Emotional Pain is Serious and Takes Time to Heal

Do you remember the last time you stubbed your toe? It hurts! Nothing else, at that moment, matters except the pain in your toe. You’re not thinking about your job, your family, your pastor’s last sermon (unless it was about toe-stubbing, maybe), the Universe, your bank account or how you lost your temper with your kids last week. All that matters is the pain in your toe. Take it up a notch….an injury in a car accident or at noon-ball on the basketball court, a broken arm, a ruptured appendix, a heart attack. All injuries and severe pain. At that moment, your physical health is the predominant care that you have.

Sometimes in life, even though we’ve been taught to live a “balanced life,” we can only focus on one part of our lives, which is our health. Other areas of our lives sometimes have priority, like our job or finances. If we lose a job, or get hit with an unexpected purchase, we may put our health focus aside, to focus on our checkbooks. If we have an issue with our immediate or extended family, especially our children, we tend to make that a priority. Sometimes, we feel lost spiritually, and have to focus on that. Sometimes, we need to focus on ourselves, how we communicate and view ourselves. We will touch on a lot of this in future topics.

When we are in pain, physically or emotionally, “balance” is a pipe-dream. Besides, when a teeter-totter is balanced, what happens? Nothing…no movement. The fun part of being on a teeter-totter are the ups and downs. Again…we will discuss “balance” in other topics. This is about PAIN. Emotional pain is very similar to physical pain. It can cripple us. It can cause other areas to hurt, or cause other parts of us to begin compensating for the pain. If you sprain your ankle you need crutches and before too long, your hands and armpits hurt from using crutches. If you tear your knee up, that can cause your hips, legs, back and other areas to compensate and also start hurting.

When you experience emotional pain and trauma, from a divorce or break-up, the same things can happen. It can cripple you. You lose focus on other areas of your life. It can cause physical ailments like rashes, heart-trouble, headaches, etc… Sometimes, the pain is mild and short-lived. Sometimes, you can just “get through it,” and let “time heal all wounds.” Often though, when we experience emotional trauma, we can’t bandage it up, take two aspirin and “fix it” ourselves. Just like serious physical trauma, we need the help of an expert.

Those experts, who help us heal from emotional trauma and injury, come in many forms. They can be clergy, family, medical doctors, licensed therapists and specialists, and even attorneys. If we break a bone, catch a bad virus, or get appendicitis (all of which are usually beyond our control), we go see a professional. Why do so many of us not do the same when we are emotionally injured? We should. All data and expert analysis and science says we should. It’s okay to do so.

Where does an attorney come into play in helping us with emotional trauma? In a few ways. Look at it like if you tore up your knee skiing, or had a heart attack. At first you go to an ER. Sometimes a paramedic (a specialist) has to take you there in an ambulance. After your initial condition is stable, then you go to other specialists. In the case of the torn-up knee, you see an orthopedic surgeon, then physical therapists. In the case of a heart attack, you see a cardiologist and again, physical therapists, as well as maybe dieticians, stress management specialists and others.

Frequently, many of us tend to “come back too soon” from our physical injuries. Maybe our knee feels better so we think we can hop on the treadmill, only to find out that we should have listened to our physical therapist, because we just experienced a set-back. Our heart feels fine a few months after our heart attack, so we cheat on our diet or use our season tickets to the football game, only to find out that our heart wasn’t as strong as we thought it was to handle the stress yet.

An attorney can help prevent you from “coming back too soon.” They can handle the stressful parts of your divorce, child custody, marital property stresses, and other things that you need help doing before you’re totally healed. Often an attorney can act like a physical therapist, in the above examples (Not a licensed psychologist, psychiatrist or therapist. THEY are very helpful and needed, and we hope that you consider using these specialists during emotional pain.). They can offer you help in getting back to normal, like you would use a crutch or a brace for your knee to help you be stronger and move about your daily life without worry.

If you find that emotional pain is making it difficult for you to be the parent, brother, sister, employee, or boss that you need to be, or it is keeping you from being able to approach stressful situations during the separation from your spouse or your children’s parent, then please feel comfortable and safe contacting an attorney for a consultation. That could be a better choice than rubbing dirt on the injury.