What We Learn from Pain and How to Process It
Pain is a necessary aspect of living. Pain is our response to certain experiences. Ultimately, they help us learn and grow, but they do not give us identity. We are not our pain. It is merely here to help us change and evolve, if we give voice to it.
The unpleasantness we feel with a certain experience is not necessarily the experience itself, but in how we perceive it. Sometimes to prevent our discomfort we might avoid or deny the experience which only perpetuates our suffering in running away from it. But without pain, there would be no change, no invention, no human evolution. There would be no contrast for us to recognize emotions. We wouldn’t be able to experience happiness or joy without pain and sorrow.
There is an art to processing pain. We all experience pain in different ways according to our life lessons. They are the vehicles that drive our will to take action and (hopefully) do things differently because we desire to not suffer anymore. The pain discussed here is entirely karmic and personal. It is does not justify conscious infliction of pain.
The key to dealing with pain is not in the ability to endure or deny it, it is in the ability to process it.
Processing our pain is an act of transmutation. In other words, it is taking what hurts us and turning it into something that make us stronger and better. Using pain as a teaching moment or lesson. Processing pain begins by allowing it to surface so that we may experience and feel it, not store or hide it inside to move forward or pretend it’s not there. In experiencing and feeling its full depth, that is where pain begins to break down barriers. Sometimes what we feel is breaking inside of us can be a good thing, it doesn’t mean we are broken. When those barriers come down, this is when you are able to see what’s inside. To see it for what it actually is, and to gain a higher perspective that allows you to work through what needs to be processed. And then, you have the opportunity to exercise your ‘inner strength’ muscle to build yourself back up from a place of ‘healed earth.’ You are given an opportunity to exercise your freedom and decide how you want to move forward.
This is the process that makes us stronger. You cannot be stronger if you don’t have the opportunity to flex the muscle. If you avoid pain, your ego can convince yourself that you have moved forward, but the pain inside will continue to be a major wound that you carry with you in this lifetime and into the next. Experiences will continue to trigger and aggravate that wound, and that wound will continue to fester.
When we are hurt physically, let’s say we have a deep cut, we would never just cover it up with a bandage and carry on with our lives as if it didn’t exist. We would tend to the wound. We would seek help, clean it, dress it, care for it until it fully heals. So why would we treat our emotional wounds any differently?
Processing emotional pain is deep introspective work that requires space and time to fully feel our emotions without a time limit. We can let ourselves feel it and express the emotions that come with it. We can let it pass like ocean waves, or like a storm, or a tornado…knowing that it too will pass. Once the dust has settled, you have an opportunity to excavate if you wish to. Perhaps there is an old, unresolved trauma buried there? Meditation helps support this process in listening to your soul voice as a means to understand any behaviors, beliefs or patterns supporting or perpetuating our fear or wound. This will help you to be able to re-program and release the fear. A key indicator if a wound still exists is if you re-hash it or attempt to aggravate it, can it still hurt you? And if the answer is yes, it means the wound has not fully healed.
Trust that, like all experiences, it will pass and the storm will clear. Practice kindness and patience with yourself to let yourself fully feel and go through the process. Be brave to face all that you may fear, all that may hurt you, and all that may haunt you. Bring it into the light, look at it, examine it, accept it, release it. Eventually creating closeness with fear and pain will bring about a familiarity that allows you to overcome the blockage and be able to see it from a different perspective. This is when you begin creating some separation between your fear and pain, and your identity. Fear and pain is not who we are, it is merely a temporary resident that has taken up space inside.
If you want to change something, it begins with understanding it and being able to identify the root of the problem. And that begins with feeling.