There’s a moment. It’s often quiet, sometimes overwhelming. When emotion first arrives in the body.
It might feel like a tightening in the chest. A wave of heat. A heaviness behind the eyes. A sudden drop in the stomach.
Something I’m learning? When this happens, nothing has gone wrong. My body is simply giving me information.
Experiencing big emotions is not a failure of regulation, character, or strength. It is part of being human.
Especially for those living with chronic pain, where the body is already speaking loudly, emotions often arrive amplified and harder to ignore, harder to name, harder to hold.
But after that first signal comes something powerful.
Choice.
Not whether you feel the emotion. But how you respond to it.
As Daniel Chidiac teaches, Not every emotion needs a reaction—but every emotion deserves acknowledgment.
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The Story We Tell After the Feeling
On the Better Than Happy podcast, Jody Moore offers a perspective that can feel both freeing and confronting.
Anger is optional.
Disappointment is optional.
Embarrassment is optional.
Humiliation is optional.
Not because we can simply turn emotions off. But because these emotions are often shaped by the meaning we assign to our experiences. Have you experienced any of the following?
- You have been dismissed by a medical professional, again.
- You didn’t reach the goal.
- Someone saw you struggle.
- Something didn’t go as planned.
Those are just events. Although they feel huge in the moment.
Disappointment enters when the mind adds the story.
“This means something is wrong with me.”
Embarrassment grows when the thoughts spiral into shame.
“They must be judging me.”
“I look foolish.”
“I am foolish.”
And here’s the important nuance.
These emotions are optional. But not wrong.
You’re allowed to feel them. You’re also allowed to question them.
The feeling is real. The story is optional
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A Simple Task: A Heavy Story
Here’s how that looks in my life.
I set out to do a little spring cleaning.
Nothing ambitious. Just a smidgen at a time. Slow and steady. The way I’ve learned my body needs things to be. Experience has taught me that enthusiasm and capacity are not the same thing.
But then life showed up.
The everyday mess. The dishes. The door in my room that was in desperate need of a good wipe down. The quiet realization that I couldn’t do both.
I had to choose. My body, which had just clocked in was now requesting a lunch break.
And then the grandkids came to “help.” Which, as you can imagine, added more chaos than progress. At this point the mess was winning. And multiplying.
The vacuum stopped working. My arms started to burn.
And just like that, the thoughts came rushing in.
I’ll never catch up.
My house will always feel like this.
Why can’t I just keep up like everyone else?
Because, obviously, one unfinished chore means a lifetime of failure. 😣
I could see it happening, the spiral. I wasn’t unaware.
But stopping it? That took effort. A surprising amount of effort.
Excuse me while I parent my dramatic inner narrator.
Because even as part of me recognized what was happening, another part was pushing me harder.
Just keep going.
Finish what you started.
If you don’t do it now, it will never get done.
False. What was actually true was much simpler and much harder to accept in the moment.
I was tired. I was in pain. I needed to stop.
My body wasn’t failing me. It was asking me to listen.
And the real choice in that moment wasn’t about dishes or doors.
But this.
Do I keep pushing to meet an expectation I set for myself… or do I take care of myself?
Eventually, I chose to stop.
Not because everything was done. But because I was.
And that shift didn’t magically clean my house. But it did something more important. It brought me back to myself and my priorities.
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Chronic Pain and Emotional Amplification
Pain is loud. But it is not the only voice.
If you live with chronic pain, this truth lands differently. (You might also find this helpful -> How Forest Therapy Can Transform Your Pain Experience)
Because your nervous system is already working overtime. Because your body has taught you that signals matter and often signal threat. ( If you want to learn how forest therapy supports the nervous system, check this out -> Mending Your Nervous System With Forest Therapy)
Pain doesn’t just exist in isolation. It interacts with emotion, memory, and meaning.
A flare-up can quickly become:
“I’ll never get better.”
“My body is failing me.”
“I can’t live the life I want.”
This is where emotional dysregulation can take hold, much like how Brené Brown describes it:
Being overwhelmed by feelings that are hard to name and contain, driving behaviors and thinking that don’t align with who we want to be.
And suddenly, we’re not just in pain.
We’re in a story about what that pain means.
Your body speaks in sensation. Your mind speaks in meaning. Learn to tell the difference.
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Disconnection: When the Body Becomes Unfamiliar
Brené Brown shares a powerful story about recovering from injury and trying to engage muscles that simply wouldn’t respond. Her therapist kept reminding her to “find your ground.”
But she couldn’t feel it. She couldn’t even find her lats.
She was using her body while being disconnected from it.
That disembodiment, that moving without understanding, existing without connection, is deeply familiar for those with chronic pain.
You expect your body to respond one way. It betrays your expectations. Every time.
And over time, many people stop listening to their bodies with curiosity and start bracing against them with resistance.
Until one simple but profound instruction emerges.
Find your ground.
Not just physically. Energetically. Emotionally. Spiritually.
If you’re trying to find your way back to yourself, back into your body, the answer isn’t usually one big solution.
It’s small, grounding practices.
Journalling. Meditation. Art. Spiritual connection. Time in nature.
Each one opens a door.
Forest therapy is where those doors meet, creating a space that supports not just awareness, but true reconnection.
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The Tree as Teacher
In The Secret Therapy of Trees, Marco Mencagli and Marco Nieri describe the trunk of a tree as something remarkably similar to the human core.
It is a channel of connection. A stabilizing structure. A vital center.
If damaged, the whole system struggles.
Like the human torso, home to breath, circulation, and strength, the tree’s trunk is both anchor and conduit.
And yet, trees do something we often forget to do. They remain rooted while experiencing everything.
Wind. Storm. Drought. Seasonal loss.
They do not avoid conditions. They adapt within them.
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What Actually Matters (Hint: It’s Not the Dishes)
Another truth worth holding onto.
You cannot overestimate the unimportance of practically everything.
So much of what consumes our emotional energy, what people think, whether we looked polished, whether everything went perfectly, is, in the grand arc of a life, remarkably small.
Jody Moore offers a striking reflection.
Imagine your tombstone reads:
“At least the dishes and laundry were always done.”
“She really stayed on top of the laundry.”
“At least no one had a reason to judge her.”
That’s not the legacy most of us want.
What we want is something closer to this.
She lived fully. She went all in. She gave her whole heart.
Not perfection. Participation.
Because the real tragedy isn’t failure. It’s not trying at all.
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Vulnerability, Courage, and the Nervous System
Brené Brown reminds us:
There is no courage without vulnerability.
And vulnerability means feeling.
It means stepping into uncertainty.
Risk.
Emotional exposure.
For those with chronic pain, vulnerability can feel even riskier. The body already feels unpredictable. Why add emotional exposure on top of that?
But avoiding emotion doesn’t create safety.
It creates disconnection.
And disconnection pulls us further from our “ground.”
EMBERLIN: (n) the small unbreakable flame inside you that refuses to go out, even on your darkest days.
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A Forest Therapy Practice: Finding Your Trunk
Here’s a simple forest therapy invitation you can try.
The Trunk and the Story
1. Arrive
Find a tree that draws your attention. Stand or sit near it.
2. Observe
Notice the trunk. Its thickness. Its texture. Its steadiness.
3. Connect
Place a hand gently on the tree (or simply sit close if touch isn’t accessible).
Bring awareness to your own torso.
- Your breath
- Your chest
- Your core
4. Journal
Bring a journal or write in the dirt with your finger or a stick. Answer these questions,
What emotion is present in you right now?
Not the story, just the sensation.
Where is it in your body?
5. Separate Sensation from Story
Gently answer this,
- What am I feeling?
- What am I making this mean?
Draw a line between the two answers. Let those be two different things.
6. Root
Imagine your body like the tree.
- Grounded below
- Supported in the center
- Responsive, but not uprooted
7. Choose
Without forcing anything, ask this,
How do I want to respond to this feeling in this moment?
Write your answer.
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Final Thought: Feel First, Then Choose
You are not meant to bypass emotion.
You are meant to experience it, fully, honestly, humanly.
And then, from a grounded place, choose your next step.
Not from fear. Not from the story that says you are failing.
But from the deeper truth that you are still here, still rooted, still capable of living a meaningful life.
Even with pain.
Even with uncertainty.
Even with a door that still needs cleaning. 🧼 🚪
SUNBEAM ACRES 