Does Pain Make you Feel Alive?

During a counselling session with a teenage incest victim, I asked her why she purposely cut herself. There were visible scars on her inner thighs and stomach that she proudly displayed for everyone to see.

“The pain of the cut is the only time I feel alive,” she answered.

Sometimes experiencing trauma is so unthinkable that the brain shuts down in order to survive. It is an apathetic, numb sensation when you don’t even feel like a real person anymore.

On the other side of the spectrum, you have the overly emotional victim who can’t stop thinking about the trauma and compulsively eats, drinks or takes drugs in order to dull the pain.

The most common example of this mental health disorder is the “drama queen”. Do you have someone in your life that is consistently battling one crisis after another? And does this person suck you into her drama every time?

If you thrive on conflict, gloat at another’s misfortune or have feelings of hate; it is time to get help. This is no way to live. The drama eventually wears you down, and should you become lost in the troubles of your own making, recovery and the possibility of living a normal life, may be lost forever.

The solution is to de-stress your life. Break down and analyse the things that create anxiety, one by one, and work toward eliminating them. If it is impossible to completely get rid of a job or a family member, find ways to cope and tolerate these stresses in order to minimize their effects.