How to hurt
Some people are good at physical pain, and some people are good at emotional pain, but few are good at both.
Which are you? I am a physical pain person. Marathon training? Unmedicated childbirth? Sign me up. Those things felt manageable and empowering despite being some of the toughest times of my life. Emotional pain, on the other hand, was something I tried to pretend didn’t exist for the better part of three decades. I felt totally incapable of facing it.
We experience these two types of pain so differently that we often miss the fact that the techniques for dealing with them are virtually the same. I like to think about how to hurt in three steps.
Curiosity
This is the best way I know to get present with pain, which is crucial for exploring what’s actually there as opposed to the fears our brains like to project about pain.
Whether your pain is physical or emotional, you’re going to feel it in your body. So explore those sensations. Ask yourself questions like
Where in my body does it hurt most? Where is the center of the pain?
Where else can I feel the pain?
What is the nature of the pain? Is it a stabbing, a dull ache, an uncomfortable tightness?
What color does the pain feel like?
Where are the edges of the pain?
(Guided meditations can be great for this. Search for “pain” on the Insight Timer I recommend in this post.)
Acceptance
After you find the edges of your physical pain, draw a mental boundary around the part of your body that hurts. Make a conscious choice to stop thinking sentences like “I hate this.” “I can’t do this” or “I wish this wasn’t happening” and accept the pain that you are experiencing within that boundary.
If it’s emotional pain you’re experiencing, tell yourself (maybe outloud) that it’s perfectly fine to feel this way. Welcome the physical sensations of the emotions as you would a guest into your home, allowing them to settle in and stay for as long as they need to. Notice how you can co-exist with them.
Surrender
Surrender to physical pain by “giving up” the area you have defined to the pain. Surrendering goes beyond acceptance in that you relax into the pain, even giving it permission to grow stronger. Paradoxically, such surrender usually lessens the pain, as you stop struggling against it and fueling it with fear. If you’re having trouble doing this, keep that mental pain boundary strong and focus on all of the parts of your body that don’t hurt (I remember saying during labor “my knees feel great!”). Remind yourself that you’re only giving a small portion of your body over to the pain and that everywhere else is fine.
Surrender to emotional pain by allowing yourself to fully feel through your emotion without judgment. Sit still and allow it to strengthen in your body. Notice that the sensations it’s actually causing in your physical body are very mild. Emotions can only physically last for 90 seconds. If you experience one longer than that, it’s because you are repeating the thought that triggered it. Notice that when you let yourself fully feel an emotion, it builds (like a contraction), peaks, and drops off in that minute and a half. You will know if you have allowed yourself to fully process an emotion because you will feel at least a few moments of peace at the end of it.
Surprise yourself
The first time I let myself feel all the way through a painful emotion, my brain said to me at the end of it,
“Woah, you didn’t die.”
No wonder I was scared of emotional pain. On some level I thought it could literally kill me.
Pain cannot kill you. Things that cause pain can kill you, but the pain itself never can. That may be obvious to your conscious self, but I’m willing to bet you have some deeper beliefs about pain that say otherwise.
In order to change those beliefs, I like to repeat this sentence (which I explained in full in this post) to myself when I’m in pain:
I can manage whatever this moment gives me, and I never have to manage more than that.