Pay Attention
- Lauren Shaw, PhD
- Aug 17, 2015
- 3 min read
Last summer my middle daughter got a tiny little cut on her heel while she was playing outside. It was more of a prick, and she barely mentioned it when it happened. A few days later I noticed that she was walking on her tip toes, and asked her why. She said that she was just trying out a new way to walk. She had just turned three, so that answer completely satisfied me.
But as the day went on, her new way to walk became more and more awkward and uncomfortable looking. I finally asked if I could look at her feet, and I was shocked to find a marble-sized infection on her heel, hard, red and white, and so very angry. In the next two weeks, we were in the clinic, hospital, or doctor’s office almost every day. She was put on heavy duty antibiotics, and she narrowly avoided surgery. All from a tiny little cut that seemed totally insignificant at first.
My daughter is tough. She recovers from injuries faster than any child I know, and she does not like anything to interfere with her play. But I know that the cut on her foot must’ve been hurting her. She tried to hide it, to push through it, and to tell us (and maybe even herself) that nothing was bothering her. Unfortunately, in this situation, her toughness and strength worked against her. It kept her from reaching out and getting the help, treatment, and comfort that she needed, and in the long run she experienced more pain because she tried to minimize it.
I bet you can see where I am going with this story. So often we do the very same thing on an emotional level. We tell ourselves that whatever hurt us was not a big deal, that we should let it go and get over it. We tell ourselves that if we ignore it, the pain or anger will go away and we will feel better. We try to block it out, push through it, and convince ourselves that nothing is bothering us.
Wouldn't it be great if that actually worked? If we really could just let whatever is bothering us go, it would be probably be ok. And I suppose that sometimes it does work that way. For example, when we are tired, hungry, or stressed, something may trigger us for a short while. But once we are more rested, we can shift our perspective and see that whatever bothered us was not really an issue.
However, I think more commonly, when we try to minimize, ignore, or push through our painful emotions, what we are really doing is opening the door for festering infection. When we don’t pay attention to what our feelings are telling us, we do not give ourselves the opportunity to find comfort and healing. And this leads to more pain in the long run.
When you feel an emotion flare up, I encourage you to take some time to pay attention. Look at it as if it were a visible physical wound that you could examine and determine what kind of attention it needs. Sometimes, when our feelings are hurt or we feel angry, what we need to do is to address the situation. We need to talk to the person that hurt us and talk through whatever happened. We need to seek reconciliation in the relationship where the hurt occurred. Sometimes we need to cry and process through our feelings with a trusted friend. Wounds that occurred in a relationship heal best in a relationship. Sometimes we need to express the feeling and care for it before we are able to move on. And sometimes we may realize that the pain is more significant than we first thought, and it is time to seek out a therapist or a counselor to help.
There are times when it is necessary to push through an unpleasant feeling. You probably don’t want to break down and cry or yell in the middle of your work day. Being able to control your emotional expression is an important piece of adulthood. But if we stop at that step, if we only push through, we don’t deal with what is really going on. We open the door for bitterness, resentment, depression, anger, and deeper levels of hurt. We need to pay attention to what our feelings are telling us, and care for them, so that we can open the door for the healing and comfort that we need.
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