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I'd recommend journaling. It helped me to look at a bunch of feeling words [1] and write down how I am feeling.[2] Then ask why. Finding the answer to why may take a while. Also, there are several layers of why. (Ex. "Why do I watch lots of movies?" "Because it feels sort of relational and kind of numbs the loneliness." "Why?" "Because it is difficult for me to do actual relationships" "Why?" "I think maybe I don't really know what love is and so I act self-oriented." "Why?" "I don't feel like I've have received unconditional love" [loose example from my own life recently]) After you id the pain, if it's because someone hurt you, you need to forgive them, otherwise, you'll get bitter. If the pain is old, you may need to look for the bitterness (expressions of cynicism, complaining, criticizing, and anger may be good areas to explore). It hurts to give up the bitterness and anger, but in my experience life is a whole lot more enjoyable if you forgive people. If I'm honest about it, the times that I am bitter or angry at someone are really miserable. If your pain is caused by absence of love, I don't know what to do about that yet. As a Christian, I feel like regularly experiencing God's unconditional love is key to fully healing our pain, but I have not walked completely through that yet. [1] http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~prewett/archive/FeelingWo... [2] It helped me to write letters to God honestly expressing how I was feeling, including about him, it provides a concrete framework. If you do this, it helps to assume that he is a loving father (since that is what he claims to be), otherwise you might just transfer your anger to him and end up equally stuck. |
It's not quite entirely secular either, because it often has roots in Buddhism. Still, you can easily practice it without needing to adapt any Buddhist teachings. I'm not a Buddhist and I don't desire to become one, but some of the practice is quite useful :)
I'm just pointing it out because I really agree with prewett, that forgiving (all sorts of things and people) is a very powerful and positive thing to do. Much more so than I expected before I practiced Metta meditation for a while--it was just one of many different series of meditation types/styles we did with our meditation group. It's had a very profound and long-lasting effect on me, also quite different/orthogonal to the benefits one gains from typical mindfulness meditation. Which I can also recommend btw, but the effects of the compassion meditation seem that more tangible, like it taught me things. Maybe that's just me though.