Why Are You Holding Onto Pain?

Show Notes:
Beyond the fear of the unknown, getting emotionally attached & wanting validation and sympathy from others I experienced, there are several other reasons people will hold onto their pain.

Needing a sense of control is a common one. When you hang onto your pain, you feel more in control of your life & use it to feel significant, or even choose to define yourself by your pain.

Another common reason is believing you need to be punished or reminded of your pain on a regular basis, so you hold onto it until you believe your sentence is over.

Something I know a lot of people don’t even consider is holding onto their pain for lack of coping mechanisms. When you don’t know how to release the pain & find a way new way to process what’s going on, you WILL continue to cling to your pain. 

The most common reason is unresolved trauma. We haven’t taken the time to really understand what we are feeling, what it is leading us to do & think about, and what needs to happen next to move forward.

Romans 8:18, "Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later."
5 reasons we should no longer hold onto pain in our lives:

1. Improved Relationships 
   1. If there is bitterness, resentment or lack of trust in current relationships, letting go of your pain can alleviate some of these current things. 
   2. Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”
2. Increased Resilience 
   1. You can’t bounce back very well from problems & struggles if you’re still carrying around pain from other experiences.
   2. Psalm 34:17-18: "The Lord hears his people when they call to him for help. He rescues them from all their troubles. The Lord is close to the brokenhearted; he rescues those whose spirits are crushed."
3. Personal Growth 
   1. When you keep hold of your pain, you hold yourself back in the past. You can’t move forward being so hyper-focused on what happened in the past.
   2. Matthew 11:28-30: "Then Jesus said, 'Come to me, all of you who are weary and carry heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you. Let me teach you, because I am humble and gentle at heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear, and the burden I give you is light.'"
4. Being Open to New Things 
   1. Holding onto our pain is similar to having a fixed mindset. You narrow your view in life, thus missing out on opportunities.
   2. Philippians 4:6-7: "Don't worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God's peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus."
5. It Only Hinders Us, Never Helps Us 
   1. Clutching tight to your pain will NOT gain you anything. It will just get in your way & cause you more trouble. Let it go, please.
   2. John 14:27: "I am leaving you with a gift—peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid."

Transcript

0:03

This is the A Real Positive Girl podcast and I am your host Sabrina. And I'm here chatting with you all about like your emotions, your mental health struggles, how to take those first few steps to becoming more vulnerable, more honest and more self-aware so that you are able to become your best self every single day. And we do that two times a week around here. So if you are new, welcome in. I really hope that today's episode and any episodes that you decide to listen to in the future or go back into the archives of anything that's happened in the past ends up being like so super helpful for you. Like really, really like genuinely. That is my biggest hope. So you're new again. Welcome in. If you are not new, welcome back. I'm so glad that you're here and you found some sort of help or entertainment in the uh, content that I provide here on The Real Positive Girl podcast. Today we are gonna be talking about why are you holding on to pain. But before we get into that topic, as always, I want to point you to the direction of where the show notes are. And if you look down there, you'll see an opportunity for you to pop over to Amazon and look at the journal planner situation that I created that will really help you keep track of your mental health and your mindset every single day while also planning the things in your life. So take a look at that, take a look at where you can send me an email, which is that real positive girl podcast gmail.com. I do check that, uh, weekly. And you can also submit a topic suggestion for the podcast. Also, come visit me on social media. I'm at Sabrina Joy Pozo on both Instagram and TikTok. I'd love to get a DM from you. Love to see you. I'd love to see you comment. I'd love to chit chat with you and the messages come follow along on socials where I'm also sharing additional content. And um, I gotten a little behind on it, but I do like slice and dice the newest YouTube uh, videos of the newest episodes, which are again, slowly coming onto YouTube. I actually just uploaded 10 episodes yesterday that are gonna slowly roll out over the weekend. Cause I try to only have like two, sometimes on a rare occasion, three videos post in a day on YouTube. And I'm, that's just because I'm trying to like rush the process a little bit. But I was able to post 10 and I'm hoping to post another 10 this weekend to kind of roll out over the next week. And then, and then after that I think we only have like maybe 10, 20 more and then we'll be cut up <laugh>. So you know, let's say by the time July rolls around we will maybe be caught up if I can just, you know, really dig into that. So, uh, anyway, yeah check out socials for any new clips for newer episodes of the podcast, the video version. But for now you can still go watch a ton of other video versions that are there from the beginning of the year. And also what's the other thing I always encourage you guys to like went off on a tangent a little bit about the video. Um, I don't know, let's just become friends online. So check all the things out in the show notes below. Let's go ahead and jump into today's episode, which is why we are here. And again, we are talking about why are you holding onto pain? This is yet another episode brought to you by me praying and asking God what should I talk about? Because I don't wanna talk about anything that I don't, that doesn't I, that I don't find interesting or helpful to you guys. Uh, especially since I don't get that many topic suggestions. But I think that it's because over the years I've done so many different topics that honestly it probably would be a little bit difficult to uh, come up with new ideas unless you were specifically going through something. So again, you can do that if you just pop down to the show notes, you're able to submit a topic anonymously, that'd be great. But for today's, I was just asking God and praying like, God, what should we talk about? Right? And it wasn't specifically today, it was about a few days ago. And then I kind of was like impatient and waiting for God to gimme an answer, like right then when I asked. But then I kinda let it go cause I was like, you know what? I don't wanna just like think that I hear something from God and then like make something up and it ends up being uh, travesty. But then later on the day, this is the idea that kind of just like was given to me that was I was blessed with and I'm very excited because I don't think it actually is something that I've ever talked about. So I think this is gonna be fun and I think it's a good question for all of us to ask why are we holding on to the pain that we've had when we are sometimes well past the experiences that brought the pain to us? And sometimes it's still fresh, but even then we know that it's in our heart and heart of hearts. We know that it's not benefiting us, right? And so in regards to holding onto pain, it's a really all about fairness and justice for me when it comes to just holding onto it, holding so tight with the tightest like grip that I can in my fist. I just wanna hold it on because I want everything to be fair, I used to be really focused on that fairness and justice for everything and life isn't fair and it's not really meant to be fair. Plus if life were fair then there really wouldn't be any need for us to dedicate our lives to Jesus because everything would just work out. But since it's not, we do need to go through that process of giving our life to Jesus so we can lean on him and he can help us through his strength to do everything. Um, so I'm not as much caught up in this as I was still a little bit, you know, I'm not perfect but I used to be like so hardcore like everything needed to be brought to some sort of justice for it to be dealt with and then we can move on. And you know, I, I really was really struggling with letting go of pain was enough done to like either the person that caused the pain or whatever the situation was to like kind of like, you know, mediate the situation, figure out who gets the slap on the wrist or. Whatever and then move forward. So I just got so caught up in thinking not enough has been hap has happened because of this small thing or big thing or whatever and what had happened or the person like I also got really upset cuz it didn't seem like they learned any lessons from it. And it just really, really got to me to a point where I would be holding down so much pain that was absolutely unnecessary. I would clutch to that pain like it was a trophy and show it off to everyone by sharing what I had endured and like why it upset me and all the details about it. Right? And I didn't feel like I was doing it in a gossipy way even though I probably was. It was just that I was sharing my truth or whatever with everyone and just needed people to know, you know? And those moments made me feel better for a moment. Like it's just being able to unload at that word vomit of sharing, you know, that kind of inappropriate emotional trauma dumping onto people but it didn't really do anything to change the situation of course cuz it's not, you're really just relaying your feelings and how you experienced whatever it was, how you've allowed it to affect you and what you're going to do, like what, what you wish you would do next. But you don't necessarily do that next, you know. So essentially I was holding onto pain for no reason and no gain and who wants to do that? And I would say actually for me, the real reason I like for a very specific, if you want a specific reason for me, the real reason I held onto my pain so tightly was because I had fear of what life would be like if I was without it. And it's because it was such a big part of my life, all the pain, the trauma, the issues that I'd gone through, it's like if I just decided to move on from those and not allow those things to dictate any emotions or actions or mindsets or anything, it's like whoa, where do I go from here? I don't know, a life without it, right? Especially if you just continue to have pain after pain and trauma after trauma. It just continues to like build up this big mountain probably in your closets with all the other skeletons and the emotional baggage that you have and you just, you're just like, yeah that's my beautiful collage of pain and trauma. I need it, I need it. And so that's kind of how I felt and I was just fearful of like what could happen if I just let it all go. And I had also like grown emotionally attached to it and that's pretty normal for people that experience a lot of pain and trauma. You're just like, you know, it is, it just, I wanted to like hold onto it and, and I thought it was so important for me to just have that attached to me at all times. And this was like in regards to any pain that came during like my childhood up until the point where I left for college because anything after that, any other pain or traumas that I experienced after pain because it provided me like validation and sympathy from others. So I was able to shift from the fear of like not knowing what would happen if I give up all that pain because I ended up moving away from a lot of my pain from a lot of my trauma. So I was able to experience what it was like to, you know, kind of like be released from that pain. I was still kind of emotionally attached to it. So there would be kind of like a, you know, uh, like a leftover feeling kind of thing. I don't even know how better to describe it but it then it really shifted over to having more validation from other people in sympathy for what I was going through. And you know, I was always, I, I would always offer to people like what I was dealing with and in a way that made it sound like I had it all taken care of. You don't need to feel sorry for me, I'm just telling you my strugs and how I got through them, right? But that I wanted to convey that I also was in the right for like however I felt and I could not have been the person that was wrong most of the time. Of course you wanna like act like you're humble and be like, oh yeah well you know, I wasn't the person that caused the pain but I was the person that was affected by the pain or sometimes I didn't realize that I was a part of being someone that was wrapped up in causing the pain, you know what I mean? It's just kind of like victim mindset stuff too. And so that was the way that I went about it for the longest time after releasing this fear of letting it go, I was like, oh no, let's just use it as a show <laugh>, which is so much more worse, right? It's so much worse. Not more worse. Wow that was awful grammar. Uh, it was awful like sentence structure, it was just more, it was, it was just worse. It's like a worse way to go about it, I would say needing a sense of control, you know, that's a good one too. We're gonna talk about that in just a second. But um, so yeah, so I, oh what I wanna tell you, sorry I got lost in like what I wanted to share with you. So I would always like tell people my point of view, how they should take it, how they should receive it, how it should be delivered and how cuz I wanted to control, which we'll get into in a second, how people saw me, how people viewed me. And I needed to be in as positive a light as possible because I was trying to make friends, I was trying to like have people on my side have that community. But you know, this, this is so unhealthy because of the manipulation tactics that I was using to you know, get people to feel sorry for me or to be on my side and it's just not right. We, we don't wanna manipulate people and force people to or try to force people cause people still can choose what they want but try to force people to feel a certain way just so we feel in control and we feel like we're ha getting the sympathy and empathy that we think we deserve. Yeah, so beyond like having a fear of the unknown of what it would feel like without that pain attached and you know, getting emotionally attached to the pain and wanting, you know, validation and sympathy from other people, there are several other reasons people will decide to hold onto their pain. And so maybe you are in a spot where you don't understand why you're holding onto your pain and maybe some of these examples that I'll share with you will better help you like be like, oh yeah it's that one. Or maybe it's none of the ones that I list but you're like oh well that kind of is gonna lead me in the thought process of figuring out, oh I think this is the reason cuz it's always good to know why, how you got there and then you can move forward and like moving away from that thing, right? Because you wanna know the origin story because you wanna know how you got there and so that you don't stumble in there again sometime in the future so that you can just continue to go about your day and keep on moving forward. So needing a sense of control as I've already mentioned is a very common one, right? When you like hang on to that pain so tight, you feel more in control of your life because you're making the decision one to actually hold onto that pain. So you're like, oh I'm in charge cuz I'm actually gonna hold onto this sucker so tightly and you're gonna use it to feel significant in your life or choose to define yourself by that pain and so people will know you as the person that was able to overcome this, that and the other or like press through these struggles and these pains or whatever and use that as like your definition of who you are and everything that you represent, which is not great either because you don't wanna be defined by these pains and these struggles and the problems. You wanna be defined by your actual true characteristics of who you are and and what you're trying to do every day in the world. Like be kind and show people grace and and share God's love and be a light to the world and things like that. Not like oh my gosh I was able to make it through like a terrible abusive a relationship which is really great that you were able to like, you know, make it through that. That's amazing accomplishment. But that shouldn't be the thing that you brand on yourself to be known by because it just continues to bring up the pain that you did actually experience like in the relationship, not just like when you got to the other side of it. And that's really damaging to you as a person trying to grow and become your best self. So needing a sense of control is definitely a common one. Another common reason for holding onto pain is believing that you need to be punished. Or reminded of the pain on a regular basis. So you hold onto it now you believe like, like the sentence that you've put yourself in is over. So if the pain that you're experiencing is really like a mistake or a failure and you're really throwing on the guilt and the shame for that experience, which we really shouldn't because mistakes and failures are life's best learning lessons, I believe one of life's best learning lessons. But if you don't realize that or you don't take in and believe that statement, then you might decide to punish yourself by holding onto the pain of those mistakes, of those failures of those really harsh things that you feel like you allowed to happen and maybe you did allow to happen but you are not in any shape or form in the mindset to give yourself forgiveness. So you're just like, I'm gonna punish myself and continue to remind myself of this pain for whatever set amount of time that you have determined which again is not healthy or helpful to the situation because if we continue to just, you know, focus in on like the things that we did wrong and the wrong turns that we went and how we didn't know the answer to this that and another one, it shouldn't be expected for us to know all the answers or maybe we were supposed to and we just didn't realize it, we weren't prepared, whatever the case may be, it's still not helpful to like sentence yourself and like tell yourself okay I need to punish myself. Like no, why don't you actually do the harder thing which is to continue to put one foot forward and then move past the mistakes and values because yes you can punish yourself but that's the easy way out because it's much harder to just like, like you know, pull yourself back up and move forward and try again or try a different way or go do something else or whatever it is because people are gonna expect you to lay down and just take it and feel so bad. Especially if other people are involved. Let's say you started a business and it failed but you employed other people, those people might hold resentment and bitterness against you and so they're gonna expect you to pile on the guilt and shame on yourself because they were working for you and now they are no longer because the business went under, right? This is just a random example but you, it would actually be better for you to just dust yourself off and move forward and you know, maybe later on in the line they'll realize that that's such a great example of someone just persevering and having resilience to but in the moment they're gonna want you to feel as bad as they think you should feel and ha and then and then how they feel like on top like that's the cherry on top. But we can't just like fall into this trap of like putting all this guilt and shame on ourselves because it's not gonna help us be able to move forward, move past or really understand like what truly happened to try to prevent it from happening again in the future. So holding onto pain to punish yourself. Something I know a lot of people don't even consider in holding onto their pain and like why they're doing it is they have a lack of coping mechanisms. Like absolutely I don't even think that's probably like a common thing that you're thinking of and possibly you don't even know what coping mechanisms are, which it is just a way for you to cope instead of allowing yourself to fall into the behaviors and habits in mindsets that you're trying so desperately to pull yourself out of and pull yourself away from. And I have actually done multiple episodes and social content on the difference between like positive coping mechanisms and negative coping mechanisms because there is a difference. So a quick example would be if you are like trying to not emotionally eat, like this actually was a problem that used to have where you're just bored or you're lonely or you're sad or you're going through stuff and so you would just go into the pantry at the kitchen, you would just be eat, eat, eat, eat whether you are hungry or not. And so a positive coping mechanism for not allowing yourself to do this cuz it's not healthy for you, that's what you choose. It was not healthy for me is cuz I was already, I was already like overweight still is to do something else. So instead of being in the pantry eating snacks, I would go outside and take a walk or I would go clean like some random part of my house like in a deep closet somewhere or out in is to allow myself to get away or go upstairs and read a book or play a video game. That was a positive coping mechanism to not allow myself to fall into the behavior for that. I'm trying to pull myself away from a negative coping mechanism that some people might engage in is instead of eating food in the kitchen and not emotionally eating, they will instead decide to go and like I dunno, smoke a cigarette or do drugs or do something else that's harmful but they see it as like a better option than falling into the thing that they're trying to avoid by just doing something else that also needs to be addressed. But that's not what they're focused on right now. So they're engaging in a negative behavior or maybe you'll call up friends that aren't actually really good friends, you just don't realize it yet and tell them to tell you horrible things about yourself. Be like tell me I'm so fat. Tell me I'm not worth it. Tell me I cannot eat. And then you use that as a coping mechanism because you want your mindset to be shifted to think a different way when you really just need to accept where you are right now in life with everything. That's how we should be running our lives just like indefinitely, like accept where you are right now in your life and then move forward from there because that is how God and Christ are handling us. It's like when we come to him we just lay it all down for where we are, what we're doing right now, what problems and struggles we have right here, right now. He accepts us for who we are right now. We don't need to prep and you know, be like super eloquent and excellent in our prayers. No we just need to come to him and be honest and vulnerable and just lay it all down. And so we just need to accept where we are in our life as well and realize that we can make changes from where we are right now. It doesn't need to be, you know the like the greatest example that I experienced a lot when I was cleaning full-time and I was running my business, my cleaning business full-time was that a, a lot of my clients, not all of them but a lot would do the pre-clean before I came to clean there were some clients that didn't clean at all and so I actually ended up doing a lot of extra work but they appreciated it and it worked out. Um, but some clients would like always make sure that they did the clean before I came to clean and then I had memories of people being like, oh my gosh, I'm so sorry that I didn't pick up before you came. And I understand that like maybe some cleaning services have that expectation but I never did. It was more of like okay well I'm here to clean and if I do extra, we've already talked about how I will charge you extra. And so it's just kind of like that where you think that you have to do all of this extra stuff to come to God or you have to do all of this extra stuff to make a change in your life or shift to different habits or beliefs or or mindsets. But you don't, you can just come from where you are right now even if that is a totally different person from yesterday or who will be tomorrow, just who you are right now. Lay it down and make the moves, make the changes. So again, coping mechanisms, a lot of times we can choose some that are negative that as opposed to choosing a positive one. So when you don't know how to release the pain and find a way, like a new way to process what's going on, you will continue to clinging to your pain if you don't take the time to process it and really go through it and just continue to just not really delve deep into it, you will just continue to clinging to it. It'll continue to be your bestie and that's not what you want it to be. So when you want to harp on your pain instead of choosing to really just ruminate about it and like focus on all of these pain and emotions and things that are like you feel like are holding you back instead maybe choose to like read a book or go for a walk or play a game or something else that will keep your attention for just a little bit so you're able to get your mind off of that pain and start to slowly release it and you know, hopefully eventually let it go. Um, another, well the most common I would say not just another, the most common reason that we tend to hold fast to our pain is because it's just unresolved trauma. It's unresolved like something happens to you and then you don't think about it, you kind of just tuck it under the rug and you move forward but you're moving forward in vain because like life isn't gonna be as great as it would be or as smooth as it could be because you didn't like resolve what happened. You didn't even take a moment to really think about the emotions that you're feeling and what you need to do to kind of heal and then move forward. So we haven't, we just haven't like taken the time to really understand what we are feeling and what it is leading us to do and think about and what needs to happen for us to move forward. Like what truly needs to happen and no longer allow our pain to hold us hostage because we often will allow it to hold us hostage. We will allow so many mindsets and behaviors and beliefs to hold us hostage because we're not realizing that we are allowing these emotions and these things to control us rather than trying to be more rational, take a step back before we make decisions or make remarks or whatever and just kind of really think it through. And I just, that's why it's the most common one because people like skip right past whatever happened so they don't have to deal with it. But really dealing with it is actually gonna make the thing that's gonna be the thing that makes you stronger and help you to move forward even bigger and better than you originally planned. So to really like let it go, you might have to like just confront everything and that's all been more mess than you would expect it to be, but it is the true way to heal and to move forward and to let go of that pain. So now that you understand some of the reasons we tend to hold onto pain, I do wanna share with you some reasons why it's important that we no longer hold onto this pain and why it's better to be more like this verse that I am going to read you, which is from the book of Romans chapter eight verse 18. Yet what we suffer now is nothing compared to the glory he will reveal to us later. So it's thinking about the pain and the struggles and the things that we're going through now, but instead of being so stuck and focusing on those things and how they make you feel and how you believe they will shape everything in your life, it's more important to shift your mindset to the glory and the joy and the peace that you will get from him when he gives it to you. That will be so much better than all of this pain in this morning that you are currently in. You just have to lean into God and allow it to happen and he will give you that peace, that joy, that glory and to just allow you to just like move out of and shift out of th those feelings and that pain that you're allowing to hold you hostage. So I do wanna share with you five reasons why we need to no longer hold onto this pain. But first as always I need to read to you my disclaimer and here is my quick disclaimer. So the tips and advice I'm about to give you is all based on my own knowledge and research and experience and the experiences of you. If you find that what I've shared so far and what I'm about to share in the tips is not aligned with what you believe will help you best understand why you are holding on to pain, right? I encourage you to see a therapist or a counselor and have that one-on-one time to really figure out what would best align with helping you figure out like are you holding onto pain? Why are you holding onto pain? What's the deal o my friend? And try to go that route. If you find that you don't wanna seek a therapist or a counselor, that's totally fine. My next suggestion would be to go to our best friend, which is Google and type in some keywords of like unresolved trauma dealing with using pain for sympathy or pain and vulnerability. And that could point you to some YouTube videos, some blogs, some podcasts, some social like content that maybe like be more in line with what will help you figure out like why are you holding onto pain. So try those things but let's go ahead and jump into the five reasons we should no longer hold onto pain in our lives. Number one, improved relationships if we are able to unload the pain and move forward. It's not saying it's not the whole like forgiven forget thing, like you might still remember obviously that you went through that stuff, that pain, those experiences but you're no longer allowing it to be the most common like top of mind thing. It's not controlling your actions and decisions and the way that you're gonna go with life. And so it will help you by letting it go improve the relationships and potential relationships that will happen in the future in your life. So if there is like bitterness involved or like resentment or lack of trust in current relationships that you have because there have been experiences in those relationships with pain and and whatever, letting go of your pain and not continuing allowing it to bubble to the surface and talk about it and blame people or whatever can alleviate some of those current things can help people to die down on their bitterness and on their resentment and maybe re like grow in trust between each other, which is probably what you want if these are really relationships that mean something to you. And this can also help with future relationships as much emotional baggage as you were if you're able to let the pain go, which because it's fantastic if we're able to let it go since emotional baggage really just gets in the way and prevents us from connecting with other people. So in regard to improved relationships, the uh verse that I wanna share with you from the Bible is from Psalms chapter 1 47 verse three. It says He heals the brokenhearted and bandit it band bandages their wounds. Why can't I say that word? He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds. So if you feel brokenhearted in a relationship, if you feel like you just, there's a lack of trust, there's so a lack of so many things and you are just brokenhearted over it being the way that it is, you really just need to lean into the Lord and let go of that pain and allow yourself to start fresh and give grace to them and hope that they give grace back to you. And even if they don't, you still give it to them and ask God to help you heal this relationship and what to do next because he will heal the brokenhearted and bandage your wounds and the sadness and the hurt and the pain that you are feeling. The second reason that you should let go of the pain that you are experiencing in your life is because you will experience increased resilience if you let it go. So you can't bounce back very well from problems and struggles if you're still carrying around all of this pain from like other experiences that have happened in your life. You know what I mean? And so you'll also, once you are a able to let go of the pain and really build up your real resilience and your perseverance and being able to bounce back from these things that we all end up going through, then you'll also see how strong and capable you are and because you're able to be resilient and bounce back and be able to see the potential for how much you can handle and what you could do in the future and what you can press through and maybe the next thing won't be as difficult and you'll better know how to handle it and better know when to call out to God, which is should be all the time, but and ask him for his help and lean into him. And so yeah, we can't bounce back very well or be resilient if we are packing all of this pain and it's just weighing us down and it's not allowing us to see the point of view that other people are sharing and see ourselves as someone that can continue to move forward if we're allowing the pain to kind of just like cloud and cover up any sort of vision that we have of what our life could be. The third one that I wanna share with you is personal growth. If we're able to let go of the pain, we will be able to achieve personal growth and that's a really big reason for us to let go of pain. So when you keep hold of your pain, you hold yourself back in the past of wherever and whenever these painful experiences and struggles happen to you, but you can't move forward being so like hyper-focused on what happened in the past, just like ruminating over it, continuing to remind yourself of it again and again and again and again. How is that helping anything? It's like you're replaying the tape to know the play. Like let's hope you're not doing the play again and then why mean play play in the game? Like play in a game, not necessarily play in a stage even though I'm very familiar with those two. But so if you're, you're not like watching you know, play by play to learn the other team's plays, right? You are just watching like re-watching in your mind the pain and the struggle that you're going through and reminding yourself and probably telling yourself lies of how terrible you are or how awful you think you are or this, that, and the other negative lies that you're telling yourself. When really if we just are able to step aside from that pain and not let it dominate our lives, we can achieve personal growth. We can, you know, um, just allow the pain to melt away and take our time to like truly reflect on ourselves and who we are and who we wanna be and how we are allowing this pain to just dictate all of those things when it doesn't need to. It doesn't need to like hang around and be this dark cloud forever. Also, when you are finally free to just like grow to your fullest and experience personal growth in different areas of your life, um, it can just feel so much more free during you achieving like whatever the goal is in your life and just feeling less burdened, which is amazing. Like who doesn't wanna feel that way. So in regards to personal growth, the scripture that I wanna share with you is from Matthew chapter 11 verses 28 through 30. Then Jesus said, come to me all of you who are wary and carry heavy burdens and I will give you rest. Take my yoga upon you, let me teach you because I am humble and gentle at heart and you'll find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy to bear and the burden I give you is light. So the yoke that is easy to bear, yes, you know, the thing that he is putting on us like mantling on us at to move forward. I and like, you know, like the yolk is like the thing, I kind of think of it as like a leash, like a collar and a leash. It's not what it is, it's, it's, I just feel like the similarities that cuz it's like the thing that you put over them and then like you use it to like guide the animal anyway. Um, and if I am wrong about that, I don't think I am cause I feel like I've seen an illustration of it for whales, but if I am, please feel free, feel free to tell me. But I believe it's yet you just put it on them and it's kind of like a guide, like kind of like a leash. Like if you had a collar and a leash for your doge, which I do and it's uh, it's easy to bear, it's easy to bear like the Lord leading you in that way and then whatever burdens he gives you, whatever things you have to deal with are light, are much lighter than anything you would experience outside of his grace and his peace and forgiveness and his love and his comfort. And so he wants you to bring your burdens to him. He wants you to just give it all to him in all honesty and allow him to teach you the ways of being like him having that Christ-like mindset and attitude and behavior they're all seeking after and we can just rest in him. And so in regards to personal growth, if we're able to just like really lean into God and give it all to him and understand that he is gonna help us, you know, continue to move forward and achieve those goals and fulfill those dreams and know that the way that he wants to take us about life is not gonna be anything worse, it's gonna be significantly better and more amazing than any other way that we are being guided through life because his yoke is easy and his burden is locked. Okay, number four is being open to new things. So when we hold onto our pain, which again, this was actually not one that I've thought about a lot in my life in general, so I'm glad that in my research I was able to stumble across it. But when we holding onto it, when we hold onto our pain, it is similar to having like a fixed mindset. And so you only see what comes easy to you and you only like adapt to those things and really like live your life through those things and anything else is just a no-go. If it doesn't happen with like natural talent, it doesn't just easily come to you. And that's what a fixed mindset is. You're so focused on things that have come natural and easy to you and you don't see the benefit of continuing to push and learn how to do something and really try hard to become better and finally reach a situation where you have advanced as far as you can go. But people with fixed mindsets are just like, oh, it's like one and done. If we don't get it now, we're just never gonna get it. Which isn't true. And so you will only see what comes easy to you and you know, you narrow your view of life, you narrow the opportunities that you could experience and it's like a sad way to live life. So you wanna be open to new things. You wanna not just so focus on the things that you know you're good at or you know you can do. You wanna focus on the things that you really struggle with, but how can you get better in those things? And by allowing our pain to go and not hold us hostage and not just like fill us and just take everything over, then we are able to have a more open mindset, a more open perspective on what we could do and what we could try and how those things will make us more well-rounded in understanding of others and become our best self every single day. So in the book of Philippians, I'm gonna read to you from chapter four verse six through seven. It says, don't worry about anything instead pray about everything. Tell God what you need and thank him for all he has done. Then you'll experience God's peace which exceeds anything we could understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus. As you live in Christ Jesus you have to give your life to him. But yes, don't worry about anything. You don't have to continue to be worrying and and fretting over like you not being this and this not happening and not being good enough or whatever. It's you can be open to new things. You can try new things. You can have multiple perspectives on things so that you have a more well-rounded vision of what's going on and what needs to happen. This can also help when you are putting all of your trust in God and realizing, okay, he can handle it. Let's see it from his perspective, which is he's got this as opposed to you feeling like you need to be controlling and micromanage you of like, okay, well actually God let me just handle this, this, this, when actually everything is better through his strength working through us. Do just need to like let it go and stop like trying to be all nitpicky and be all up in there. Uh, but yeah, don't worry about anything. Tell God what you need. Thank him for everything and that he has done and actually just allow yourself to truly experience the peace of God which will help you just be more open-minded to things and the way that God wants and knows your life should be set up as cuz we will oftentimes pray about a lot of things and then we get upset when things don't come to pass the way that we had planned it to happen. But often God knows the way that it should happen and we think we know because we have like everyone, even if you have like the biggest imagination in the world, we all have a limitation on how things could happen in our life based upon assumptions and previous historical events and and and the way that we feel about ourselves and where we are in life right now. And all these things when God could see so much more for us, like we are made for more and he knows that he's gonna give that to us. And so what we're asking for may come to us in a different way than we were expecting, but it's always gonna be better. And we always just need to be open-minded of like, oh, okay, so I didn't get the fancy car that I want, God bless me with this other regular car, but okay, let me just be like accepting of this because, and and understand and be and be grateful because I needed a car in general and I didn't necessarily get that other car. But then maybe you find out like long way down the line that you actually end up being able to sell that car really easily because it's just a good general car that anyone will buy and you get blessed with a different kind of car or whatever the situation may be. Or you might find out the car that you really wanted actually was recalled because had all these safety issues wrong with it, whatever the case may be. So just kind of keep that in mind, being open to new things, being open to whatever God wants to do for you even though it doesn't feel like it was like your plan. It's probably a better plan and we should just like adapt to it and try it out. Okay, so number five and the last one I had to share with you today is it only hinders us. It never helps us. So the last reason that I wanna share with you is just really a basic reminder of why we should no longer hold so tight and fast to our pain is that it only hinders us. It doesn't help us, it never helps us, it never makes us stronger or it never makes our life better by holding onto it. Now gleaning whatever knowledge and experience you can from that experience, from that situation, those things definitely help. But those things aren't like focusing totally on the pain, all the wrong things that happened when you glean knowledge and information from and experience in new hop that has happened, you're like, okay, well how did we get here? What happened during this, that and the other? How can we prevent it from happening in the future? Are there any other things that we need to kind of like be aware of to better plan for next time? And so take that information and move on from it. But if you're just trying to like relive everything and kinda like actually accurately remember in your mind like a movie, you're really causing yourself more damage of being so caught up with what happened in the past. So clutching tight to your pain will not gain you anything. It just won't. You think it will, but it won't. If anything it'll just get in your way even more and cause you even more trouble. So I just encourage you, please let it go. You'll feel so much better. And yes, if you're like me when I was talking about how I used to be so obsessed with everything needing to be fair and justice, needing to be had, again, I still struggle with that a little bit, but <laugh>, um, if you're like me and that's your issue and that's why you can't just let go of the pain. You have to realize it's gonna come a point where they don't care whoever else was involved. You don't need to hold guilt and shame against yourself because that's not gonna help you move forward. That I'm actually, you know, cause like some sort of ripple effect in you not moving forward and not preventing other things from not happening that should be happening. I'm not trying to guilt you with that. Just kinda like think about it that way. Like okay, let's just move forward because it would be best and just realize that there's nothing it's gonna do for you. It's gonna do nothing, nothing at all. Zip, zilch, maybe negative 10, just continuing to remind yourself of it. It's not beneficial. And the verse that I have for this one, for it only hinders us and it never helps us, is from the book of John chapter 14, verse 27, I am leaving you with a gift, peace of mind and heart. And the peace I give you is a gift the world cannot give. So don't be troubled or afraid. It's so good. I feel like you're really just, just like, you know, puts a bow on everything. He left us a gift. Jesus left us a gift of peace, peace of mind and heart loving others, you know? And we know that's not something we're necessarily gonna the level or height that Jesus could provide us with that peace and that heart. And also just reminding us, we don't need to be troubled, we don't need to be worried or afraid or anxious or whatever. We just need to lean into him cause he has given us that peace of mind. He has given us that heart to continue to press through, to be resilient, to not give up, to have the personal growth, to be open-minded. We can do all the things through him, through him, through he who strengthens us, which is him. So it only hinders us. It never helps us to hold onto our pain actually tries to cripple us, I would say. And so we need to move past it and let it go and lean into Jesus. That's what I would say. So, but that's it, that's all I had to share with you today in regards to this episode, talking all about are you holding onto pain and why are you holding on to pain? Um, so until next time, have a good one. Uh, check the show below. Oh yeah. Thank you so much for listening to The Real Positive Girl podcast again with me, Sabrina. I to say that part. But I do appreciate you being here, downloading, sharing, listening to the show. You guys make my day every day that I see that someone has downloaded and shared the show. And I mean, I can't see you sharing the show, but I can see you downloading and listening to it and, and saving it and that's awesome. And any reviews that you decide to pop in there, that's great too. Um, but yeah, so check the show notes below. Come say hi to me on socials, submit a topic anonymously, check all the things out. But until next time, have a good one and I will see y'all next time. Bye.