What Is Your Relationship to Your Pain?

When I look back and reflect on my life, often I like to reminisce about the happy times that I’ve experienced. The laughs, the gatherings, the achievements. While it’s important to feel grateful for these moments, I find it equally important, if not more, to look at the more painful moments. Whether it be the passing of a loved one, a relationship ending, a job loss, or any other difficult touchstone, it’s important to look at how the pain of these experiences shaped the days that followed.

As Traver Boehm says, “you can’t outrun pain.” So, if I can’t outrun pain, how do I respond to it when it finally reaches me? Do I push it away? Try to ignore it?

I’m sure you’ve heard this sermon before and know where I’m going with this. But even if you’ve heard this a thousand times, it’s important to hear it again: Pain is our greatest teacher. Often times it can be unbearable. It can leave us lying on the ground unable to muster the strength to stand. But regardless of what experience you’ve endured, or are currently enduring, ask yourself this question: What is my relationship to my pain?

Resistance

In April, I lost one of the strongest connections I’ve ever had in life. The pain of losing my grandmother is a complicated one. On one hand, I’m happy for her. She often told us that she was ready to go. But on the other hand, I felt a connection to that woman that I have never felt with anyone on the planet. The night she had left us before I had even learned of her passing, I had one of the worst anxiety attacks of my life. There was no explanation for it, I just remember lying on my floor thinking that I was going to die. My heart was pounding, I couldn’t get a grip on my thoughts. The world was spinning. I could feel the loss on a spiritual level, I can’t explain it any more than that.

How do we resist pain? We push it aside, we yell at it, we ignore it. We cling to anything else. Resistance comes when we cling to something outside of the Now. I was clinging to the time in which my grandmother was here. To a time where my relationship was thriving. To a time when I knew what I wanted to do with my life. I was clinging to any other moment other than the one that existed right now.

Whenever those intense feelings of loss climbed, I resisted them and cursed them. I would cry about every hour, and then say, “what’s wrong with you? You know she’s in a better place. She chose her time and she was ready. Be happy for her.” Or, I didn’t want to accept the loss and searched for ways to live in the past or outside the present moment. Either way, I was robbing myself of experiencing the loss fully.

I had to step back and ask myself: Where is my mind, right now? Is it here, with this pain? Or elsewhere? What do I want to go back to? What am I looking for to get away from this pain? Am I allowing myself to leave this moment in hopes of a better future, or am I still lingering in the past?

Numb

I’ve noticed that my emotions don’t work exclusively from one another. They operate as a spectrum on a wheel. The emotions spin and spin, some more rapidly than others. One moment I’m experiencing happiness and a few days later I’m sad. This is nothing new, its life. The important takeaway, however, is not that the emotions change. It’s that the emotions are connected. You can’t silence the anger you feel without shutting the joy out. You can’t numb despair without dimming down your excitement. It just doesn’t work that way.

When I numb one feeling, I numb all of my feelings.

Numbing doesn’t have to take the shape of drugs and alcohol. I’ve numbed my anxieties by scrolling through my phone for five hours straight. Numbing is very similar to resistance, but the key difference is that I’m not allowing myself to feel anything at all. The pain can be so unbearable, so I shut off the sensory overload. But when I shut those senses off, I block all the relief and joy that life can bring.

How did I numb my grief? There were a few times when I drank alcohol when I didn’t need to, but the real downfall came from entertainment. Let me be clear here:
Relieving yourself from your pain for a moment to catch a breath can be very helpful. Every once in awhile, we need a break. But to play video games for six hours every night on top of Netflix binging? No, that’s not relief, that’s escapism. During those hours of distraction, I could feel my pain being lifted. But when the relief ended, there was just more intensity. More anxiety. More pain.

I would turn off my X-Box and go straight for my phone. After I’ve scrolled through every social media platform, I would turn on Netflix. Minute after minute went by without allowing the pain into my heart. And when the pain was kept from entering my heart, I blocked out any moments of joy or gratitude. It wasn’t until I stopped distracting myself and numbing myself from my pain when I began the true art of acceptance.

I began to ask myself: How is this device, whether it be my phone or my TV, serving me? Is it giving me a short period of relief so I can catch my breath? Or is it blocking out the world so I don’t have to deal with it at all? Am I allowing the impermanence of life, all the fluctuating joy, anger, sadness, grief, pass through me? Or am I stopping this flow by shutting off the system entirely?

Acceptance

The day of the funeral was a hard one. My grandmother deserved more than what COVID-19 had required of us. No more than 15 people. Everyone had to wear a mask and stand six-feet apart. But rather than turn away from the pain, rather than drown out the tears with something external, I leaned into it. When I leaned into it, I noticed a few things I never took the time to notice before her passing.

From years of painting and sewing, I noticed how much life she held in her hands. I noticed how much warmth she emanated when I hugged her. Her laughter, and how she always reminisced on those moments of laughter. She supported others in the family even after years of not speaking with them. She loved, fully, and deeply. I knew these things before she passed, of course, but I never took the time to appreciate them until I accepted the fact that she was gone.

Acceptance is not passive. It doesn’t mean letting the world walk all over you. It does not take the shape of inaction and inactivity. In fact, it is one of the most active steps you can take for yourself. It is a conscious choice towards presence rather than resistance. There are many times in life where pain is thrust upon us, and if we have the ability to change that situation and strive to better ourselves or our lives, then we should. But if I am experiencing something I cannot change, such as grief or loss, there is no trick or strategy that will get me out of it. Only accepting that the pain will come and go will I find true relief.

You also learn about where you came up short. You start to see the cracks and flaws in the ways you’ve been living before. When life is going well for us, it’s easy to let the days pass us by while thinking we’re living our highest potential. For me, I learned what boundaries I needed to establish for myself and in my relationships.

I asked myself: Am I allowing this moment to be as it is? Am I surrendering to this moment rather than clinging to anything else other than what it is? As I listen to this moment, what do I hear? What do I feel? What color does this pain look like? What shape does it take? Where is it located in my body?

When I found a level of acceptance and asked myself these questions over and over again, I found that the pain wasn’t as unbearable the second time it came around. Because it will come back around. But that’s a part of acceptance too, knowing that pain will come and it will go. I was able to find a level of stillness as I let the Now into my life. And when the Now is accepted, rather than resisted or shunned, your life slowly starts to align to its higher purpose.

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