It was around 4am in the morning and I was deep asleep. My 4 years old son woke up crying loud with ear pain. When checked, the ear wax was coming out and it was blocking his ear. My wife cleaned it with an ear bud. The pain subsided considerably and within 5 minutes, he went back to deep sleep.

"What non-sense is this pain!", I was little irritated that my deep sleep was disturbed. However, the whole event left me wondering - what was the pain trying to do?! There was danger to the health of his ear and it (pain) got into action to inform my son of this. What if the pain was not doing its work? Neither my son, nor we parents could have observed this, leading to further damage of his ears. Similarly, consider many of the body's dysfunctions – body wounds, stomach-ache, leg pain, heart ache, head ache, injured bones.... and the pain gets into action to let us know the area of the body where we have to move our attention. We almost automatically act to do something, so that the body's health is retained - we may put a band-aid, give a hot water treatment, take medicines, provide rest, avoid physical exertion and so-on.

On a different level, one could see how the pain becomes functional in the emotional realm. The pain of separation, of insult, anger of boundary violation, fear of uncertainty, breach of trust, betrayal by a friend, shame of not being at our imagined level of performance, and so-on! These feelings are various forms of pain.

As there are several variations of the feelings (as a range), they can be simplified as - feelings of sadness and its variations indicate anything related to past; feelings of anger and its variations indicate anything related to the present and fear and its variations indicate anything related to the future.

However, unlike in the case of body's pain where we attempt to see the pain without judgement and take actions to heal it, here we tend to avoid the painful feelings by deflecting our attention through binge eating, drinks/smoking(sometimes drugs), beating(shaming) ourselves, binge watching, laughing at the pain, not sharing them and so-on. In some cases, we keep on telling the same story of sadness, anger, fear repeatedly with others without working on them, just to keep feeling victimised. Imagine doing these deflecting activities, when there is a pain in the body! Do we keep talking about the body pain to all to keep feeling victimized? Doesn't seem sensible!

Why then for the emotional pain that we react differently? Why it becomes a matter of identity as to – “I have anger issues”, “I am always sad” and so-on. There is a considerable influence of the culture and society in the way we react to the painful feelings. Could we bring the same wisdom and love with which we treat our body to our feelings? It is a healthy option to reach out to trusted friends, relatives, therapists and say - "I need help, I am emotionally injured". We need not be ashamed for having these feelings or overreact to the injuries of our emotional security and happiness. In nutshell, these feelings are messages that a good, healthy functioning of the emotional life is disturbed. Lets treat them as our friends. Lets see them in ourselves, our close relations - may it be friend, colleague, parents, children, wife, sibling, neighbours and help address them, without judging. Providing a positive space for the presence of these feelings and its expression itself would do a considerable healing and regaining the health of emotional life. Pain, thy are my friend, my protector, my caretaker!