Why resolving your pain isn’t (just) about calming down

A lot of my clients come to me already expert in the art of soothing themselves. For those who've been in pain for a long time, they've been practicing calming down for years. They're quite skilled at it–I've learned a thing or two from them. :)

But there's something else I’ve noticed. I sometimes see that this well-rehearsed capacity for soothing can be bracing masqueraded as self-care and regulation. Resistance doesn't always look hard and locked in and rigid. A lot of the time it looks like a serene lake, peaceful and still.

I don't want to take that away from anyone. That peace is hard-earned, and the ability to get yourself there is a genuine asset. Oftentimes, it’s half the game.

And still.

There's something to be said for opening up inside of that stillness and letting in a little more. For weathering the storm and feeling not only the physical pain your condition brings, but also the harder emotions that ride alongside it–not just grief and sadness and loneliness, but bitterness, anger, rage, shame. The feelings that are harder to own up to (or even perceive). The ones that feel less acceptable to feel than hurting does.

What we resist persists.

So while I have enormous respect for my clients who've learned to calm themselves with such elegance, part of what I help them do is build capacity for being with their pain, rather than turning away from it. Not managing it from a safe distance. Actually being up close with it.

Because pain is a signal–and the more we can hear it clearly, the more we can tease apart what belongs to it and what doesn't: the family narratives, the medical gaslighting, the emotional charge that's been packed around the sensation itself over years of having to manage it alone.

The more space we can make for listening to the signal and ignoring the noise, the more we can let pain do what it was designed to do: to keep us safe, and then to let us go.