Finding Your Marbles
A Mental Health Survival Guide

Everybody hurts.

I can still remember one of the most painful memories of my life. It was when I was in Grade 2 and my first dog died. My parents had him before I was born, so he was my buddy since I was a newborn baby. He was my best friend and he was gone.

It hurts even now to think about it, but I remember that when I was a kid, it was like my world had come to an end. It was the first time in my life that I had to face the loss of a loved one.

We will all hurt at some point in our lives; either from a death, or from trauma, or from being betrayed by a loved one. At some point we will all feel like the little boy who lost his dog.

Our society does not deal with hurt very well. Too often people are told to just “deal with it” and get on with their lives. And with the frantic pace of modern life, it can seem that we don’t have time to deal with hurt properly, so we just do the easiest thing and bury the pain.

I can tell you from experience that burying hurt will only make things worse. Your buried feelings and thoughts will eventually re-emerge, usually in the form of depression. It is best to deal with hurt when it happens.

There are a few things that you can do when you are hurting. Most of them don’t take very long, but it is important to let your hurt take its natural course. Your body knows how to heal itself, even from pain caused by grief or trauma, but you need to allow it to go at its own pace. Healing can’t be rushed.

The Importance of Release

Release is the most important element of dealing with hurt. You need to get the hurt out before it poisons you. And the single best form of release is one that you already know; crying.

That’s right. Cry your heart out.

I’m a big advocate of crying. It’s no fun, but it always makes you feel better afterwards. I have no idea why adults are taught to believe that crying is a weakness or that it is unhealthy. Somehow we have become convinced that it is wrong to cry.

Children understand the true value of crying. When my son gets hurt, he cries for a while until he feels better, and then he goes back to whatever he was doing. To him, crying is a simple decision, it’s what you do when you are hurt. I wonder how we came to forget the importance of crying when we became adults.

If you can’t bring yourself to cry, then try to find a different type of release. One great release that works for me is writing. If something really hurts me, such as remembering the loss of my first dog, I write it out. The act of writing helps me get through the pain.

And for any guys who are reading this; learn to cry. Seriously.

Laugh

I have a friend who has been going through a difficult time lately. So almost every day, I have been sending her the famous laughing baby video from Youtube. It never fails to cheer her up. It also never fails to piss her off, because every time I send it I say “have you seen that funny laughing baby video?”

Laughter is great medicine. It’s always good to have a good laugh, especially if you are feeling really down. I like the laughing baby, but if there is anything that always manages to put a smile on your face, stick to it. As my hero, Mel Brooks, once said,

“Laughter is our only defence against the Universe.”

Think it Through

Another good way to deal with hurt is to work through it. When my dog died, one of the ways that my parents helped me cope with his death was by encouraging me to think of all the happy times that we had together. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it did help me cope with the loss. If you are hurting, try to think through whatever is making you hurt. Writing helps with this, but sometimes it’s good to just sit down somewhere quiet and be alone with your thoughts.

When you do this, be careful not to dwell on how the pain makes you feel. That can lead to you getting lost in the pain, which will eventually lead to depression. Try to focus on why you hurt versus how you hurt. If your grandfather dies, maybe you will miss the long walks that the two of you would take, and a good way to work through the pain would be to take a long walk on your favorite route by yourself and think about him.

See where I’m going with this? Try to think and work your way through the pain.

Talk it Out

Pain needs to be shared. This is easy for children, because when they are hurting, they cry. If they are hurting badly, they cry louder. It’s a very effective signal that says “I am in pain and I need help now!”

Obviously if you are an adult, standing on a sidewalk and loudly bawling your eyes out might not get you the attention that you need or want, but that doesn’t mean that you can’t get help when you are hurting. If you are in pain, tell someone. Don’t keep your pain bottled up.

And don’t be afraid to cry. Remember that crying is also another way of communicating.

Try To Help

One of the best ways that I have found for dealing with hurt is to help other people who are hurting. That is one of the reasons why I started Finding Your Marbles in the first place. I still feel a lot of the pain from my abuse, and it helps to try to help other people who are feeling the same pain.

We’re social animals, and helping other people makes us feel good about ourselves. It’s the way that we are wired. If you are in pain, try going out and helping some other people with their troubles. It doesn’t have to be anything big, like working at a soup kitchen. Even cleaning your old clothes out of your closet and giving them to the Salvation Army can be a great boost to your mood.

Finally, Cry Some More

If you try all these things and nothing works, it could just mean that you haven’t gotten all the hurt out. In that case, cry some more. Crying does absolutely nothing harmful to your body, so just let it all out.

It takes a long time to get over hurt, and in some cases, the hurt never goes away. That’s why we should never be afraid to cry. It doesn’t last very long, and it really does make you feel better.

And if you can’t cry, give it time. A lot of us, especially guys, have been incorrectly taught that crying is a weakness. This is complete and utter crap. Crying is perfectly normal and it is perfectly healthy. The tears will come. Give it some time, and be gentle to yourself, and allow yourself to feel the pain.

Depression Life pain

This entry was posted on Friday, April 20th, 2007 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Depression, Life. You can follow responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment or trackback from your site.

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