Pain

William R. Colagrande, MS

For something so commonly experienced, pain is not really all that well understood. Pain remains a topic of debate not only among the medical and mental health professions, but among theologians and philosophers as well. Be that as it may, I’m going to attempt to evade the lion’s share of the controversy by limited myself to a discussion of emotional pain, particularly its functional aspects.

Both physical and emotional pain serve an important function: they convey a warning of a threat to our state of well-being. With the exception of pathological or chronic pain, once the cause of the pain has been identified, appropriate remedial actions can be taken to reduce or eliminate the pain. We experience the pain, use it to trace back to its source, take appropriate steps to address the causative condition and the pain is relieved as healing ensues.

When it comes to dealing with emotional pain, our autonomic nervous system may actually appear to be working against us. Once we’ve identified a source of pain, say, for example, an open flame, we learn very quickly to avoid close contact with it in the future. While an effective strategy for dealing with physical pain, it usually results in only making matters worse when confronting emotional pain.

Think of a cousin to emotional pain, fear. While we may not enjoy the experience of fear, we have come much farther in recognizing its usefulness. Fear is what keeps us from simply stepping off the curb without looking when crossing a busy street, from swimming too far out from shore in a lake or the sea or from consuming “happy” meals five nights a week. We recognize that fear serves an important protective function.

The same is true of emotional pain, but only rarely do we appreciate its instructive function and only even more infrequently take appropriate steps at remediation. We live in a very pain-phobic culture. Very few people perceive the value of understanding and exploring emotional pain. For the most part we flee from it as quickly and completely as we can. Drugs (prescription medications or illegal), alcohol, food, TV, sex, work or spending all represent the most popular means of escape. While none of these activities would be considered harmful done in moderation, a change in your personal patterns of their use might be the earliest warning sign that something is amiss. When you find yourself eating too much (or too little), having an extra drink or two, losing interest in activities you normally enjoy, or glued for hours to the boob tube, you ought to start wondering what is driving this behavior.

Sometimes, if you break up with your boy/girl friend or lose a loved one, the cause of the emotional pain is obvious. At other times, besides having noticed a tendency to be drinking more, you may have no clue as to what is bothering you. It is at times like this that we need to restructure our attitude toward emotional pain. Rather than distancing ourselves from it, we need to learn to accept it, to welcome it in as a necessary part of life and learn from whatever it has to tell us about how we’re running our lives.

For, at base, that is the critical function emotional pain serves. It informs us where we have gone wrong in our lives and points us in the direction of making an appropriate response. Often, the main reason we are inclined to flee so quickly from emotional pain is because we have not done a good job of addressing it in the past, either in general or in certain specific areas of our life, such as romance or career. It is more constructive and helpful to stop for a moment and consider that perhaps we need some new strategies or tools to deal with the problem, rather than fleeing with all possible dispatch without giving the matter a second thought.

The habit of fleeing becomes deeply engrained when we incur painful incidences early in our lives, when we lacked the inner structure, necessary skill sets and emotional maturity to deal with them. This is certainly understandable. That is why, when confronted with emotional pain, it may be helpful to consider the growth you have undergone over the years. You may well have lacked the skills and maturity you needed then, but you certainly are better prepared now to take on these issues. The first step is in figuring out that there is a more effective response than mere flight.

Boxing great Joe Louis once said of his opponents You can run but you can’t hide. The same holds true here. You can seek to avoid your emotional pain, and most of us do just that most of the time, but you can never really get away from it. When it does subside, it is only a matter of time until it surfaces once again and threatens to become chronic in nature. While I won’t go as far as to say your emotional pain is your friend, it is at least a conversant counselor, bearing important information on how you can best maintain your emotional state of well-being. Rather than disappearing out the back door when you hear it knocking on the front, consider showing your pain a little respect by stopping and asking Hmmm, ok, what brings you around this time? Exploring pain can be a valuable source of growth, wisdom and contentment, if only you learn how best to approach it.

2008

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