I remember being pretty young and getting a cut, or a scrape. If my memory serves me correctly it was on my hand or my arm. It was bleeding, so my eldest sister told me that we needed to disinfect the cut. She told me she was going to have to use some alcohol. I immediately wanted to back away. “Nuh-uh, no alcohol”, I protested. She insisted that it needed to be cleaned out. I was not having it. “It’s going to burn!”, I said. “All you have to do is tell yourself that it doesn’t burn; and you’ll see, it won’t sting”, she replied. As I thought my sister was all-knowledgeable at the time, I allowed her to go ahead. She put the alcohol on. I sucked in my breath. It... burned.
“It doesn’t burn”, she said. “It doesn’t burn” she repeated over and over, until she had finished. And as she repeated it—it stung less and less…. It was crazy. She had managed to convince me, at least partially, that my pain wasn’t really there. The brain is an incredible thing.
Cuts
Last week, I completely wiped out as I was entering playgroup with my son. I scraped my hand pretty badly and it definitely got all sorts of gravel and dirt in it. As they provided me with alcohol and a band-aid to get it all cleaned up, I shared the story above with one of the Early Childhood Educators who worked there. She thought it was very…interesting (read: probably crazy :)). But even in that moment, like when I was a child, there was still a little sting. Days later, I was cleaning the cut again before changing the bandage—and it burned, just a bit. It made me wonder –how many things in our lives are painful, but we have just convinced ourselves that it “doesn’t burn”? That the pain we feel does not really exist? Or that the pain is normal?
I think our society has constantly fed us the fact that “Beauty is pain”, “No pain, no gain”, “Pain is weakness leaving the body”, and all other sorts of quotes that make us feel that pain should be normal. It may be commonplace. We may see it all around us, but it should not be normal. Pain is our body’s way of telling us that we need to pay attention to something or that something is wrong.
Discomfort, on the other hand, or feeling uncomfortable is a regular part of life, it is often how we push ourselves, how we grow, how we improve. Imagine if you were training for a half-marathon and you weren’t an avid runner or hadn’t worked out in over a year. You would likely be a bit sore if you tried to run 5K on your first day. But you would most likely be in all sorts of pain had you tried to run 15 or 20K on your first go.
Struggle is inevitable as we change and grow, but pain is an indicator that something is wrong.
Physical pain has become so normalized in some populations and they have learned to “live with the pain” to the point that they do not seek help until their situations become dire and they find out that they have an illness, for example, that they have been ignoring. This is often because they don’t want to be seen as complainers.
Unfortunately, not only have we, as a society, normalized the physical pain that is felt by so many; but, we have also minimized the emotional and relational pain that we experience.
I have had friendships and other relationships that were no good for me. I am sure that most of you have as well. In fact, I’m sure that some of us have had people around us who are straight up toxic. Too often, we keep them around, hoping that our positive influence will change that person. Perhaps we make excuses for this person’s behaviour or the way that we are allowing ourselves to be treated (or mistreated).
Or maybe, we think, or have been taught, that the pain that they are causing us or the hurt that we are experiencing is normal. Perhaps, even worse, others around us have convinced us that what we are experiencing is normal.
That it goes with the role of being a _____ (child/ sibling/ parent/ partner/ friend/ worker/ person of group X, etc…). And we have likely internalized those beliefs about others, and about ourselves, maybe even to the point of thinking that we are somehow deserving of the pain that we feel. However, it is so important to mention that the commonness of something does not mean that it is something that we should just endure. We need to take a step back and reassess our relationships—and we may notice that some people have got to go.
Band-Aids
Pain doesn’t solely exist in our relationships, it also exists in the way that we see and experience life. Our emotional and mental well-being. Sometimes this is the most difficult place to realize that we need help, because everyone experiences emotional pain differently. What may cause intense feelings of stress or anxiety for one person, would not for another. The problem is that too often we do not allow people to share or release the emotions that they feel without saying something like “it happens”, you “just need to move on”, or you have to “get over it”. Although people often say these sort of things with good intentions, it diminishes the pain that the individual is feeling, it places a time on how long you are permitted to feel that way.
Shortly after my son was born, I remember revisiting all that happened to bring that sweet little baby into the world. Nothing went according to plan—in fact, everything that happened was unexpected, and, to be completely honest, a bit traumatic for me. I wanted to talk about it, but I was reminded how lucky I was, how although it may have been traumatic, it was normal, and that I had to “move on’ and not dwell—lest I become depressed. But that didn’t help. Instead, I ingested the emotional (and physical) pain that I felt for months until I realized that it wasn’t a “normal phase” and that I needed to deal with it.
We, as a society, struggle so much, and we struggle alone, because we are afraid to share with people that we are experiencing life a bit differently. Afraid to share that we are struggling. That we feel pain. We’re too ready to cover up our cuts and bruises with pretty band-aids and tell ourselves that life doesn’t hurt, that we feel no pain, that the situation doesn’t stink. That it doesn’t burn.
Healing
Take a second to reflect on your life right now. What parts are you feeling pain right now? Where are there toxic elements that you have been ignoring or normalizing for far too long? Is it at work? At home? Is it a relationship with a colleague, friend, family member or partner? Now that you have realized that these are pain points, what can you do to address them.
My sister was right, the mind is so powerful, that it can really begin to convince us that things are “normal” even when they hurt. But let’s keep that little mantra for small scrapes and cuts and address the real things that are going on in our lives, so that we can move on happier, better, and stronger than we were before. Nothing good comes from masking our pain—one way or another, it will come out. So if pain is what you need to act—then I guess I’ll say “Let It Burn”.
“History, despite its wrenching pain, cannot be unlived, but if faced with courage, need not be lived again” --Maya Angelou