Your Pain Has A Name

In this episode, Monica DiCristina shares insights on the importance of naming our pain, understanding our pain narratives, and coming home to ourselves to find healing and freedom in Christ.

Monica's website: monicadicristina.com

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Monica DiCristina is a therapist in Atlanta, where she runs a private practice serving individuals and couples. She became a therapist after one changed her life. Monica shares therapeutic content through her Still Becoming podcast, newsletter, speaking, and her book, that is being translated into 9 different languages: Your Pain Has a Name: A Therapist’s Invitation to Understanding Your Story and Sorting Out Who You Are From What Hurts.

We dive into:

The importance of naming pain for healing
How pain stories shape our identity
Curiosity as a tool for self-discovery
The role of faith in processing pain
Sharing pain and the risk of invalidation
Unwinding identity from pain
Coming home to oneself in Christ

Chapters

00:00 Introduction and Personal Context
02:08 Why Naming Our Pain Is Crucial
03:19 Examples of Pain Stories and Their Impact
04:10 How to Name Your Pain and Its Significance
05:01 Curiosity as a Key to Self-Understanding
06:27 Recognizing and Naming Childhood Pain
07:44 The Impact of Not Naming Pain
09:08 Honesty and Safety in Facing Pain
10:13 Pain as a Namer, Not a Definer
11:21 Sharing Pain and Its Challenges
12:43 Christian Culture and Pain
14:15 Jesus and the Model of Suffering
15:12 Unwinding Identity from Pain
16:24 The Process of Healing and Self-Discovery
17:23 Pain as Experience, Not Identity
18:48 Living Beyond Pain in Christ
21:20 Coming Home to Yourself
22:28 The Goal of Knowing God and Ourselves
23:15 Encouragement to Practice Self-Discovery and Healing

Transcript

Amanda Davison (01:05)
So much has shifted in ministry for myself and this podcast now it used to be really focused on wives and marriages and now we're really working on untangling so much and maybe peeling back the layers of maybe things we haven't been aware of or just some spiritual lies that we've you know have been part of our identity or experiences that are now

maybe keeping us in bondage. And so that's that's what I wanna talk to you about because so much of what you share I know is gonna resonate with the listener. And I'm switching our where you are so I'm not looking weird. There we go. You are good. Yes, yes. but I was looking over this way 'cause of where you were positioned. So you're you're fine.

Monica DiCristina (01:54)
Am I looking in the right place? that okay? Okay, good.

Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Davison (02:03)
But I want to talk about it. You wrote a whole book on naming our pain and why that is so important. What happens when we don't name our pain? So let's dive in. Why? Why, why, why? Why is it so important that we do name our pain?

Monica DiCristina (02:08)
Yeah.

I mean, it's a great question. And I think what I have found as a person, you know, living my own life and as a therapist is that when we don't name our pain, it can often try to name us. Like it's not an innocuous thing to not understand the painful things that have happened to you or happening inside of you. Because when we don't understand, we want to make meaning out of it. And so we often fill in stories.

You know, and those stories are often really harsh and really shaming or just untrue or unfair.

Amanda Davison (03:01)
Hmm. So

okay, you just said a lot there. So when tell give us an example. You just said when we don't name our pain, we fill it in with stories. What does that mean? What does that look like?

Monica DiCristina (03:06)
Yeah.

So imagine if you were raised in a very critical household with maybe a narcissistic parent or just a parent who was tired and overworked and in their stress, they criticized you constantly. If you don't learn to name the pain accurately that my parent was overly critical because of their own issues, you might grow it up thinking, well, this is how love feels, or I'm just not good enough, or I'm just too emotional, or I just need too much.

or I'm just too much. And so naming your pain is really separating what happened to you from your identity. What's happening in you, even how you've coped with painful things from your identity. Yeah.

Amanda Davison (04:02)
Hmm. Okay, in that example you just gave, how

would I name if that's me, I'm that adult kiddo or that kiddo in that home, how would I name that pain?

Monica DiCristina (04:10)
Yeah. Yeah.

Well, would I mean, you know therapy could help or you could do your own investigative process by reading books journaling listening to podcasts But you would begin to learn well, what are the signs of a critical parent? What are the signs of a narcissistic parent? You know, what part of the story is mine to carry and isn't mine to carry? It's really like I talk about in the book a term I made up called Sherlock in your life, know, like really investigating your life and

It's incredible what we can find, these clues that when we begin to understand, we understand ourselves present day so much more. And that space and that understanding is really how we can move towards a more accurate or more healed version of who we are.

Amanda Davison (05:01)
So if I'm hearing you correctly, it might like curiosity is key, I hear you saying, which is a lot of what we're doing on this podcast, and you do as well. So getting curious about well, what was that? Not just of maybe absorbing or assuming or maybe even playing along when we don't even know, but something is off, something was off.

Monica DiCristina (05:02)
So, thank you.

100%. Yes.

Yes

Thank you.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (05:30)
Why

don't I examine that and get curious about it so that I can uncover maybe what that was? I yeah. And so and naming it mat and like for I'm just thinking of the example you gave. If I get curious about that interplay, my parents were very critical of me for whatever reason, then does that does naming that pain potentially sound like

Monica DiCristina (05:38)
Yes, 100%.

you.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (06:00)
I grew up in a home where my parents were critical of very critical of me. So that was like my experience. If I were to name the pain associated with that, is could that be like you're helping me? Let's pretend I'm that child. Could that be something like I

Monica DiCristina (06:03)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (06:27)
Oftentimes or most of the time felt like I was never good enough because of that. So that would that would be an example of that.

Monica DiCristina (06:32)
Yes, exactly.

Yeah, without naming the pain of I was raised in a very critical, harsh household, you might walk around thinking, I'm just not good enough and everybody else is. I'm just not enough and everybody else is. Without that curiosity, where did that belief start? Why is that your conclusion? Why do you believe that other people are lovable and you're

You know, like I've yet to meet someone who doesn't make sense. You know, that there's always a story, you know, and the story may be big, the story may be small, something that happened at work on a Tuesday, you know, but people really make sense in understanding that, then you can understand the conclusion that you made. I'm too much. Well, is that conclusion really accurate if we name the pain more accurately? No, you had either a...

narcissistic parent or just an overly stressed depressed parent or someone a parent who just didn't know how to deal with their own feelings and took them out on you. That's what happened. So if that's what happened were you ever not enough? I don't think so. I think that you were hurt, you know?

Amanda Davison (07:44)
Hmm.

I'm like I'm dissecting my own life as you're talking. And I'm remembering how much I loved my dad and my parents divorced when I was young. And so every other weekend I got to go with him. And I looked so forward to him coming every other weekend, every other Friday, every other Friday. And there were a few Fridays where he didn't make it. And back in the day, right, you didn't have a cell phone. I had no idea that he wasn't, he just wouldn't he was like a no-show.

Monica DiCristina (07:48)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda Davison (08:11)
And just being so heartbroken. And I absolutely carried, and other things had happened with my mom, but I carried into adulthood this message for sure about myself that I'm I'm not important enough for people. I'm not very important at all. Because if I were, he would have come, you know. And so that's interesting when you say that. I'm just thinking as an adult, I've been able to, you know, have tons of conversations with my dad about that. And

Monica DiCristina (08:25)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Exactly. Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (08:39)
And he's helped me because of that, he helped me understand that, you know, he was in a difficult place and himself. And through that maybe investigation, like you say, I was able to then redefine that for my for my own life and say, it wasn't me. You know, my dad had no money to get gas. So he didn't come. It still hurt me. I was very sad. But that's why he didn't come. Do you think that

Monica DiCristina (08:45)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Thank

Amanda Davison (09:08)
Part of this is just the ability to be honest with ourselves, finally.

Monica DiCristina (09:15)
Yeah, absolutely. I definitely think it's being able to be honest with ourselves. But I also think that honesty is something that is not always easy to be, not because we want to be dishonest, but because we may not feel emotionally safe enough or have the resources or the relationships to learn how to be totally honest with ourselves.

When we're not honest with ourselves, it's not because we're usually because we're a dishonest person, it's because it may be too scary or we may be afraid of what we're going to find out. Right. Or we may think, oh, there's no way that this isn't just all my fault. You know, and your story is such a powerful example of how a correct identification and naming of what was actually happening helps unravel the lie that, know, that you were left with without that information.

Amanda Davison (10:05)
Hmm. And is that what you mean when you write that if you don't name your pain, it will name you? Like you referenced.

Monica DiCristina (10:06)
and this is it.

Yeah,

absolutely. That's what I mean. You know, I mean, I meet people with all different stories. I have my own story. And when we don't understand what's going on, we want to make meaning out of it. Like I said before, the meaning is not usually like, I'm lovable. The meaning is usually something that is trying to understand why this hurt so bad or why this hard thing happened to us.

Amanda Davison (10:39)
Yeah. And it doesn't discount the pain, right?

Monica DiCristina (10:43)
No,

exactly. My goodness, no. mean, like, you know, validating and honoring the truth of the pain is sort of the door into understanding what you've concluded and the door forward to more healing and health and truth. Yeah, never invalidating the pain. I've been doing this for almost two decades and invalidating pain is never helpful, to put it mildly.

Amanda Davison (11:11)
Mm-hmm. Why don't

you talk about that? Cause you you also discuss, you know, sharing so being able to recognize and identify the pain and maybe the reason for that or making trying to make sense of all of that and then sharing that with someone. But that doesn't go well, maybe. yeah, why don't you talk about that?

Monica DiCristina (11:21)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. my goodness. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean.

I can't tell you how many stories I have sat with where it's not just the painful thing that someone felt or happened. It's the pain they felt when they tried to share it with someone and someone either invalidated it or minimized it or, or blamed them, like said it was their fault, you know, or, or gaslit them about their experience. And that's a whole nother separate layer of pain.

It's very often in therapy part of the power of the uniqueness of therapy is is just someone not Invalidating you because they've got a dog in the fight, you know, I don't I don't have an agenda when someone sits down with me I don't need them to like their uncle or to you know be who I want them to be You know and and but sometimes in our lives some people, you know

consciously or unconsciously have an agenda and it's hard for them to make space for us or they're just Uncomfortable. They're just so uncomfortable with our you know story, whatever that is big or small

Amanda Davison (12:42)
Do you feel

that in the Christian culture we live in, that this oftentimes the Christian maybe understanding of pain are, you know, maybe bent toward not wanting to be uncomfortable, maybe just truly having no one, you know, no one's modeled it for us. We don't know how to engage with pain. or, you know, all all of that. Do you find that that adds another layer to our

Monica DiCristina (12:46)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Amanda Davison (13:12)
ability or inability to process our own pain.

Monica DiCristina (13:16)
Definitely, definitely. I I've sat with countless people who have been told in some way or another that they didn't have enough faith because they were struggling, you know, or that they needed to have more faith, you know, or they've run into people in, you know, Christian circles who directly or indirectly said that to them. I think that, you know, we forget often that Jesus wept, you know, I mean, he was someone who was acquainted with suffering.

Right? and, but, that's not often what we're taught. And sometimes we're not taught that in sort of a sub, a subtext way. It's not, you know, people aren't going around explicitly saying, you know, your pain doesn't matter. Right? It's more like how, how should we show up and how can I show up if I'm really struggling right now? If I'm really anxious or if I'm struggling with a depression, how do I show up and feel like I can still be loved and be okay in this community?

Amanda Davison (14:15)
Yeah, and I feel and I've been guilty of it early on in my Christian walk with the Lord. I remember hearing statements so I would repeat them, like when something hard would happen, like a spiritual bypassing. Like, yep, well, like I hear you're struggling with whatever, but God is good all the time, all the time, God is good. You know, it's like, Well, yeah, absolutely. But also

Monica DiCristina (14:30)
Yeah.

Mm-hmm. Right. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Amanda Davison (14:42)
You completely are missing

the reality of the state that this fellow human is in right now. And by not sitting with them in that pain, you are adding to their pain. And so I think that's really important that we start to understand that too, that Jesus, like you say, did not run away from pain. He did not slap a band-aid on it or try to tie a bow on something bleeding.

Monica DiCristina (14:53)
Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (15:10)
he he leaned in toward it. And yeah, I just I think that's really important in this as well, as you do such a great job of talking about. What does it look like or what does it take to unwind? You say unwind, I love that word, our identity then from our pain. Because that's a tricky one. Yeah, why don't you talk to that? Talk about that.

Monica DiCristina (15:12)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I

mean, and I know I've repeated myself about this, but I just want to go back to it for one minute that, like, I believe humans are meaning makers. We want to understand everything, you know? And so that can be really beautiful when we're writing a poem about a sunset or something, you know? We want to have meaning in a moment that's romantic and wonderful. But when we want to have meaning in a

something painful that happened to us. And no one is, no one, there's not a narrator stopping the story and saying, this is what happened. There's often not someone raising their hand saying, you're hurting because I hurt you, right? We're just left with, how do I understand this? And we often globalize our experiences too. So, you know, it's, it's not that we just fear criticism. It's that we walk into a room and we think everyone else is better than us.

It's not just that we felt unloved. We walk into a room, we think, God loves those people, but not me.

You know, and so it's really, it's a process. I use words like unwinding and unraveling because I don't really believe in a before and after model of healing. I think that that often sets so much of us up for disappointment and confusion. It's a process. And you know, I think about it like practicing. Your whole life you're practicing something, unconsciously or consciously. You might be practicing a lie without even realizing it, but it also takes

time and intention to practice the truth, to put on what is true, who am I actually, what does God actually say about me? So it's a process that I think we're going to be on continually as long as we're here.

Amanda Davison (17:09)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I'm just thinking if the pain is our experience, and correct me if I'm wrong, but if that is true, and if the pain did not occur because something is wrong with us, then we can experience pain and know still who we are in Christ.

Monica DiCristina (17:23)
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Sure.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (17:47)
Right? Like so I'm ch it's almost like I s you know, it's a choice maybe to not define ourselves by the stories we tell because of the pain we've experienced, but instead still remember, know, repeat, or learn for the first time who we are in Christ alone and what other people choose to do to us has nothing to do with that.

Monica DiCristina (17:53)
Thank you.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Amanda Davison (18:17)
identity.

Monica DiCristina (18:18)
I totally agree with that. And what I would add to that is, you know, your pain can be an experience, but it also can be a struggle. You know, your pain can be an anxiety disorder. You know, your pain can be a depression. Your pain can be a divorce. You know, your pain can be many different things, but what it isn't is your identity. And, you know, and that's a, that's a big statement that takes time and investigation and curiosity to

Amanda Davison (18:29)
Yes.

Mm.

Monica DiCristina (18:48)
untangle and live out.

Amanda Davison (18:51)
Yeah, I

wanna talk a bit about that. You say that we can identify our pain narratives. How what h help us to identify them or what it might be?

Monica DiCristina (18:57)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, so, you know, right now you probably hopefully can't hear it because we're recording, but there are noise machines in the hall because I'm in a therapist's office and it is to protect privacy. but if I stop and I listen, I can really hear it. Or imagine when you're on an airplane, you stop and you really listen, you hear the noise. The narratives that we carry like that are often unconscious. They're so automatic. People call them silent assumptions or

automatic assumptions that we don't realize they're there, you know, but we operate almost in obedience to them. You know, we operate, I'm not going to go for that job because I could never get that. Or I'm not going to go try to be friends with those people because they would never like someone like me. And so there's a big part of slowing down and hearing, well, if I, if I learned to name my pain and name what I believed about myself,

How often am I hearing that in my life if I start to tune in and really listen for it? And it's surprising. Like I often tell clients to start with like when you're driving home from a dinner with some people where you felt a little awkward, you know, just, there's something as small as that, or someone asked you to do something and you said no, something as small as that. What comes, what comes up?

Amanda Davison (20:19)
Yeah.

Monica DiCristina (20:21)
I've got to be pleasing to be loved, you know? I shouldn't have said that at dinner. I'm too much. They're not going to like me, you know? So we start to hear those narratives. And we're not that original as humans. We often have probably, you know, three to five narratives that are pretty constant. They might change content, but they're pretty constant.

Amanda Davison (20:43)
So start paying attention.

Monica DiCristina (20:45)
Yeah, yes.

Yeah, and that's free. We can all do that. Right, exactly. Yeah, we can all do that. Yeah.

Amanda Davison (20:49)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, that's free. We don't have to like fly to Atlanta. Move to Atlanta so that we can see you. Yes, right,

right. That's helpful. I want to also talk about this. you talk about coming home to yourself. That just makes me want to like grab a big blanket and be like, okay, let's lean in. I want to lean into that.

Monica DiCristina (21:09)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Amanda Davison (21:17)
Talk to us about that. What does that look like?

Monica DiCristina (21:20)
You know, I feel and I run into so many people who are exhausted by the idea of finding yourself or discovering yourself. And what does that mean? Or just be yourself, you know? Like, what does that even mean? But when I think about coming home to yourself, it's coming back to who you've always been. It's like remembering a song that you forgot, you because you were created.

You were created in love. You were created on purpose. There's wonderfully made inside of you. it's really, sometimes we just really get lost, understandably.

and we get far away from ourselves. And so all of this has a similar idea of when we're paying attention, we're becoming more aware, we're being curious, we're drawing closer and closer back home to ourselves. And I really believe the more we get to know ourselves, the more we get to know God, the more we get to know God, the more we get to know ourselves.

Amanda Davison (22:17)
Hmm. That sounds beautiful. And I hear

that, you know, the moral, I think, of the story is the moral of this whole podcast. The heartbeat, I should say, behind it is really that is the goal. That is the goal. knowing God, knowing who He created when He created us, and finding freedom in that and not being in bondage to anything else.

Monica DiCristina (22:28)
now.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Bye.

Amanda Davison (22:47)
pain, you

know, what we're telling ourselves, believing about ourselves, about the world, all the things. And so thank you for this important work. I know you're doing it, you know, all day long as you meet with clients and there's so many more women and men who just heard all of this. So I just want to encourage you ladies listening or watching grab Monica's book. Everything again linked below.

Monica DiCristina (22:51)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Amanda Davison (23:15)
Don't forget to do that and man, start a book study. I was thinking while you were talking, how how much more healthy would adults be if we taught our kids how to do this?

Monica DiCristina (23:21)
Okay.

Yeah, yeah, I think of it like a posture, you know, it's like a way to go through life. I mean, there's no way in this book I could name every pain, you know, but it's like it's just a posture that we can teach ourselves and teach our kids. Yes.

Amanda Davison (23:40)
Yeah. To help them get curious. Right? beautiful. Thank you so much, Monica. I'm

sure someday we'll maybe chat again. So thanks for being with us.

Monica DiCristina (23:51)
I would love that. Thank you so much for having me.

Amanda Davison (23:55)
Thank you. So good.

Monica DiCristina (23:57)
Oh,

thanks. You asked such great questions. So thank you. was fun. It was easy to chat. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.