[query] non-destructive ways to handle emotional pain?

[wispfox]

So, I realized that I don't really know of good ways to handle emotional pain that aren't destructive and/or self-defeating. Well, beyond just dealing and gritting my teeth through it (which is what I usually do, combined with distraction methods).

This sorta bothers me, because I'd really rather _have_ useful methods for such.

Non-useful suggestions, in case anyone is wondering what has occured and been discarded thus far, include any sort of chemical escape methods, inflicting physical pain in order to handle the non-physical version - although I suppose I can see ways in which this might not be destructive, breaking stuff.

Possibly useful ones that I can think of would be vigorous excercise of some sort (except that I've never been able to escape into excercise, except swimming, since my (mild) asthma gets in the way of that idea), loud music, reading - but I can't really read if I'm sufficiently hurting to need to _do_ something about it. I have better coping mechanisms for anger than for pain - anger, at least, I can use my lacrosse ball & stick to go beat up on a poor unsuspecting wall.

Crying, obviously - but there's only so much crying that one can do. And it takes a _lot_ of effort to get myself to do that.

One thing's for sure, I _have_ to let some of this out somehow.

Maybe I'll watch _Dancer in the Dark_ tonight...

Comments

[randysmith]

The images I can think of to share have to do with the metaphor of a wound. You want to do your best to clean it out, maybe put some alcohol on it so that it doesn't get infected (ow!), put a bandage on it, and then do your best not to pick at it. Maybe some anestic as well. What those actually map to I dunno (I've done mental visualization aroudn them sometimes), but I could imagine the various forms of painful music/musing as being the alcohol, cuddling with other people as being the anesthetic, and distraction (computer games, reading, excercise, etc.) as being the not poking at it.

Good luck. I'm really sorry.

[wispfox.livejournal.com]

I continue to _really_ like this metaphor. Just wanted to comment.

I shared it with aelisdeliria when I first saw the comment, because I liked it so much.

I think I keep waffling between needing alcohol and anesthetic. I do enough with distraction as a matter of course...