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Oh, The Pain Of It All
This type of pain can be remembered and recalled with all of its intensities at will even if it happened in early childhood or years and decades ago as if it just happened with all its details. There are some reported cases in psychoanalytical literature of individuals recalling emotionally painful incidents two – three months before they were born. Now, that is what I call a memory. Why can we remember emotional pain but not physical pain? It is really quite simple.
Human brain mapping is pretty complete and understood. There are sections of the brain dedicated to reasoning, memory, learning, processing information, emotion and motor skills. That is why we are what we are. We think, we remember, we learn, we do, we emote. As we live our lives we all suffer disappointments, rejections, insults and abuses and failures. Our expectations and goals are not met. Our hopes and dreams are not realized. And last of all, we make mistakes in judgments and actions. So what do we do? We say to ourselves "I won't forget that" or "I will remember that as long as I live". We reinforce the pain every time we recall the memory of the experience. It is learning. Emotional pain is learned behavior. It is important so we hopefully don't make the same mistakes over and over.
Animals including ourselves have two options "fight or flight". Some animals do not know fear and will fight to the death. Most of us are a littler smarter than that, we are like the "bunny", we flee, but we don't forget. Once the immediate danger has passed and we began thinking about what has happened and we structure the situation to our own needs, suddenly we have emotional pain. Believe me it is real and the hurt is real. It is not something that you can pass off and it is not going to go away by itself. But there is an emotional healing process that will help relieve the pain and perhaps over time eliminate the pain.
