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If you're presently overly avoiding your pain and grief, I recommend you consider these four empowering tips to help you rise back up—even higher than where you were in the first place!

4 Bounce Back Tips

1. Whenever you find yourself seeking an addiction in an attempt to run from pain, keep in mind these wonderful words from author Satish Kumar: "Sister, pain is part of life. By accepting it, its intensity is reduced. Do not resist it. Resistance to pain brings tension and anxiety, anxiety leads to fear. Fear of pain is worse than pain itself. This pain will pass."

Translation: It's always your choice. You can either (a) Sit with the pain now, or (b) Avoid the pain now and potentially feel even greater pain later, thereby delaying the healing and its incumbent path to self-growth.

2. Once you allow the pain to come, become aware of where in your body this pain is landing: throat, heart, stomach, back, head. Feel it in this body part, then breathe it out of this body part. If possible, give yourself specific times to grieve and breathe.

3. Keep a journal. Track your healing process through the five stages (you may skip some stages and also regress or cycle back), but a journal will show you that progress is being made. And, remember, after you pass through stage 4, that final stage of acceptance is right around the corner. Whew!

4. Recognize that you are an unfinished self in progress. Like so many of life's challenges, experiencing and overcoming pain can reveal emotional depths and perspectives you didn't know you were capable of. Refocus on the excitement of all the new changes in your personal being and your life journey ahead. Motivate yourself to stretch your mind—and always seek to find the most healthful interpretations and most positive lessons to be found in all your life challenges!


Karen Salmansohn is a best-selling author known for creating self-help for people who wouldn't be caught dead reading self-help. Get more information on finding a loving, happier-ever-after relationship in her book Prince Harming Syndrome.

More Reading from Karen Salmansohn:
How to survive living in a state of flux
Does sexy have a size?
Broken-hearted? Throw a divorce party
How to know and grow your potential
Are you a feminist or a feminine-ist?
Should you break up or make up?
Here's how to be happy, dammit!

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