Finally, another silver lining, often achieved in later stage recovery, is a greater ability to handle normal pain in the most healthy and least retraumatizing way. By normal pain, I mean the recurring existential pain all human beings experience from time to time via encounters with loss, illness, money troubles, time pressures, etc. Such painful encounters can produce emotional reactions like anger, sadness, fear and depression. The average person has not learned how to verbally ventilate and metabolize their feelings about such events. This results in them getting stuck in painful emotional
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