Resilience

Pain and the way we accommodate it are both unusual things.

All people are different when it comes to being hurt and therefore the levels of tolerance vary. This goes for both physical and emotional/mental pain. If you were to punch someone in the arm, depending on who this person was you could make them cry, bruise or hurt them. On the other hand, they could brush it off and hardly feel a thing even though you punched them just as hard as the other person.

If you were to yell or swear at someone, they could laugh and not care or swear back - getting angry rather than hurt. Either this or, you might not know it, but you could be leaving them with a sunken feeling in their stomach and a hollow pain in their chest as they take what you said or did to heart.

Personally, what I find differentiates physical from mental pain is how it effects us over time. Your body hardens and callouses, your skin thickens and you become used to pain. Whereas with mental pain, the blows tend to get worse the more prolonged they are. Each insult, each argument chips at your mental shield until it all comes crumbling down.

In an attempt to keep themselves safe I have seen people isolate themselves, shut off their emotions or hurt others in return. All of these things only cause a different kind of pain. If you're alone, who will be there when you need help? If you don't feel anything, when will you be happy again? Why hurt others, when all you are doing is spreading the pain?

Resilience, just like pain, is different for everyone. Building up mental resilience is hard and for those with mental illnesses can seem almost impossible.  To build up resilience you need to let some of the pain out. To share how you feel. To express yourself. To go talk to a friend and vent and talk about the problem, to find a solution to the problem if possible and fix things, to distract yourself until you're calmer with music or television. Or you could express yourself, draw something, paint something, or even write something as I am now.

Just know that whatever bad has happened, it is not permanent. It will end someday and so will the pain it has caused.