SPFPP 273: Stop the Bleeding First

Avoidance. Many of us tend to avoid leaning into the intensity of an emotion by engulfing ourselves into something familiar to take our suffering and pain out on. In nature, after an animal experiences an injury, it HAS to stop the bleeding before going on to hunt, eat, drink, etc. There’s a lesson here for us to take in. Our injury may look like a herpes diagnosis, the end of a relationship, or some sort of other traumatic event that shatters us emotionally. I was playing God of War Ragnarok (on my PS5) and Kratos said this to his son after one of their comrades who’d become family was killed, and Atreus (Kratos’ son) wanted to go hunting in order to ignore the grief. MAN I felt this hard and knew immediately that when he said “stop the bleeding” that this was a lesson to incorporate into SPFPP. If an animal doesn’t first stop the bleeding, they cause more harm. Integrating that analogy into human experiences, if we ignore what causes us emotional damage, what harm are we doing to ourselves? Our guest, Erika shares her experience with “stopping the bleeding” by simply being comfortable receiving support from the people around her for this traumatizing experience of receiving a positive hsv diagnosis. Let her story serve as a roadmap for navigating this aspect of stigma for yourself.