The Pain We Create Avoiding Pain

We all experience painful events and difficult adversities in life - it's unavoidable. Whether it's the loss of a loved one, a heartbreaking relationship ending, or any other tragic circumstance, pain is part of the human experience.

However, the coping mechanisms we have developed, often from a very young age, to avoid re-experiencing that emotional pain can create their own problems. When things become too painful, we instinctively try to protect ourselves by putting up defences to cope. Naturally we develop strategies and behaviours aimed at helping us avoid feeling that level of hurt again.

On the surface, this makes sense. Why would we willingly put ourselves in painful situations?

The harsh reality though is that by running from pain, we create deeper issues. The anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts, disordered eating, excessive cleaning, or exercise, the needing to keep busy, finding it difficult to be still, or any of the many self-harming behaviours or addictions we may use, are all signs that we have something underneath which we cannot face/verbalise or manage in a healthy way.

As children, we don't have the luxury of agency, wisdom, and resources that adults often possess. So, we're left to our own primitive devices to find a way to feel ok again after something traumatic, a difficult environment, or a painful experience.

Maybe we began overeating to numb our emotions. Perhaps we developed a hypersensitivity or hypervigilance which enabled us to predict ‘dangerous’ situations, this would help us keep our environment stable. I often see adults who talk about being ‘over empathic’, or feel they know what others are thinking. When we delve into the fabric of their life, they learn about the life experiences which have contributed to this way of feeling, and as these patterns often developed unknowingly, they have become their ‘normal’, and as a result, have been hard to pick up subjectively.

The tragedy is that once we become adults, these unhelpful coping strategies persist, despite our ability to face pain in a more sustainable way. The pain we continually avoid because it feels so painful, can often prevent us living a fulfilling and fully functioning life. That frightened or unheard child part of ourselves can become triggered in certain situations (and you often know what these are), and thus we repeat the pattern again, i.e. withdrawing, heightened anxiety, excessive anger, over/under eating, panicking, cleaning etc.

Healing involves firstly identifying how and where your coping strategy derived from, and then gentle exploration of that early pain that we've inadvertently running from. Of course this is simply put and there are different levels to this, but it is within your reach to conquer and move through, when you are ready.

As R.D Laing says, Pain in life is unavoidable. But the pain and symptoms we create by avoiding addressing that pain, is avoidable.

By building awareness, developing self-compassion, and learning to sit with discomfort, we can halt the cycles that keep us trapped. It's a difficult journey, but as the saying goes, the cave we fear to enter holds the freedom that we crave.