Stopping Fighting What Hurts Is A Cunning, Not An Act Of Cowardice
Choosing to be strong and to deal with pain is the best thing we can do, and often this strategy does not involve reliving the pain or hitting it. Avoiding something that requires effort on our part and that poses a challenge to get what we want is to escape. Avoiding always colliding with what disturbs our state of mind and is preventing us from living quietly, on the other hand, means being endowed with emotional intelligence.
Freedom and strength are also rooted in the ability not to constantly stumble over what disturbs or hurts us. Being strong means facing your own ghosts and fears, such as showing ourselves as we are. And we are both what we like and what we don’t like. For this reason, giving up fighting what hurts us is a ruse, not an act of cowardice.
Stop struggling with the unnecessary pain that prevents us from evolving
Some humanist psychologists, such as Carl Rogers, had already pointed out that the tendency of all human beings is to self-actualize. Other experts on the subject, such as Kelly, Royce and Powell, have dealt with the capacity of the human being to be an active agent, who builds his own reality in order to adapt to the world and to found his own individuality.
This process of research and experimentation is particularly exciting if, little by little, we find what makes us grow as people and we do not stagnate in a prototype more similar to an automaton than to an original and dynamic person, which changes with time and circumstances.
Sometimes anxiety and depression originate in stillness. An immobility that derives from the imposed belief that, in order to be people of value, we must display extraordinary strength in the face of the facts to be endured. Furthermore, following this conviction, we give birth to the idea that the basis of our success lies in overcoming these obstacles and in our victory.
Many psychological disorders arise when we are unable to say “enough” in time, which is apparently easy in certain contexts, but extremely difficult for people who prefer to sit in an uncomfortable and dangerous place, rather than make the effort to remedy the problem.
Saying “enough” is necessary
In this world, the state of happiness is no longer a state of mind, but a constant imposition: one must be happy, be strong and, above all, demonstrate it. This created need turns into an emotional prison that does not allow the complex psychic dynamism we have at our disposal to flow smoothly.
One of the components of this dynamism is the grief and pain produced by certain people and situations. Humans feel pain and always will, but avoiding it when they can is a healthy emotional strategy. This does not determine a greater or lesser strength, but our intelligence to avoid what we know to have always weakened us.
“Be strong and that baby won’t bother you if you face him.” “Be strong in the face of a breakup, you have to agree to see your ex with another”. “Be strong and endure even if you don’t like the job: you will receive the salary”. “Relate to people of all kinds, even if some are harmful, life is like that.” “Don’t take your family’s contempt so seriously, blood is blood.” Who has never heard of these phrases?
It is true that life is also like this, studded with hard moments, but we must not define strength and cowardice in these terms. Strength is more related to statements like “Sooner or later I have to learn to speak in public because it is important to my work”; “Today I want to feel good and I don’t have to be in the same place my ex is until I get over the breakup”; “I will not shut up before my mother’s contempt in public”; “I will quit this job because it exhausts me and it is not what I want to do in life”.
For most people, these latter claims are utopian, immature, or selfish. However, the former prolong situations of pain and injustice much more than the latter. They make people unhappy because of work, their partner or friends. They create people incapable of self-realization for not knowing how to distinguish the useless pain from the important one.
Misunderstanding the concept of strength gives life to people who are cowardly about their feelings. It leads them to waste talent and passions to take them to the wrong places with toxic people. If you are smart, you will understand that it is not necessary to develop a lot of strength to deal with complex situations. Do not feel cowardly, feel like individuals who fight for what makes them strong and who do not waste energy fighting against what weakens them.
