We’re always in such a hurry to “get back.” It shows people around us that we’re strong, capable, and forward-looking. We feel validated by the approval and praise we receive for being this strong person. So we continue suppressing our pain and stress.
Have you seen how animals respond when they are injured? They scream and wail and then retire to a corner to recover. Sometimes, they recover in hours. At times, they take weeks. They know intuitively what we, the “modern wannabe superhumans” refuse to acknowledge – pain doesn’t go by forgetting about it.
Animals nurse themselves back to health by giving their pain their undivided attention. And what do most of us do?
“Strong convictions do not necessarily signal a powerful sense of self: very often quite the opposite. Intensely held beliefs may be no more than a person’s unconscious effort to build a sense of self to fill what, underneath, is experienced as a vacuum.”
― Gabor Maté, When the Body Says No: The Cost of Hidden Stress
The only way out of the vacuum is through the vacuum. It’s painful. It’s jarring. And it’s what transcends an unpleasant life experience to self-knowledge and inner growth.