociation from the world, from one another, and from Me, the Incarnate Divine Person. When you dramatize this problem of emotional dissociation, this quality of the collapse of feeling, energy, and attention, then you become a self-server, totally without clarity in relationship-not only in human relationships but in all relationships, and in relationship to Me most fundamentally. This constant and unconscious effort to create emotional dissociation must be undermined. Serve one another by helping to break this habit and by re-establishing one another in authentic emotional association, in love-surrender through feeling-Contemplation of Me, and in a loving, radiant life altogether, in all relations. As My devotees, you must bring down this emotional barrier that exists between you and never again play the game of "let's pretend". * * * If you cannot feel, if the core of the being, the heart, is not active, then at the physical level you must indulge yourself in all the ways of gaining pleasure, from orgasm to drugs. If you cannot feel at the level of emotion, then you cannot live a life of love, you cannot be intimate. If you cannot feel with the head, at the level of mind, you cannot enjoy clarity of mind or "consider" things as they truly are. Thus, feeling must be awakened from head to toe and from toe to crown, through Contemplating Me with feeling-devotion. Feeling must become natural to you. It must become your discipline. * * * The Realization of Truth is an emotional matter. The discovery is an emotional one, the change is an emotional one, the true practice of the Way of the Heart is emotional. The "consideration" of the activity of emotional dissociation, or "Narcissus", must not be dropped. It is not something that as My devotee you take seriously only every now and then. It must be constant. You must constantly observe what you are doing at the heart and transcend it. That is what it is to practice the heart in every moment. Therefore, you must be able to inspect the limit on your heartresponse to Me, and, therefore, to all others, in every moment. You must be able to inspect the process of emotional dissociation, whereby you are always entering into the separative, subjective mood of the separate person, instead of the radiant, loving mood of My devotee, or the true person. This is Wisdom: Always relax into the pains and circumstances of experience, and so remain in Communion with Me, rather than in confrontation with the modifications of life. Surrender to Me rather than react to experience. Do this consistently, under all circumstances, and thus remain always with Me and disposed toward loving self-release in all relationships. This is the human foundation of morality. * * * To found yourself in feeling-response to Me is the essence of all practice in the Way of the Heart. * * * You can place only one limit on your practice of the Way of the Heart, and that is the limitation on feeling Me. * * * What else can be called God, Truth, or Reality but That Which Is Self-Evident when all of dissociation is transcended? That Is the Divine Self-Condition, Which Is the Realization in the Way of the Heart. That Is the Person I Reveal to you. That Is My Realization, My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, My Very Condition, My Work. That Is the One I Am.

I tend to feel very annoyed when I invest a whole ton of time into something and the person I made it for just looks at it and goes "great" and turns away never to look at it again... especially if they asked for it.

It feels like that emotion then bleeds into other things... anger can turn into various things when it gets seeded within.

Biology, simply enough.

We are born with a certain uncontrollable set of circumstances...everyone wants a safe and certain future. And most of us are brought up to believe others not accepting us, poverty, lack of sexual prowess, etc hinders the certainty of our lives...and the degree of those different desires usually come from our own parents beliefs.

Of course biology isn't set in stone...that's the beauty of life. You can live in any world you choose to, anything is possible if you are imaginative enough. And when your perceptions start to change you are, in a sense, paving the way for how your children will react to circumstances.

Originally posted by RRokkyy

Originally posted by Ralphy
I was thinking tonight about how hurt is what stimulates anger/depression but what causes hurt/emotional pain? I have come up with hurt being a negative belief that we hold against the image of ourselves of that which we think we are.

What do you guys think is the cause of emotional pain?

Contraction of the life force.

CHAPTER 26 Undermine the Tendency to Create Emotional Dissociation SRI DA AVABHASA: As My devotee, you should not indulge any separative activity in yourself at all. You can all see what separative activity is. It is when you withdraw from somebody. Is there anybody here who does not know what that is like? Everybody here knows that? Then you have received the initiation! That is the avoidance of relationship. Before you do that, before you withdraw from somebody, notice that the person is already right there. Your relationship to the person already exists. Therefore, all withdrawing from that person is felt by you as pain. You suffer because you withdraw your life-force from them, and you likewise feel confused and upset. Do you see how all of that is the life of suffering? Then do not do that anymore! Instead, live in relationship to others. Do not tolerate any withdrawal in yourself. Maintain your contact with that other person and deal with all the forms - even the subtlest forms of that withdrawal in yourself, from this same point of view. And do not dramatize it anymore. You must not forget. Never allow your "consideration" to degenerate into "let's pretend" and mere positive affirmation. There must be a real and direct feeling association among My devotees and a constant feeling practice of love-surrender to Me. You must literally practice this heart-felt surrender at all times, and you must literally oblige one another to do this practice. * * * The commitment to subjectivity is the withdrawing of life energy, the withholding of feeling-attention, the failure to love. It is just as much a failure to love as all the outward, wild, gross activities people tend to do. Generally, however, people do not regard the failure to love to be a "sin". They think that "sin" is the indulgence of - the senses, and they think that otherwise their subjective orientation is in the God-ward direction. But that is absolutely untrue. Subjectivity is just the other side of the body. * * * Love is unobstructed feeling-attention. It is human relational intensity - free of the recoil of egoic "self-possession", reactive or negative emotions, and absorption in the subjective stream of thoughts and images. In general you tend not to engage the emotional dimension at all. You avoid it. You play the game of emotional dissociation from the world, from one another, and from Me, the Incarnate Divine Person. When you dramatize this problem of emotional dissociation, this quality of the collapse of feeling, energy, and attention, then you become a self-server, totally without clarity in relationship-not only in human relationships but in all relationships, and in relationship to Me most fundamentally. This constant and unconscious effort to create emotional dissociation must be undermined. Serve one another by helping to break this habit and by re-establishing one another in authentic emotional association, in love-surrender through feeling-Contemplation of Me, and in a loving, radiant life altogether, in all relations. As My devotees, you must bring down this emotional barrier that exists between you and never again play the game of "let's pretend". * * * If you cannot feel, if the core of the being, the heart, is not active, then at the physical level you must indulge yourself in all the ways of gaining pleasure, from orgasm to drugs. If you cannot feel at the level of emotion, then you cannot live a life of love, you cannot be intimate. If you cannot feel with the head, at the level of mind, you cannot enjoy clarity of mind or "consider" things as they truly are. Thus, feeling must be awakened from head to toe and from toe to crown, through Contemplating Me with feeling-devotion. Feeling must become natural to you. It must become your discipline. * * * The Realization of Truth is an emotional matter. The discovery is an emotional one, the change is an emotional one, the true practice of the Way of the Heart is emotional. The "consideration" of the activity of emotional dissociation, or "Narcissus", must not be dropped. It is not something that as My devotee you take seriously only every now and then. It must be constant. You must constantly observe what you are doing at the heart and transcend it. That is what it is to practice the heart in every moment. Therefore, you must be able to inspect the limit on your heartresponse to Me, and, therefore, to all others, in every moment. You must be able to inspect the process of emotional dissociation, whereby you are always entering into the separative, subjective mood of the separate person, instead of the radiant, loving mood of My devotee, or the true person. This is Wisdom: Always relax into the pains and circumstances of experience, and so remain in Communion with Me, rather than in confrontation with the modifications of life. Surrender to Me rather than react to experience. Do this consistently, under all circumstances, and thus remain always with Me and disposed toward loving self-release in all relationships. This is the human foundation of morality. * * * To found yourself in feeling-response to Me is the essence of all practice in the Way of the Heart. * * * You can place only one limit on your practice of the Way of the Heart, and that is the limitation on feeling Me. * * * What else can be called God, Truth, or Reality but That Which Is Self-Evident when all of dissociation is transcended? That Is the Divine Self-Condition, Which Is the Realization in the Way of the Heart. That Is the Person I Reveal to you. That Is My Realization, My Very (and Inherently Perfect) State, My Very Condition, My Work. That Is the One I Am.

edit on 20-4-2011 by RRokkyy because: (no reason given)

If you follow what is written here it works, it takes sometime, and you need to avoid the sense gratification as well, its a hard task for the majority of people. You need to always contemplate god, having loving devotion for god always. Eventually it becomes second nature and you end up doing unconsciously. Another thing I found is that you need to go over the events of the day before you goto sleep and see how you could of improved each situation you were presented with. Lets say if you said something that you really didn't mean to say that could of affected someone around you, see when you start tuning into all this you start sensitizing yourself and you start to become more easily affected by subtle things from outside stimulus. Some things that can help is stop smoking, drinking, move away from entertainment, etc. Its a hard path to follow but just doing this for 3-6 months and I promise the world will start opening up to you.