PTSD – A Way Out.com A mindful way to heal

.
*
*
*
“Though the experience of physical pain and emotional pain are clearly different, functional imaging studies show that, with few exceptions, the regions of the brain that these types of pain activate are identical.
*
*
These include not only the regions responsible for giving pain its unpleasant character, but also those responsible for regulating its size, location, and intensity (perhaps partially explaining the startling finding that Tylenol, a centrally acting pain reliever, alleviates not only the pain of a smashed finger but also the pain of hurt feelings.)
*
*
No wonder, then, that physical and emotional pain produce the same reaction: a strong desire to avoid the things that cause them.
*
*
“Suffer what there is to suffer.
*
*
Enjoy what there is to enjoy.
*
*
Regard both suffering and joy as facts of life,”
*
wrote Nichiren Daishonin.
*
*
Yet most of us clearly don’t.
*
*
Unfortunately, the strategies we use to avoid emotional pain often cause more harm than does the experience of emotional pain itself:
*
*
more harm results, for example, from excessive drinking or drug use than from the anxiety they’re often used to anesthetize; more harm results from relationship sabotage than from the fear of intimacy that often drives it.
*
*
Not only that, but attempting to suppress emotional pain may paradoxically increase it.
*
*
*
In contrast, being accepting of emotional pain, being willing to experience it without attempting to control it, has actually been found to decrease it.”
*
*
*