Feel The Hurt

Lest you become a sealed off city.

You need to feel a wound to heal a hurt.

— Robin Sharma, The 5 AM Club

Have you ever felt so heartbroken and betrayed that you almost could not breathe? You know, a moment when something that happened or someone's action affected you so much that it made something snap inside of you, a cold chill through your spine, causing the warmth inside of you to freeze up, and making you decide to never be in that position anymore, to never allow anyone else the opportunity to hurt you like that again?

Many of us have snapped like that, and I say so from experience. We have gotten ourselves betrayed and hurt so much that there's that deep knowing inside of us that we'd never allow ourselves to get in that space again, and so, every time we slip up and then get hurt, we move on so quickly, we never allow ourselves space to feel exactly what we are feeling. We deny ourselves the chance to feel the pain because that's not us anymore. We don't feel pain anymore.

We don’t feel pain anymore. Or do we?

Here's what I've come to understand over time, if you don't allow yourself to feel the pain as thoroughly as it wants to be felt, you get stuck in that area, the wound will never heal, and you will never grow out of the pain.

If you're like me, after every hurt, failure, pain, betrayal, you just want to quickly move on to the next without pausing to feel the hurt because there's no time. You just make your mind up to seal off that place in your heart.

Now you have sealed off every part of your heart, it’s now beginning to look like a city of buildings and spaces that have been sealed off after a murder investigation and was never reopened. Your heart now feels so cold, like an abandoned, forgotten city.

Left to me, all of this is fine. After all, who likes to be defined by emotions and feelings? Certainly not me. However I've come to realize that where pain that should be felt isn't felt and expressed as it should, the pain gets trapped in that spot, sealed off, never to be opened to growth and development until the pain is finally released.

And so, from the place of knowing that I have a lot of pain to release myself, a lot of hurt to allow space for, I'm asking you too, to feel the hurt. Pain that isn't felt becomes a tumor in the heart and an embargo to the soul. And a man with a tumor in his heart and an embargo in his soul will become a stunted man who'd record a life that lacks fulfillment.

There's a consensus among many thought leaders on the subject. If you have read the book or seen the movie titled, "The Fault in Our Stars," you must have heard the phrase, "Pain demands to be felt." Nothing can be truer about pain. It backs down to no one and overcomes every obstacle. Until it is felt, until the hurt is felt and expressed, you will remain stuck and will never grow in that area.

And not growing in your heart and soul won't just affect your development as a person, it will also hurt everyone around you who tries to love you. This is because not allowing the hurt to be felt turns you into a hurting person, and you know the popular phrase, "Hurting people hurt people."

Until the hurt is felt and expressed, you will remain stuck and never grow in that area.

So, if you're reading this and all the ways you're hurting or have been hurting for many years but blocking off comes to the surface, I implore you to do something different; feel it. Deliberately feel the hurt. Intentionally pause to allow space for the pain so you can heal. Feel it like your growth depends on it because it does.

Don't be stuck in a pain that someone caused because you didn't allow yourself to feel it. The Billionaire in The 5 AM Club said, "Difficult feelings that you don't find a healthy way to remove become repressed, which creates stress, poor productivity, and even disease."

So, cry if you need to. Burn if you need to. Yes, burn. Because if you don't burn, how then can you rise from the ashes like a Phoenix?

To your growth...

No, I lied. This newsletter was written mostly for me. If it helped you, that's a plus.

Your Coach,

Abiola Okunsanya,

Handzinspired. ✨

P.s. About Fault in Our Stars, I'm a reader, so, of course, the book is better than the movie! ;-)