The Wisdom of Our Pain

   There is a saying: “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” I can’t remember where or when I first heard this now-familiar aphorism, but it has echoed through my own cultural spaces so long that it almost sounds hollow now- cliche and folksy, like “You are what you eat” or “Every dog has its day.” Were we to find ourselves in some particular instance of intense emotional pain, only to have a friend utter this trite wisdom to us, we might want to outright smack them for insensitively suggesting that our distress is actually being amplified by our own choosing. A person in pain usually needs compassion and sympathy first, not advice or positive reassurances. They likely need to simply be seen and acknowledged in their hurt- not clumsily pushed into a better frame of mind by some smug wordage that might just as well come from a take-out fortune cookie. In times of real pain, we often need genuine connection and validation, not preachy slogans that paint us as the architects of our own misery. Pain may be inevitable, and suffering may truly be optional, but in order for these words to land, there often needs to be a space inside us where we can first stand without feeling overwhelmed by the enormous suckiness of it all. 

    There is a reason though, that certain sayings gain traction far beyond the vocal range of the person who first uttered them. There tends to be a kernel of profound truth to them, even if their words seem a bit worn out. We may not like the timing with which someone reminds us that we have a choice in how we relate to our pain, but truth is still truth even if its timing seems a bit off. Pain is inevitable and it has so many forms, flavors, and nuances, that if we were to look closely at at what we go through on any given day, we would likely find a dozen or more instances of pain recognition: the pain of being late, the pain of feeling lonely, the pain of feeling misunderstood, judged, devalued, helpless, or offended. Of course much of our pain is often discovered to be fleeting and short lived, but there will be instances of larger, more intense, more lasting pain that can sabotage our sense of life satisfaction. And yes, as the saying goes, we do have a choice in the degree to which our pain, regardless of its magnitude, robs us of our peace and happiness.   

 Renowned meditation/mindfulness teacher Shinzen Young offered a very simple formula for the relationship between pain and suffering:

Pain x Resistance = Suffering

    When we encounter pain, we will often generate an internal opposition to what we are experiencing and it is precisely in this opposition that we actually amplify our misery- sometimes by several orders of magnitude. Recognizing this tendency is the first and most essential step to breaking free from the hold suffering imposes on us and our sense of wholeness. 

    Again, it should be noted that pain can arrive in many forms that are not merely physical. Certainly cuts, burns, abrasions, toe-stubbings, and head bumps are all forms of pain, but these garden variety expressions are often the easiest to deal with. As we go through life enduring all sorts of minor injuries, we often find physical pain subsiding at a very quick rate. Anyone with children has observed that even a small bit of physical trauma can induce screams and tears of apocalyptic proportions, but that these outbursts quickly evaporate with a few kisses, a sympathetic embrace, a soothing parental voice, and maybe a cookie. Thankfully, much of our physical pain often has a very quick half life especially as it comes from the brief but harsh impacts with our physical surroundings. 

    As adults, we often find our ability to contend with long-term or chronic physical pain becomes notably strengthened with our age. We can often push through it, go to work, even laugh and enjoy life while we quietly hold our back pain or bummy knee with a certain grace and dignity. Obviously we all have different thresholds for enduring chronic pain, but the torment with which even long-term pain afflicts us is usually pretty mild compared to another kind of pain that really undermines our peace with things.

    Psycho-emotional pain is a very special brand of pain experience and one that often stings us more deeply than any broken bone or bumped elbow ever could. This is the pain that keeps us up at night. It makes us moody, emotionally volatile, argumentative, depressed, anxious, or any number of other unpleasant qualities that might shut us down and put us at odds with others and even ourselves. 

    Psycho-emotional pain might arise from regret, remorse, shame, embarrassment, loss of what we love, worrying about the future, and so on. There is an almost endless supply of things that push our buttons on the inside and this kind of pain can lead to any number of inwardly and outwardly destructive tendencies. This is where resistance often enters the picture, and subsequently, where suffering becomes multiplied.

    When we feel bad in our emotional body, we usually want an immediate way out. We might find any number of distractions that can pull us away from the immediacy of our own hurting. Drinking, shopping, socializing, pleasure-seeking, even things like incessant positive thinking can be ways that we try to run from our pain, but these things often come with a severe cost and eventually prove to be mere bandaids rather than genuine sources of healing. 

    Another common, almost ubiquitous strategy for resisting pain is blaming something outside ourselves as the source of our affliction. We can point our finger at any number of external villains and this gives us a temporary sense of power as the emotion of anger will have a much more enlivening feel to us than other heavy emotions like loss, defeat, and shame. It can feel empowering to identify the reason we feel bad and we often get locked into a rigid story about who did what to us and how we might exact our revenge on them in return. Our world is replete with stories about individuals who acted out with sometimes wildly disproportionate violence against other people that were esteemed to be the bad guys in the minds of the persons experiencing some form of psycho-emotional pain. 

    Now some might argue, especially in the height of their own pain, that lashing out is a wonderful antidote to sliding into the helplessness of suffering, but the problem is that violence often begets more violence. Whole wars get started because of minor disagreements triggering people to keep pushing the retaliatory envelope further. There can be any number of unwelcome consequences to our very human attempts to sublimate our hurt into outward expressions of anger. Though we might feel a temporary surge of relief at punching someone in the face because of some perceived offense, when the handcuffs go on our wrists, we might find ourselves subject to the looming concern that our troubles are only about to get much worse. 

    However we outwardly react to our pain, there is a primary point of mental resistance that is important to recognize. It’s a kind of automatic internal friction really, where we declare in our own heads, “This shouldn’t be happening.” Rather than starting with the basic acceptance that our pain is truly being felt, we resist the reality of the pain by telling ourselves that something is wrong, or out of place. It is a ground-level translation of our pain, which reveals itself as wholly unpleasant to us, as some kind of flaw in our experiential field. At this moment of disagreeing with our reality, anything goes. We might shut down, or lash out, or run out of the room. We might bottle up our emotional distress and bury it  under an artificial outward appearance of being strong and keeping it together. We might tell ourselves that we are too exhausted to contend with our situation, or over-dramatize our sense of victimhood. The bottom line is that resistance to our pain usually creates more problems than it solves. We may get temporary relief from our distress and misconstrue our "feeling better" as a genuine resolution to our problems. 

    There is a saying that “in order to heal it, you have to feel it.” True healing isn’t found in constantly retreating to make ourselves feel better, but opening up as completely as we can to the hurt. Even if we check out later with some bit of escapism, pausing to absorb the direct experience of where we are right now without needing immediate resolution is a tremendous step towards finding a greater state of wholeness with our condition. Though there may be some losses that can never be fully made whole, we can begin to hold space for the sense of brokenness we discover when we are in distress. It requires courage, yes, strength and honesty too, to stand openly in the fire of our experiences without retreating. It is a practice and though we may feel at times like we are failing, that too is something to simply hold space for and allow. 

    It can be easy to think of our suffering as proof that we are defective in some way, that we are unenlightened, cowardly, or avoidant. It is an important aspect of self-compassion that we allow ourselves to be human, overwhelmed, and at times, completely withdrawn from our turmoil. We don’t always have the immediate luxury of sitting with pain. Sometimes, as the saying goes, “the show must go on,” and we will have to compartmentalize our distress and place it in the background for later, in order that we can function in some more immediate role right now. We don’t always have the bandwidth in our limited attentional range to give our pain its due time and space. Sometimes the pain is so immense that we must titrate it into our nervous systems slowly in small manageable doses. It is perfectly fine to engage with our pain at a later time, but what is essential for our own happiness and well-being, is that we do eventually let it in and experience it without interference. 

    Delaying our time to process deep psycho-emotional pain can be a perfectly healthy part of our coming to terms with our reality. This is true, but delays can sometimes drag out and we might find that we erroneously assume that our work is done simply because the distress that was so vivid to us a while ago seems to have evaporated. What we will often find though, is that the mess is still there, that it has merely been swept under the rug of our own denial and addiction to positive feelings. We may find old pain rearing its ugly head down the road in some more dire physical manifestation like back pain, high blood pressure, headaches, insomnia, and so on. There is another saying that “the body will cry the tears that the eyes refuse to shed.” Unresolved trauma can often show up in a host of physical maladies that might be vastly more dire and debilitating than our emotional distress ever was. Of course not all physical maladies have psycho-emotional trauma as their source, but bodyworkers of all stripes have stories of strange physiological diseases emerging from people who have been carrying the weight of unresolved pain, people who, out of some immediate necessity, had to push their hurt down, to buck up, and soldier on. Whole books have been written about this phenomena and one might be well served to check out “The Body Keeps the Score” by Bessel van der Kolk for a more in depth examination of the processes whereby our ignored, suppressed, or denied pain can reemerge as disease. Suffice to say though, we are each being called to open up to what hurts, scares, and offends us- not necessarily to accept those things that hurt, scare, or offend, but simply to accept that we are feeling something painful- to acknowledge our distress openly and honestly and see if we can, even if only for a short moment, just be with it. 

    I would suggest that true strength is not so much a function of physical muscles that lift, push, or pull, but our ability to simply stand in the direct experience of our complete unfiltered lives without retreating when things get difficult. By simply remaining curious about what we feel, not what made us feel this way, we begin to strengthen our ability to contend with our torment in ways that are wise, grounded, and purposeful, rather than simply exacerbating our pain by fighting a reality that is not what we want. So if pain times resistance equals suffering, then pain times acceptance offers much more beneficial products like courage, resilience, and fortitude. 

Practice holding space for the totality of your experiences without needing immediate release from them. See if you can feel the sting of loss and disappointment in your whole being first. Let the hurt expand and intensify. Watch for fluctuations in the way your pain registers in your body. Where do you feel your heartache when you really get still and listen to it? Is it really in your heart? Is it in your belly? Curiosity can be a powerful tool to reengage yourself in your own healing processes. It allows you to lean into discomfort so that, on the other side, you can reemerge from your pain feeling stronger, more fearless, and more centered in your own equanimity than ever before. Again, it is a practice, and like any practice, it requires some bit of diligence and patience. It is not mastered overnight. Be gentle with yourself as you continue to practice. And no, you do not have to actively manufacture pain and distress in your experiential field- life will give you ample fuel for your own transformation. See what you can endure before reacting. Believe it or not, you do have a say in how you respond to your pain. If we allow it, our wounds can actually be opportunities to evolve into more expansive versions of ourselves, capable of meeting life head-on, even when we feel beat up by its incessant barrage of emotional blows. 

    I should admit that at age 52, I am still impressed by my own capacity to feel hurt by things that are minor compared to some of the monumental challenges that other people have endured. But we need not trivialize our own hurt by holding it up against the most ghastly and unimaginable horrors that occur every day. While there can certainly be a Stoic wisdom to keeping our troubles in proportional perspective, pain is still pain. When we are going through pain, that is simply where we are, and we will do well to open up the fundamental reality of it. Declaring that, “it could be worse,” might simply be a way of sidestepping the truth that is confronting us. Sure it could be worse, but pain speaks in the present moment and if we can just listen closely, we might actually extract some significant wisdom from our experience of it. 

    Pain can show us when we are off course, when we’ve erred, when we may have overlooked some important details in choosing what to do. Pain and our ability to feel it are companion elements in a highly beneficial feedback system that serves as an alarm when something is off. Of course alarms are annoying, but it is precisely that annoyance that wakes us up from our sleep. So the next time you find yourself hurting, see if you can just pause. Take it in. Feel it in your body fully without immediately trying to find the escape hatch. Inquire honestly as to whether there may be some deeper message to pain’s bothersome presence. You might just find that the very thing you most wish would just go away is actually pushing you into a greater state of harmony with your world and wholeness within yourself.