Why Pain Is The Best Thing That Can Happen To You!

The stories we tell about ourselves, those we watch, hear, and are drawn to, are not the litany of our greatest hits. They are about the painful events in our lives we survived and grew from. While we don't seek them out, we know they are the stuff that makes us!

Transcript

Why Pain Is the Best Thing That Can Happen To You?

The secret of pain is, it grows when you run from it, and shrinks when you run toward it.                                                                                                                       -          David Goggins

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of healing your own. Today’s podcast is called:

Why Pain Is The Best Thing That Can Happen To You!

My name is Greg. And I’m an expert level MFR therapist and owner of Glen Ellyn Myofascial Release, and in-person and on-line treatment center for pain relief, injury rehabilitation and physical and emotional healing.

As I write the words above, I’m reminded of being young and mom telling me to eat the vegetables I was avoiding as an 8-year-old, using the infamous: “They’re good for you” label that kids have always known really means: “They taste like crap - eat them or you’ll sit there till bedtime until you do.” As an adult I’ve learned to love and prefer vegetables to all other foods: who knew. In short, my relationship to food matured. Unfortunately, my relationship to pain has taken much longer to evolve. 

Here is the problem, I/we live in a culture with a child’s view of pain. We are 8-year-olds who can’t believe pain could be good for us. We just want the dessert, that is, the pill that will make it go away. We do not understand pain, or see its value. So, we make ourselves pain’s victim. And of course, it keeps coming back around to see if we are ready yet. But we instinctively grab the pill bottle, or THE bottle at the first sign of it and the cycle continues. And for a while, like the children we are, we think we’ve outsmarted mom, we don’t need the veggies and we can leave the table whenever we want. But then, tomorrow morning, as in Groundhog Day, the pain station is playing that same damn song again I can barely get out of bed, and as we get older its more frequent and more intense. Just listen to a group of 60-somethings and you’ll hear a Pain symphony.

Here is a truth about pain. Most of what people mean when they talk about pain is, fear. Google the term “facing Pain” and you will get mostly responses to facing fear. Fear is not pain, but the fear of pain. Let me say that again. Fear is not pain, but the fear of pain. That’s an important difference. What people call pain is the self-induced fear that pain is coming. So, they do almost anything to avoid it, fend it off, mortgage it to a future that is sure to feel worse for the delay. And why is that?

Well, what I’ve discovered in myself, friends, and clients is the common belief in three possible negative outcomes. If I give in to this pain, even welcome it, one or all of three things will happen: First, it will never go away. Second: The pain will be unbearable. Or third: It will kill me.

Another truth about pain is its not unhealthy – its natural. But the fear of it can be unhealthy. We now know that fear and anxiety cause most physical and mental illnesses. The fear of it is its own cause. And while pain is a natural occurrence in life, fear and anxiety increase its intensity. So, what, if anything can we do about it.

Before answering that, I want you to recall an unusual or intense experience in your life. Something that you feared the approach of, or were caught completely off-guard for.  I’m not talking about a childhood trauma, but more like a truth you had to tell. Maybe you’d get fired, or flunked, your partner would leave you. Something you thought might devastate you forever, might even kill you. Roll your film back and pause just before it happened. What were you feeling just then? Take time let yourself re-feel the experience. The anxiety, the dread, maybe even panic. And then, the THING itself. What happened? How did you survive? Did you call on a part of yourself you didn’t know was in you? Did something or someone save you? 

And when you tell your story to others, do you recall the litany of happy events that happened throughout your life, or tell of the challenges you weren’t sure you’d survive. If you’re like me, you tell the second. And why is that? Why do we tell the stories of the things we never wish happened, yet somehow survived? My guess is, even though we may not admit it, we know it’s through those experiences that we grew, evolved, became more than we thought we could be. It’s how everything grows. Giant sequoia trees, which can live 3000 years have the tiniest seeds that only geminate under fire. Meaning there is no growth in your comfort zone. It takes intensity. It’s how all change happens. 

So maybe, our resistance to change, to pain, is part of the package. Part of the ingredients for change, for growth and for healing. It’s not a mistake. Its part of the fuel needed to burst our seeds to get to the next stage. To get to healing. 

So, now instead of bemoaning fate when pain happens; this shouldn’t be happening, its not fair, or all the other victim complaints I’ve made over the years, I choose to see it as a call to adventure: My body has a new secret for me to find. One writer puts it this way: “Life will never exempt you from facing more pain. Once you accept this, your goal will no longer be for pain to stop, it will be to increase your tolerance for it.”

In short, pain may be the best thing that can happen to you because, like all growth, we don’t wish for it, but in the end are grateful it happened. It’s the story we tell. And like every good story you’ve ever seen, heard or been a part of, the growth came, as it always does, when we faced a new challenge, one that forced those seeds of greatness in us to sprout to something we didn’t know was in us.

When you are ready to feel pain, through the body, you are no longer its victim. You are free.

If you are ready for pain free living rather than pain numbing or simply want to know more, you can contact me at website, Glenellynmfr.com, and as always, my friends, I wish you well on your healing journey.