by Sean Graham
When we are children, we all receive pain training that revolves around learning what not to do. My daughter, when she was a toddler, reached up and touched an element that had recently been turned off with her tender little fingers. The blisters and pain that ensued taught her never to do that again. We had told her many times not to do it, that the stove is dangerous, but she had to learn the hard way. This type of pain-avoidance training is helpful when learning how to avoid physical pain, it is not helpful when learning what to do with emotional pain. Our culture has taught us to avoid, deny, control and soothe all forms of pain as quickly as possible. The problem is you cannot quickly soothe, remove or control emotional pain. Emotional pain is connected with love and caring. The reason we get hurt is because we do love and we do care. To avoid pain caused by love and care would mean we stop loving, we stop caring, which is not a solution. This is a coping mechanism, not a resolution, and people drag their emotional pain around with them everywhere, transmitting it because they have not allowed their pain to be transformational and life giving.
So what do we do with our pain? The good news and the bad news is this: we receive it as a mirror of our caring and our loving. We trust our pain because it comes from our care and our love. And we allow it to transform us. But here things become a touch confusing. For some the transformation is into a harder, more callous person with the hopes that being guarded will prevent pain in the future. There is another option, but more uncommon. There are those that allow their pain to make them softer, more vulnerable and more fragile. The result of that fragile, vulnerable state is that they come to life simply because they are not running from their pain. I want to make special note here though that this does not apply to those who have been abused. When we are violated by someone, we often need help to process through our pain. The isolation that most enter into once they have experienced abuse is what traps them in their pain. Healing from abusive pain only happens when we trust others to help us process through it.
To be alive is to struggle. And to struggle implies pain on many levels. The avoidance of pain is not actually possible, therefore our hope is only in its integration. Richard Rohr constantly says that unless we allow our pain to transform us, we will transmit it. This is the risk of all other forms of pain management, except for this - being receptive. Life is hard. Thomas Merton begins his book “The Road Less Travelled” with the words “life is difficult”. A large part of me wants to flower this up and make it easier by telling you the good news that it is all going to be ok. But until we can trust our pain, receiving it fully, we are just participating in the earliest stages of development in understanding pain. As we grow and mature, everything we suffer forms and shapes our character and creates life. The reason we hurt, the reason we suffer, is because we do love and we do care. This might sound odd, feel it deeply but don’t take it personally.