"Learning to Live With Pain..."

And the crucial difference between merely surviving, and Thriving.

If adaptation to emotional, psychic and physical pain weren’t such a common, universal human trait, what would our lives actually look and feel like? In truth, I am astonished by how many people I’ve spoken with, are willing to adjust to living with pain (of any sort), and manage to accept it as “normal.”

My father’s parents were impaired, and probably should never have had kids~ but then, I wouldn’t be here. His father was both emotionally and physically abusive to his 3 sons, and their mother was mentally unstable. This was my dad’s frame of reference for “family” and home life.

My father remarked more than once about a young friend he had as a child. Turns out, he’d spent time at this little boy’s home, and occasionally shared meals with his family. I think these visits were his only way to experience some semblance of familial normalcy.

Daddy recalled with some degree of wistfulness, how very different his friend’s parents were around each other than what he’d experienced daily, in his own home. It felt bizarre, yet wondrous for him to witness two adults being playful, affectionate, flirtatious and loving with each other~ and those early childhood memories remained vibrant throughout the remainder of his life. My father died at the age of 81.

What stood out for him most, was his little friend’s excited comments that he “could barely wait to grow up and get married." This child observed so much shared pleasure and joy between his mom and dad, that he was eager to replicate this experience in his own life when he grew into adulthood.

If you’re checking inside yourself right now and exploring memories of your own home life as a little kid, congratulations~ because it is THIS period of time that’s powerfully influenced your willingness and capacity to love, be loved and thrive, rather than merely survive~ whether you’re in a coupled relationship or not.

When we grow up with emotional pain, we not only learn to accommodate and normalize it, we adapt to loving it. Pain of varying degrees becomes our constant companion (a long-term friend, if you will)~ to where we feel nervous or anxious, in the absence of its presence. You’d be shocked to learn how many thousands of people feel uneasy and anxious, when feelings of pain or torment are absent.

The subtle anxiety that arises in many of us when life feels like it’s going “too well” drives subtle or overt self-sabotaging behaviors, and self-defeating life choices. We’ve learned thru continuous exposure to disappointment and setback when we’re young to distrust light, good feelings, because they were consistently followed by disappointment and/or pain.

You won’t believe me when I say this, but every single client I’ve had over the past few decades, is afraid of genuine, lasting Happiness~ and their day-to-day life choices continually reflect it. It may be miniscule decisions they habitually make that undermine their health or relationship dynamics, but they’re routinely harming themselves, just the same. In short, surviving feels more familiar, hence comfortable to ‘em, than thriving.

CAN this reflex be dismantled? Can people learn to welcome light, good, joyous feelings, without their Anxiety Monster putting up roadblocks and interfering with their actual attainment of Happiness? Absolutely~ but doing so, requires gaining enlightenment, healing and reprogramming techniques, to turn that ship around. Sadly enough, most seem quite content to “live with” their pain.

Many enlist psychotherapy for years or even decades, in hopes that Happiness will ultimately be theirs~ but it eludes them. Why? Because emotional impairments are not head centered. They began as betrayal wounds to one’s heart, during the earliest weeks of life outside their mother’s womb.

There are tens of thousands of very bright, psychologically astute Borderlines on our planet, and there’s literally nothing wrong with a Borderline’s mind. Their heightened, dysregulated emotional states create cognitive dissonance, so that the brain is short-circuited and distorts incoming information, but they are not “mentally ill” as far too many laymen and psychologists would have you believe.

The problems, setbacks and relationship disappointments or disasters we encounter have nothing to do with our intellectual acumen or mental capacity. These issues have followed us since infancy and early childhood, and have solely to do with our need for HEART repair.

All our belief systems, attitudes and expectations of what it means to live a fruitful, gratifying life were shaped and chiseled in stone, when we were defenseless little children, and those experiences became our truth about how grownup life is “supposed to feel.”

Problem is, there’s a powerful amount of distortion that’s interceded and influenced every single choice we’ve made, so we’ve unwittingly foiled our own Grand Plan~ or what we’d always fantasized about and anticipated “Life” could one day be like for us.

Our Narcissism keeps this faulty system in place, believe it or not. A Narcissist cannot allow him/herself to need anyone (it makes ‘em feel too vulnerable), so meaningful, effective professional care is typically sabotaged, in favor of the erroneous, grandiose belief that one can actually heal him/herself. Nice work if you can get it… but how many decades of your life have already been devoted to this solitary aim?

Given that dependence or reliance on another proved to be an unwise and painful experience for us as small children, we were conditioned to rely only on ourselves. This provided us with a semblance of emotional safety, and reinforced our sense that we at least, wouldn’t abandon us in the way our parental units did~ which for millions has provided enough comfort, and stopped them from seeking life-altering help (and why would one even bother with anything less?!).

The outcome? We literally cannot trust ANYONE with our care for more than a fairly brief period~ for what if they reject, abandon or (even) die on us?! What then, will become of us?! When you’ve grown up believing everyone who has any meaning to you will abandon you, there’s a good chance you’ll manifest that reality in one way or another.

Learning how to embrace joyful feelings requires highly specialized care and guidance. It most surely doesn’t come naturally to humans who’ve grown up struggling with emotional pain. It didn‘t come naturally to my dad, either.

His first marriage (of three) was to my mother. She was not a well-balanced woman, and was diagnosed and hospitalized with Schizophrenia when I was seven~ which was two years after my parents divorced. Children learn by example. Whoever they grow up loving, whether their adoration was returned or not, is who they bond with and marry in adulthood.

My father basically married the woman he grew up with. It’s all he knew to do. To his credit, my dad was never emotionally or physically withholding or abusive to my older sister or me, so much of that ‘generational trauma’ was (thankfully) averted~ but how many of us were this fortunate?

Meaningful, heart centered therapeutic intervention (IF you can even find it) provides corrective emotional experiences to clients who, like my dad, had no other frame of reference for what “happiness” looked and felt like as a little kid~ aside from his very pleasurable, yet sporadic experiences at his neighborhood friend’s home.

People tend to wonder why their grown kids aren’t close to ‘em. In all probability, trust was severely compromised for these children around the time they were barely able to walk~ or earlier. Having grown up with Heart Trauma from a litany of subtle setbacks and disappointments, forging genuine trust in others is nearly impossible… and we’re right to feel this way!

The saddest part of this condition is, that due to never having been able to form a safe and secure bond with Mother, there are millions of people who’ve never learned to trust themselves. They second-guess every decision and choice they make, because these aren’t coming from an instinctual, intuitive place inside their body.

When we dissociate from painful emotions as toddlers, we effectively halt our emotional development. Our senses become dull and even deadened. This alone, is the root cause of Narcissism and Borderline Personality Disorder features in 80% of people living all over the world.

If you cannot feel (in your body) what’s likely to give you the most optimal outcome from a choice you’re having to make, you can only rely on your head for that input, and your mind will lie to you, based on whatever wishful thinking or agenda you have operating in the background. Think of your mind like a computer program that’s been infected with a virus. It’s frequently your worst enemy~ yet if you’re dissociated from your bodily senses (intuition and instinct) you’re gonna trust whatever resource you have available to you. Your senses will never lie to you, or get you in trouble~ but your head sure will.

Poor choices and decisions impact our everyday experiences lifelong. We “learn to live with pain” rather than working up the courage and determination we need to resolve it. Resolution is vastly different from resignation. Resolution means there’s no nagging, ‘unfinished business’ to attend to. Resignation means you’re willing to feel resigned about your unfinished business, and “live with” unhealed trauma.

I don’t know about you, but by the grace of God, I’ve always had a low threshold for stress and pain. Quite simply, I don’t believe it belongs in my life, and I’ll do literally anything to avert either!

If/when I experience discomfort in my body, I will do everything in my power, to research and eradicate it~ because it’s completely incongruent to my nature to endlessly endure it. Thus, I have healed myself of many ailments, and there are one or two I’m actively still working to eradicate.

Our acceptance of pain, based on what we were programmed over and over to accept and accommodate as children, is actually the only element that stands in the way of our ability to create (with a bit of expert guidance) lasting joy and contentment for ourselves.

How we do Anything, is how we do Everything. My best advice to you, is this: Check-in with yourself about how high your threshold is, for tolerating discomfort and pain. You may find it’s considerably higher than you think, based on your earliest life experiences as a child. Remember, that’s your original blueprint, and the one you’re used to designing your life from, all the way up until today.

You might look back on childhood events from your current vantage point, and with all the resources you’ve gained over the years you’ve been an adult, you can view those setbacks and disappointments as “not so bad.” Your child-Self however, is still aching from each one of those incidents, and suffers from unhealed wounds to his/her sense of worth and lovability.

This is why adult pain feels familiar, and you can brush it aside and make it “not matter,” until it becomes excruciating~ leaving you to wonder how in the world you got into this predicament! But maybe it’s still somewhat mystifying to you, ‘cause you’re earning a good living, and/or in a quasi-satisfying relationship. Your episodes of discontent therefore, make no logical sense to you~ but here’s something nobody ever tells you: Feelings are seldom rational, as they are not a product of the mind.

This is not to cast blame, mind you . . . but you are the only one steering your ship as an adult. There’s nobody else at the helm! If you grew up believing life and love have to be “hard,” and pain and struggle are to just be accepted and endured, you started out with a poor frame of reference (or blueprint) for living well ~in every sense of the word.

Whatever GOOD this lifetime has intended to yield to you, you’ll thwart, because (deep down) ya don’t feel worthy or deserving of receiving those things. You can thank your mom and dad for this outcome, but you might wanna give some thought to altering your script, so you can surmount all that bad old programming, and welcome far more abundance and joy into your existence.