Consider starting with reading I cause pain. And that's okay. which I wrote as "Part 1" of this post. It's helpful context, but not necessary.
Causing pain as love
Younger me thought I was doing a loving thing by sparing others pain and sacrificing myself in the process. I've come to realize that for the most part it's actually the opposite -- the most loving thing I can do for my beloved (and myself) is to actually honor my own needs and, if it simply can't be avoided, cause them some pain in the process. Because if I'm not honoring myself and my needs, I'm abandoning some part of me. And therefore I cannot be fully present to love the person I'm abandoning myself to protect. Resentment starts to breed and pollute the love that we share. Which means, in the end, I'm not actually able to love them that well.
Recently I was on the receiving end of this phenomenon. A dear beloved of mine woke up to the fact that he'd been in a pattern of fawning with me (people-pleasing), neglecting his own wants as an unconscious attempt to spare me (and him) the pain of disappointment. Hearing this I felt nauseous, a feeling of disgust sweeping through me -- my body's indication that something feels off and needs to expelled. Then anger rose to support the expulsion -- I practically yelled at him "Just cause me the pain!"
No part of me was okay with him tiptoeing around my feelings at his own expense. And I could see more clearly that the tiresome drama that we had been looping in, causing us both suffering for some time, was tied to this avoidance of causing me pain. I unequivocally prefer to be caused pain. And trusted to feel the pain, hold myself through the pain, and expand through the pain.
To me, this is more real, and this is more loving. Otherwise I'm in relationship with a facade. Which is not at all what I'm interested in. The pain comes with the realness, and I'll take that any day.
Our relationships, and our individual selves, would benefit from resetting our expectations around love and pain.
I love you, and it hurts
Here's the thing: I expect to feel hurt in some way by every single human relationship I have, especially the ones I love and appreciate the most. And I expect to cause pain in every single human relationship I have, especially those most precious to me. It could be anything from a mild disappointment to a devastating heartbreak.
In my experience, the naiveté that this might not or should not be the case is a major contributor to second arrows of suffering. The insidious beliefs or expectations that I will not or should not feel hurt are constantly undermining our ability to simply feel our pain, release our pain, and even wake up through our pain.
Here's what tends to happen unconsciously (or even consciously)... we think:
Ouch. That hurts. Stop it!
I'm hurting, and that's NOT okay.
You hurt me, and that's NOT okay!
You shouldn’t have caused me this pain.
If you really loved/cared about me you wouldn't hurt me this way.
The fact that I'm hurting means you're not caring enough for me.
- or -
Oh no, they'll feel hurt by me. I can't do that.
I shouldn't cause them this pain.
If I cause that pain, I’ll be a bad person. It's wrong to do that.
They're hurting, and that's NOT okay.
I hurt them, so I'm NOT okay.
It's not loving/caring of me to act in a way that leads to their pain.
From these mindsets of resistance, should/shouldn't, good/bad, right/wrong it's pretty hard to find actual connection points grounded in shared reality.
Versus the mindset of:
Hey, we're human. We love each other, and we hurt each other.
I'm hurting, and that's okay. You're hurting, and that's okay.
I love you and I contributed to your pain, and that's okay.
You love me and you contributed to my pain, and that's okay.
The pain is okay. I'm okay. You're okay.
IT'S ALL OKAY.
It's all a part of loving as humans.
It hurts, and that’s okay.
When I can hold the frame that the pain is okay -- the pain in me, the pain in another -- then often something beautiful happens. The pain gets to come to the surface to be felt. We get to feel and hold our pain together. We get to connect through the hurt. We get to know ourselves and one another more intimately through it. We may even find our love deepening and expanding through it.
We drop out of our minds. Beyond any notion of blame, guilt, shame. We forget about grasping for solutions, fixing, figuring anything out. We enjoy the simple tenderness and intimacy of holding ourselves and one another in our pain. Our minds quiet and our bodies relax and open on the other side of feeling the pain. The parts of us in pain feel seen, feel heard, and most importantly, feel felt. So we soften as tension and armor melts off of our bodies.
And in the wake of this, often clarity simply reveals itself. A sense of how to move together from here starts to crystallize, in connection and synergy. Even if the clarity is to go separate ways, there's a sense of togetherness and care in it.
And there’s a sweet sense of undefendedness. Because nothing and nobody is being made bad, wrong, not okay. Sure there are lessons to learn, there are ways to evolve. But the wondrous magical thing is that this just happens naturally through feeling our pain, and being felt in our pain.
Being unapologetically human
If we can allow ourselves to be perfectly imperfect in all of our human messiness, and be unapologetic about our imperfections and our mess – in the sense of not hi-jacking ourselves into guilt, shame, blame – we have a much easier chance of simply being with the impact of our imperfections and our messiness. When we hook ourselves into guilt, shame, blame we distract ourselves with stories of badness, wrongness, not okayness -- these are second arrows of suffering. They are all in some way a defense from simply feeling the raw pain. Feeling the pain is what gives the neural network of our brain and nervous system the data input it needs to learn and evolve such that it can naturally move with more skillfulness and awareness in the future.
Here’s the crazy kicker: it’s our pain that teaches our neural network/brain. Just like the pain from touching a hot stove teaches us to modify our behavior and refrain from touching hot stoves, the pain from feeling the impact of our actions helps us update our unconscious behavioral models automatically to help prevent similar pain in the future. The pain is intelligent, and serves an important evolutionary purpose.
However, there's a critical obstacle to this natural learning process: the presence of judgment. Any sense of "badness" or "wrongness" – whether expressed as guilt, shame, or blame – disrupts this evolution and blocks the wisdom that pain offers. Why? Because judgment triggers defensiveness, and defensiveness prevents authentic feeling and learning.
If you notice someone being defensive, you can be sure that beneath it they’re feeling blamed, shamed, made wrong in some way. You might be unknowingly contributing to these feelings. It's a good practice to actually check in with yourself and honestly ask -- am I judging, blaming, holding them as wrong?
In such moments, when I discovered my answer was 'yes, actually I am', I've found it helpful to be transparent and simply own: "I notice I'm in a blaming state right now, and while that's not where I want to be, it's what's real for me in this moment." Sometimes I check and I’m really holding a frame of not judging or blaming the other person, and in such cases I become touched with compassion for the deep guilt/blame conditioning in their system that is projecting that I must be making them wrong in a moment that I’m not.
In my experience with conflict, when someone becomes apologetic or guilty, their energy contracts. Their presence dims as their awareness gets hijacked by stories of being bad or wrong. This creates disconnection precisely when I'm most yearning for presence and connection. What I truly want in moments of pain isn't an apology – it's to be in connection and to be felt.
Pain doesn't want to be alone
You've probably heard the expression "hurt people hurt people". This sadly happens because we unconsciously respond to our pain in a way that creates even more pain for ourselves and for others. The more we make pain bad or wrong, and the more we resist pain, the more likely we are to feed this tragic cycle of hurt people hurting people.
If we take a closer look at the mechanics of this cycle, we start to understand what drives it, and how we can step out of it.
When I'm in pain, and someone played a role in triggering this pain, there's a natural impulse for revenge. You hurt me, and it's only fair that you feel hurt to. You should know what this pain you've caused me feels like! So we lash out and retaliate.
This is war. In the most extreme cases, people literally kill each other to get revenge for the pain of beloveds being killed. But even in our most intimate relationships, we wage wars -- You betrayed me, so I'm gonna betray you. You emotionally attacked me, so I'm gonna emotionally attack you. You abandoned me, so I'm gonna abandon you. Hurt people hurting people. Victims becoming perpetrators, creating more victims, who become perpetrators, and on and on and on.
Beneath it all is a simple desire to be felt in one's pain. I'm hurting. I want you to feel this hurt too. I don't want to be alone in this hurt.
Instead of satisfying this with revenge and feeding the vicious cycle, we can end the cycle by vulnerably and courageously inviting others into feeling our pain with us.
Feel this pain with me
I've developed the practice of pausing when I notice things getting heated between me and a loved one. I express something along the lines of: "I don't want to fight you, there's nothing for us to justify or defend. I just want to feel you feeling me. I just want to hear you say 'I can put myself in your shoes and understand how your pain makes sense. I'm feeling you in your feelings of <insert educated guesses>.'
When I hear something like this, my whole system relaxes. Often this is the point I finally burst into tears and I can feel myself and my pain more deeply, which allows it to flow and naturally release itself, or even heal deep wounds that have been yearning to be met with love and compassion.
Sometimes, after some failed attempts (which happens if there's a ton of guilt and shame conditioning in the other person that obscures their ability to do this with me), I simply speak what I'm wanting to hear aloud as though they're speaking through me. "Katara, I feel you in your pain. Your pain makes sense. You make sense. I can imagine you're feeling overwhelmed, scared, lonely, etc..."
It continues to shock me how effectively this works. Reliably every time I speak to myself the words I'm longing to hear, I end up sobbing feeling deeper compassion and understanding for myself -- through simply feeling myself, and being felt through feeling myself. Oftentimes, I also feel my counterpart soften with greater compassion and understanding for my pain.
Heal this pain with me
An axiom I live by is that "Healing happens when we're in connection with both resource and the pain."
If we can manage to have one foot in resource and the other foot in our pain, healing just naturally happens. If we are only connected to resource and are not touching the pain, we're just having a good time. Which is great, but no healing happens. If we're only connected to our pain without being connected to enough resource, we just spin out in our pain and potentially even re-traumatize ourselves.
But if we can manage to touch our pain while being connected to a sense of resource, the pain has an opportunity to be felt which allows it to be moved and released. And its wisdom can be harvested.
If someone can adequately feel us in our most tender and painful places, their loving presence is a potent form of resource that helps facilitate our healing process.
Oftentimes when I experience this, as the pain is felt and moves through my system, old memories and young wounds will spontaneously pop into my consciousness. I'll feel the younger parts of me, frozen in painful moments, feeling scared, overwhelmed, and alone. I'll see an image of a childhood scene that felt devastating to me. And as these old wounds and pains are met with my compassionate awareness, along with the loving presence of another, I begin to experience stunning clarity and insights streaming through. I can more easily recognize what's happening in my body and psyche. I can start to naturally differentiate between the layers of reality being overlayed onto one another.
I often experience my sense of reality shifting in realtime, watching my brain's model of reality updating itself to be more grounded in my actual present-day reality rather than old projected models of reality created by younger more vulnerable versions of me with far less resource and skill than I have today. A sense of strength and resilience naturally arises. I come more alive through feeling the pain.
Thank you for causing me this pain
Sometimes people impulsively apologize as a response to my sharing my pain with them. This is the last thing I'm wanting. Impassioned, I respond:
"""
Don't apologize. You have nothing to be sorry for. I am not seeing you as bad or wrong. You're fine exactly as you are and have been.
Yes I'm in pain, and I'm choosing this pain. I'm choosing to be in connection with you, so I'm choosing both the beauty AND the pain of being in connection with you.
When I share my pain, I want no apologies. I want no feelings of guilt or shame.
Here's what I actually want:
Just cause me the pain
Unapologetically
And be with me in the pain
Let me feel you feeling me
Help me hold myself in the pain
Help me heal myself through the pain
See me as empowered
See my pain as intelligent
Help me harness the pain as a dearmoring force
That breaks me open to greater love, freedom, and empowerment
So that I can thank you for causing me this pain.
"""
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