What If You Were Able to Have a Relationship with What Hurts?
We’re not really socialized to deal well with pain — emotional, physical, or anything in between. The immediate answer is to take a pill, ignore it, push through it, heal it, just get better! We consider our default state to be comfort, happiness, and ease, which sounds great in theory ... but leaves a lot to be desired when it comes to living an actual human life.
Because of course the truth is that we’re very rarely going to be completely content and free of pain. Sometimes we carry big, heavy things around with us for years, in our hearts and in our bodies. A lot of times we’re actually getting something from that pain — and not in the annoying, New Agey, “you chose this as a lesson” way, but in the sense that it reminds you of what you’ve lost. It keeps a person or place or memory alive for you. It could be protective, trying to keep you from doing something again. It could be simply tender, reminding you of a decision you made that was right, but sad.
But we’re not really taught to see pain as anything but a problem. Which isn’t particularly helpful, of course. You can’t squelch it, push through it, aggressively heal it, or ignore it. Doing that just guarantees that the tenderness is going to leak out somewhere.
Instead, what if you were able to treat it more like something you have a relationship with?
Grief, pain, tenderness, they’re all a part of you. We don’t so much get rid of them as grow around them. Like a tree with something stuck in it, we gradually grow bigger, and increase our capacity, until it’s just another part of us. It might always be tender to some degree. But it can end up as more of an “Oh!” than heavy, deep pain.
That process often looks more like taming a wild animal than following some five-point healing process. It can be messy. It’s inconsistent. It’s beautifully human. And whatever it looks like for you is fine — truly.
If it never changes, and that pain lives with you exactly as it is, that’s fine.
If it shifts and moves from, say, your knee to your heart, and becomes emotional rather than physical, that’s fine.
If you one day you find it’s time to let it go, that’s fine.
If you find that actually, you’re cool with whatever happened, that’s fine.
The answer is always being where you’re at, and then deciding what you might want to do (or not) from there.
Try this:
See if you can take a moment just to sit with the sensations that come up with the tenderness. How might you describe them neutrally, without a judgment or story attached to them. Does that change how they feel?
When tenderness comes up, see if you can take just a sip of it. You don’t have to have the big catharsis moment (though of course that’s OK, too). But what is it like if you take just a little sip of it and send it some care and curiosity? What might it have to say?
See what the idea of change feels like in your body. You absolutely, really, and truly don’t need to do anything different. When it’s time to change, you’ll know. (And it might never be time!) But what does that moment of being ready to change feel like in your body? Can you recognize it when it comes?
These are deep waters — and as always, it’s helpful to have someone alongside you. I’d love to support you as you work with what’s tender. You can find out more about how that can work here. Or, if you’d like to join me for an hour of group contact nutrition and settling, we can do that. Find out more about Settle here.
