Disclaimer (pause to read):
People Are Not Attached to Their Pain!
I met once with a woman
who was desperate to fix her daughter.
Her daughter had been in and out of drug rehab clinics
and her mother was frankly, perplexed
with her constant negativity.
And what this woman said to me is:
"You know, sometimes I think the problem with my daughter
is that she's attached to her pain.
I was also at a seminar once
and I walked in on a speech that another speaker was giving,
and the topic of that speech was
'Why chronic pain patients sabotage their treatments
and act like they don't wanna get better,
because they like their pain'.
This concept that people somehow like their pain
and are therefore attached to their pain
is a pervasive concept in the spiritual communities,
the psychology communities and self-help communities.
It is a pervasive concept that is causing so much damage,
that this narrative has to change
immediately.
Let's get something out of the way very quickly, shall we?
people do not like their pain,
they do not like being in pain,
end of story!
When we talk about attachment there is this implication
that a person has some dark affection or fondness for their pain
and that this penchant for pain
keeps a person fastened or connected to pain.
This is just wrong.
When it seems like somebody won't let go of something
that you judge as painful,
whether it's a belief or some behavior
or some strategy,
or whatever it is...
The reason that they won't let go of it
is because they perceive themselves to be in a situation
where they will in fact, be in more pain without it.
They may be wrong about that,
or they may in fact, be right about that.
What this essentially means
is that that thing that you judge as painful,
they perceive to be decreasing their pain in some way.
So, you can't say that they're attached to their pain
if they're trying to decrease it.
So that you can understand exactly what I mean,
I've got three very solid examples:
#1. Marjorie suffers from chronic pain.
She shows up at her doctor appointments
and she complains about how much pain she's in,
but when her doctor gives her treatment ideas,
or exercises to try,
or remedies...
She won't engage in those treatments,
she won't follow through.
So her doctor's at a place now where he's wondering:
"You know, I think Marjorie wants to be sick,
and I'm just wasting my time here".
Marjorie is not faking this situation,
she's actually in very real pain,
but what's underneath this entire chronic pain dynamic
is that she's totally isolated.
Marjorie believes that nobody cares about her at all,
that nobody wants to be in her company,
that nobody would benefit by being around her.
And this causes her literally, so much distress
that it is corroding her body.
Because of this,
she has to find backdoor strategies
to be cared about.
The only time that anyone ever cared about her as a child
was when she was sick.
She doesn't wanna be in pain
and she doesn't want to be sick,
but, being in physical pain and being sick
if it means that she gets to have
some company at her doctor's visits
and she gets cared for and paid attention to,
is less pain than the alternative.
This means, staying sick
and deliberately keeping herself
in this position to have to keep coming back for these doctor's appointments
is in fact
decreasing her level of pain.
And if she were to follow through on her treatments and get better
and so she would no longer have to go to the doctor,
she's just back in the worst pain
of complete isolation, again.
Or so, she thinks.
#2. Justine is 15 years old
Justine routinely engages in self-harming behaviors
most especially, cutting and burning.
Her parents are completely perplexed
at why anyone would want to do this to themselves.
They're so perplexed,
that they immediately seek out psychological help
to figure out what the hell is wrong with their daughter.
They're completely convinced that Justine's problem
they're gonna try to fix
is the fact that she somehow has some desire or addiction
for or to pain.
But, that's not her problem.
The problem is that the household that Justine lives in
makes her miserably unhappy.
She feels like no one sees her, no one understands her needs
and therefore, she will never have any needs met.
She's alone even when her family members are in the room.
She is not important
and therefore she feels like she has no reason to live.
But, on top of this,
another dynamic in this household that Justine lives in
is that there is a zero tolerance policy
towards a negative emotion of any kind.
See, Justine's parents have a very solid truth,
and that's that they're really good parents
and that's that Justine has a very good life.
Because of the way that they have formed
this belief about themselves,
and they're unwilling to experience
any other reality outside of that,
they already know
that if Justine has an issue,
it's not because of them and it's not because of the life she leads,
it's because there's something wrong with her.
This means that no matter what strategy Justine uses
to try to get her parents to change something
so that she feels better,
they are both unresponsive.
The idea that they want to maintain about themselves
and about their life, is more real and more important to them
than seeing the reality of their daughter is.
Because of this,
self-injury is not Justine's way of being in pain,
it's her way of trying to decrease the pain she's in on a daily basis.
For example,
because both her parents are so incredibly unresponsive,
abusing herself or creating a physical injury that's pretty shocking
is a way of escalating the message of desperation
in the hopes that maybe that
will cause them to change
or see how much pain she's actually in.
#2. When she's in this much pain on the inside,
but outside it sort of seems like everything's fine, right?
It's a bit of a gaslight.
So the way that she tries to mitigate that gaslight
by injuring herself,
is to make it so that there's this alignment on the outside and inside
of what is the truth about her and how she feels.
#3. When in a household like this
there is no tolerance for negative emotion,
anytime Justine goes to express negative emotion,
it's immediately turned against
and they push it right back into her.
And this creates this atmosphere of:
"I can't express pain, and so it's just poison within me".
And so, when Justine cuts herself
and watches the blood flow,
that blood leaving the body
feels like the toxicity of her negative emotions
leaving the body.
Justine doesn't wanna be in pain.
She doesn't like it.
And when people say she's attached to her pain,
she's right back in that torment of not being seen or understood.
The pain of being in emotional hell
and alone, because her parents have already decided
that the truth is that she isn't in hell, she's fine.
The pain and the experience of her self-injury
is something that decreases the pain that she is in.
It is an attempt to self-preserve
in a home environment
that is both dysfunctional and also destructive.
#3. Mitch is driving people crazy.
People don't like spending time around Mitch.
They describe him as negative.
He is constantly focused on what is bad and wrong
and believe me, he never misses an opportunity
when someone feels really happy about something,
to remind them of the actual negative truth
of that situation that they're in.
He can floor them in half a second.
Mitch doesn't actually like
this feeling of seeing the world in such a negative light.
He would like to feel good about life
and about you know, existence and other people,
but it's a lot easier said than done.
The problem is that several times over the course of Mitch's life
he experienced catastrophic blows to his belief in others,
his hopes, his dreams, his goals,
his trust, his faith, his desires
and his positive expectations.
These blindsiding and crushing experiences
were so psychologically and emotionally traumatizing
that mitch decided a state of positivity is inherently vulnerable
and as an invitation for pain he can't actually handle.
Subconsciously he decided that he has to buffer himself against
and protect people against positivity at all costs.
So, Mitch is actually using negativity
as a buffer against more pain.
What any example of a person maintaining a painful belief,
or a painful strategy,
or a painful behavior will show you
is that you can't say that somebody likes pain,
and you can't say
that they're attached to their pain.
What you can say,
is that they are using a painful strategy
to attempt to reduce or avoid worse pain.
To understand more about this, I want you to watch my video titled:
There Is No Such Thing As Self-Sabotage
If we don't get this through our head
really really quickly,
we're gonna do nothing but add to people's pain.
We're gonna prove that we "don't get it".
And by not getting it,
we made ourselves part of the problem.
Not only that,
we left them alone in their pain.
Also, we will start to corrode their self-concept
by propagating this absolutely idiotic idea
that something is wrong with a person
unless they just decide to feel differently.
We will also continue to make them feel
condemned and forsaken to suffer,
by implying that we think they derive pleasure
from something that actually is so painful for them
that they would choose pain, to get out of that pain.
And it is an absolute guarantee that we will have no way
of actually doing the actual right thing
to get them out of pain, altogether.
No one likes being in pain
and no one is attached to their pain
in the way that we mean it
when we often say "they're attached to their pain".
We need to stop propagating this idea.
And therefore, because of their connotation
we need to stop using these words
that people are attached to their pain.
This week I ask you to join me in this understanding.
Have a good week.
If you liked this video,
be sure to hit the like button,
subscribe to my channel
and consider sharing this video with your friends.
You can also click on the bell icon
to be notified of the next time that I post a video.
I wanna thank you personally
for the bravery that you have
to step into awareness.
I'll see you in the next video.
Subtitles by: Tanya Duarte www.tanyaduarte.com