If You Feel a Nameless Pain, Read This

I’m not a psychologist nor a doctor. The below is not medical advice — but a personal example of how I am dealing with the topic.

Understanding pain and its limits

I feel a deep, nameleas mental pain. It creeps into my veins. It destroys my days — way too often.

At the same time, I feel I have a lovely life and lots of beauty in it… if there wouldn’t be that big mysterious thing.

I made a big mistake in dealing with my mental pain. And I hope I can help you avoid doing the same — I thought:

Once I fully understand that nameless pain (its cause and the situations where it was created), I am free.

This was partly true. And partly dangerous.

Hyperfocus on pain will make it more painful. So will ignoring it.

What’s true: It is good to gain an idea of where the pain comes from.

What’s dangerous: Going into analysis paralysis — and adding further pain as you will not fully understand the root cause (trust me, I’ve been there).

Emotions from the subconscious are extremely complex and it’s nearly impossible to fully unwire and understand those. (see step 3)

Better accept this first. And let me show you what I found to be the sweet spot of investigating the pain.

Here’s what I did.

Step 1: Taking full ownership

First, I set out to confront the pain I feel and not ignore it. Emotions that we willingly ignore tend to grow. Psychology calls this ‘ironic processes’.

“The ironic process theory posits that sometimes our efforts to control our minds result in the opposite outcome of what we intended.” — simplypsychology.org

I got into coaching, therapy, and read many books. Now, I understand some of my family and earlier life dynamics (this will remain a lifelong task) — and how they have shaped me.

But most important: I took full ownership.

Yup, what comes now hurts.

It’s not my fault I feel that pain, but it’s my responsibility to deal with it.

No one else is responsible for the pain I feel. This would just cause resentment directed towards the past and people who cannot help me. I would just hurt myself and avoid responsibility.

The only question that exists is:

How do I deal with the pain that I feel?

Step 2: Carry out a ‘pain-screen’ and remain in the present — or at least, near past

To improve something, you must audit the status first.

I learned this in project management: But it also goes for feelings. And if you feel a ‘nameless’ pain it is essential to first screen your nearest environment for obvious root causes.

When I do a ‘pain-screen’, I audit basically all life pillars like:

• people surrounding me
• current job
• my finances and also
• memorable situations that happened in the past couple of years

…

I journal a bit about them. Then I see whether I can connect some pain to the life areas above. Here’s what I learned some years ago — and suddenly, the pain I felt went from nameless to… “how could I not see that?”

(My story for step 2)

Some years ago, I was moving in with my ex-boyfriend. My job was extremely demanding (creating beautiful power point slides until late night).

Since we had decided to move in together, I felt burnt out. My stomach cramped a lot, I couldn’t eat much, and I weighted, well… not enough.

I thought my job was stressing me out. But the sooner the move-in date, the more mental breakdowns I accumulated. I was either in rage or crying. Either way, I was totally paralysed by pain.

Long story short: When I ended the relationship 18 months after that, all pain was gone. I felt so happy and light.

The punch line for you: Reflect on all the things in your current life. Our brains are SO SO good at maintaining the status quo. You may be voluntarily blind to what causes your pain.

In the end, it may just be your fear of change saying ‘well… it’s not too bad’.

But if you did step 2 and you are sure the reasons for your pain are nowhere around you, you better…

Step 3: Say hi to your subconscious!

Most mental pain that feels ‘random’ and ‘unexplainable’ is subconscious. And it’s incredible how much information is stored there!

Our subconscious is literally doing and knowing so much that’s very hard to bring into our awareness. And a lot of this fuzzy stuff shapes our automated behaviours and thoughts.

For example, when meeting a new person, we gather hundreds of subtle cues in milliseconds: the tone of voice, the facial expression, eye contact, posture — even the rhythm of speech.

These elements combine to create a powerful, often unconscious impression of how we see this person — but if you ask people to describe a person they just met, they only find a few descriptive words.

That’s the small share of their perception that made it to their awareness.

So finding very specific root causes for today’s feelings in our subconscious is like trying to find one specific document in a warehouse full of unlabeled boxes.

And you don’t even know what you’re looking for.

Step 4: Look for your subconscious memory card, but not too much!

It’s worth finding categories to look at. I call them major conflicts.

For me, it’s family problems. I have some triggers that I cannot clearly explain. It hurts to have open wounds in the family structure that cannot be properly worked out.

Also, I find myself in a life situation (aka. job) that I have clearly outgrown. I’m working on changing that.

But I cannot explain the part in me that clings to my current life so hard, even if it doesn’t feel right (I always thought I was a cool risk taker, haha).

However, the point I want to make is that it’s important to do some deeper investigation — beyond your closest personal circle. That can give you some more material or rough topics to work on.

But don’t go so deep that you send yourself into analysis paralysis.

Maybe start therapy.

At the end, very deep mental mechanisms can never be fully understood. And maybe, that’s okay, which leads me to my last point.

Step 5: I’m not good. But good enough, thanks!

I wanted to write here that I have made friends with the pain. But, haha, that’s lying to myself and to my Medium audience.

The honest version: I learned that it’s a lifelong task to deal with pain. It will never be gone. So better accept it to some degree. A very good movie teaching this is Stautz.

One of my favourite psychology movies!

For me, personally, I accept the pain as long as it’s not overwhelming. If it’s overwhelming, breathwork helps. I work with it, not against it.

And I see it like this:

Pain is a motor for change.

If you feel pain, you have a task.

See that as a present! The fact that you are reading this article until the end is already proof that you want to take that task.

And what else is that than a radical appreciation of life? ❤

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