April 10 2006

I’m in Pain — Now What?

“I am in pain… and I am trying not to be.”

Readers of my new book The Radical Acceptance of Everything will probably recognize those words as the first line of my article, “I Am in Pain.” In that article I use my own inner struggle in a time of despair and confusion, to point to a subtle but powerful truth: that when we are in pain, we are often identified with the part of us that is trying not to be.

Of course! Who wants pain?

I’m starting to believe that the label “pain” itself is a sign that we are locked in an inner struggle. If we weren’t identified with trying not to feel it, would “pain” be what we would call it?

Try this yourself, as an experiment:
If you’re feeling something right now that you’re calling “pain,” either physical or emotional, try letting go of that label. Imagine that you have lost the word “pain” from your vocabulary, and you need to sense directly and describe freshly what you are experiencing right now.

I predict that the direct sensing and fresh describing will already be a change from what you were doing.

So It Isn’t Exactly Pain — NOW What?

Now be sure to acknowledge “something in you” that doesn’t like this feeling, doesn’t want to feel it, something like that. Notice if that brings some kind of shift or sense of relief.

We know that what hurts, hurts worse if we tighten up around it. But we don’t always know how to be with it differently. For me, this is the powerful move that is always available: to acknowledge
SOMETHING IN ME that doesn’t want to feel the pain. Now there is some room inside.

From there, we can turn toward either one of these sides of us with interested curiosity, to get to know it better. Each one will have some emotional quality. You might be surprised that “what has been called pain” actually has its own emotion.

It’s offering empathy from Presence that allows a real change. No, we don’t have to just suffer forever from a past that hurt us. What is called “pain” is alive now, in process now. When we let go of labels, and give company from a place that has no agenda, what has been stuck can find its forward movement again.