What Can I Learn From Pain?

What can I learn from pain? What lessons can I take from these emotions and experiences? Pain pulls and drags, doesn’t it? Like gravity. We orient it as a downward motion. That association means that life is about standing tall with a straight back and a head high. Depression is pain, and it is a lot less obvious than an open wound. Depression is the fight against gravity, it isn’t sadness. Sadness derives from the common Proto-Germanic root ‘sæd’ which in Old English became sated/satiated, which means full. So, understanding this helps us to see the conceptual metaphor of PEOPLE ARE CONTAINERS. What is a full container then, if not…heavy?

Pain as a general experience is broad. But here, I am specifically targeting mental pain. It is a quiet pain, one not so obvious, and yet, pernicious all the same. Its traumatic intensity does not sit on the surface of your flesh, but it digs deep into your core and feeds on your capacity to function. From my experience, it comes in waves. It happens when you are overwhelmed and you need to release or blow-off steam. These metaphors are concerned with pressure, which builds when our ability to hold-back and contain the emotions become overwhelmed. Gravity and pressure overlap, but there is a point where pressure outpaces the force of gravity; ask any plumber and you’ll find they will agree.

I’m Hopping Mad

I remember hearing an expression once from an old friend of mine who has sadly passed. He was telling me about a time he had to negotiate a price about a property, and yelled at the payee ‘I’m hopping mad!’ The interesting thing about releasing emotions and letting things out, is temperature, which again, rises with pressure. Did you know that when you get angry, your body temperature literally rises, cascading to many other affects – such as hopping, in my friend’s case. The fight-or-flight response locks into gear and your heart palpitates.

Pressure plus heat equals release – because otherwise it would take far much more energy to contain than to release. Blowing-off steam is the natural consequence of anger. But anger is a response to depression. Psychology 101 here people, if you are angry at everything, it is a result of some deeper seated emotion, something unresolved, some pressure yet to be released. That pressure, that trauma, is the pain.

People are containers?

Yes. We have a boundary, an inside, space outside of us. We are clearly different from the space outside of us in that we move, act, speak and have internal rooms that do all kinds of other things, cellular things. And when our inside parts are damaged, alarms ring. The brain does not widely distinguish a difference between mental pain and physical pain, similar brain regions execute the same messaging. So, if we can control the framing, we may be able to usher in some reverse psychology as a crutch to help us manage our pain.

Don’t make me smile

I won’t. You have every fucking right to feel shit. Healing is a matter of being in that shitty bastard moment. You’re fortunate if you have supportive people around you who understand that. But, remember, if you don’t – fuck it! Take my word for this, because this comes from a place of sincere honest experience. You are in your moment of pain allowed to feel like garbage. You are allowed to wallow in the absolute shit-bag deal that life has unfortunately pushed your way. Believe it or not, this, is the early step towards healing. Acceptance is important, because this reminds us to love and care for ourselves, to sit for a moment with our demons and negativity. To bid welcome to our pain and anxiety, like it was a person, is a personifying metaphor that bridges how well we deal with our emotional state.
Any books that tells you that if you smile your brain believes you’re happy, is lying to you. If you smile while you’re in pain, you look like you’re enduring a conversation while holding in a piss for 10 hours. you look like Hide The Pain Harold. You don’t need to rev-psy your mind forcefully. You can authentically seek out a way to blow-off steam. Comedy is a great start.

Check out my buddy Jimmy O as he ruins hecklers with his nihilistic fuck-off humour. Listen to music and allow yourself to cry. Yeah, big man, you are also allowed to cry. It’s fine! This makes you stronger, because you’re connecting your experience with what your brain feels. Is life shit? Yep! Find yourself a space and cry about it. This is blowing-off steam. this is allowing the pressure out, this is release. If you deny yourself this, it will defeat you. And you are better than that. You are a conceptualising animal able to reframe reality to suit your perspective. You can not wallow in the shit forever. And you must not!

Is This Learning from Pain?

Pain is necessary. It is your mind telling you that something is wrong. You are satiated (enough) with the circumstances. And you are overwhelmed. Your brain knows this and signals to you this very understanding. If you are reacting with anger, then anger is a response to the pain you are enduring. Anger is the useful, albeit unfortunate, reaction. If you could not feel pain, if you were always happy, then you would be dead. Because pain balances our happiness. Imagine you have a switch in the back of your skull and you merely need to turn it on and be happy. You would no longer be able to know what happiness is anymore, you would have no other emotion to compare it with. You would be empty, an unfilled container drifting around with the top closed, fulfilled by nothing and emptied of everything. This is not living.

I have taken anti-depressants and they are useful crutches. They can lift you to a place where you can decide if you need to keep taking them or not. We should not dismiss what medicine can do. It is necessary and it is important. (Revolutions aren’t coming anytime soon people, we need to dig deep and do what we can.) Because if sadness is weight, then depression is the person beneath it. They are the ones crushed under the weight of their own containment, unable to release, unable to push back and fight. Depression is something that needs to be dug out. But knowing this, knowing your brain is not lying to you, knowing you are hurting for a reason and it is not an illusion, you can begin to accept what needs to happen next.

Fight!

If you’re asking what can I learn from pain, then you are looking for answers. But before you find them, release your pain and reach out to those who may help dig you out of that overwhelming burden. Seek out love and connection and try acts of generosity. It takes an extremely strong person to be in pain, and still have enough gusto to offer something to people anyway. This is also your path to healing as it has been mine. Do what you can, because in the end, it is about you now, but sometimes others need you more than you know. If you know who I am talking about, then you also know that they are worth the fight.