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???????? ✈️???????? Sydney to Cedar Rapids ????????✈️????????
Did you know studies have shown that Tylenol can ease the pain of emotional hurt? Let’s talk about how I found this out.
When I got back to America I had to, in the words of Cheryl Strayed, be brave enough to break my own heart. I had to step away from a friendship that mattered tremendously to me (weird, ???? doesn’t just come from romantic relationships).
*It’s decided* is one of the most powerful phrases in the English language. It’s definitive. From the second I made this decision It. Hurt. Like. Hell.
And I started to wonder why it hurt like hell. So I took to google. There I discovered that emotional pain, such as heartbreak, is processed in the same part of the brain as physical pain. Also, when you spend lots of time with someone you like the brain releases happy chemicals. When that person goes away so do the chemicals…and your brain simply needs time to rebalance. That’s how I discovered the Tylenol study! To be clear, I’m not advocating pill popping to ease emotional pain.
A WW philosophy is if you can understand it you can push through it. This particular time *choosing me* hurt. And I wanted to understand the why behind the hurt.
Here’s why I’m telling you all of this…It’s not because I want you to be an expert in heartbreak (that sounds terrible). Instead it’s because so many times I hear people say things like…I feel so stupid for being upset, or I know I shouldn’t be thinking about this…or why haven’t I gotten over this yet.
It’s because you’re human and your body is doing exactly what it needs to be doing to fix, change, and save it’s self. It’s doing it’s job.
So, extend grace to yourself. Period.
Sometimes choosing you means choosing courage over comfort. It means doing really hard things. It means going through suck.
Whether your suck is a heart break, grief, stress, anxiety, whatever…take the time to learn the process. Give yourself the gift of learning why you feel the way you do.
And when your friend is trying to be helpful and says something glib like “this too shall pass” don’t punch her in the face. Instead simply say “I know. Science says so.”
This is the last post of the #ChooseYou series! Thank you so much to all of you who have followed along and engaged with me over the past two weeks! Have an idea for what you want to see from WW next? Message me…
