Dear Ravi:

Unfortunately for you, your family gave you the message that discomfort is a terrible, terrible thing that you may not be capable of surviving. This is a powerful message. The discomfort they tried to protect you from is physical discomfort as in standing for a long time and being hungry.

Problem is that there is such a thing as emotional discomfort. And your family has been doing their best, in various ways, to increase it. And they do not comfort you when you experience that kind of discomfort.

There is a concept taught in psychotherapy called “emotional regulation.” It is part of teaching the patient/ client to endure emotional discomfort. When you wrote in the last sentence above: “I cannot survive (the “terrible crushing sensation in my chest…)” It means you feel that emotional discomfort is dangerous and you don’t have the ability to endure and survive it.

One of the skills taught in psychotherapy is to sit there, notice the “crushing sensation in (your) chest”, focus on it and observe it: how it feels, how it changes… and it does change, eventually it becomes weaker and goes away. As you notice this, you learn that you can survive it, that the uncomfortable sensation is not dangerous.

This way you learn strength. You wrote that you are a weak person. No wonder you are, and no wonder because you were taught that discomfort is such a terrible thing that should be avoided no matter what because you can’t endure it.

When you learn that you can endure it and that indeed (physical and emotional) discomfort does not last forever, that it is not dangerous (If it was dangerous you would have died many times over, wouldn’t you?), then you build strength, that is, the faith in you being capable to endure and survive the discomfort and function well enough in your daily life with the discomfort.l

These very days for you, is an opportunity to observe the discomfort, to notice it is not dangerous, only uncomfortable (as intensely uncomfortable as it is), and function well enough in spite of it.

For your own best interest, develop this skill of emotional regulation. You will build strength and nothing will be more exhilarating than when you realize you are indeed strong.

anita