I was talking with my good friend Nick, and the topic of inner pain came up. We all seem to have inner pain. Sometimes it only comes up when its triggered. When someone calls you a stupid, you may get really really angry at them, but if someone called you a jerk, it would hurt a little, but you're emotions wouldn't turn into an instant tsunami of pain. Often we get angry at the person who triggered our inner pain. Anger seems to be a common self protection mechanism.
Why is this? Why is it that the term stupid may get our gile up and other insults do not? You can fill in the blank. You know what triggers your pain. I think our pain is triggered because it brings up memories of trauma from our past. I think our personalities are layered like an onion. When we all start in life, we are like perfect little pearl onions. As we grow, we add new layers to our onion, and we grow in sophistication. If at some point in our life we experience trauma like someone telling us how stupid we are because we flubbed up in kindergarten while reciting the ABCs. This trauma is becomes a bruise to our young, tender onion layers. When we are young, we usually don't have the broad perspective and emotional tools to deal with the pain of early trauma, so the bruise, (or tear) in our onion skin just gets covered over as we grow. As we become adults we appear to have strong round outer onion skins but that inner bruise or damage is still there. When someone pokes us in the right spot, we feel the pain again, and we react. The reactions often make the pain worse, and create more pain. Reactions like anger, or depression, or maybe even feeling sorry for ourselves are typical ways that our brain tries to deal with the pain. Often we blame the pain on outer circumstances. "I feel bad because they called me stupid!"
Again and again throughout our lives we feel the pain of that inner bruise, or that past trauma. Suppressing the pain may be a way that we use to avoid feeling it. Instead of dealing with the pain of the inner bruises, we often get really good at ignoring that pain. We think that it is a sign of inner strength to not be outwardly affected by the inner pain. We don't want to appear weak to others who respect us, so we stuff the pain down deep and pretend its not there. We keep a "stiff upper lip" as the British say. I think the notion that suppressing pain, as an effective way of dealing with it, is wrong. Not that its morally wrong, or ethically wrong, but that it just doesn't work.
Many studies have been done, and the results show conclusively that suppressing and ignoring our inner pain, actually makes it grow. Often, the pain is transformed into outer destructive action like harming oneself or harming others. I think people who cut themselves are probably trying to suppress deep inner pain. Another way of suppressing the pain is to self medicate. People who are addicted to drugs and alcohol are often medicating themselves so they don't have to feel the pain. I once met a man who had been sexually abused as a young child by a sibling, and felt a constant pain. He wasn't even aware of that pain, until one evening when he took mdma (ecstacy). He was then temporarily free of the pain, and realized just how much pain he had been feeling all his life. He also realized that the pain was caused by the early childhood experience of being sexually abused. He actually remembered what had happened to him. For years afterward, he self medicated and eventually found a prescription drug which alleviated that pain. I think it was Zanax, but I can't remember for sure. He called this "a drug from god" because it took away his pain. Over time that drugs effectiveness grew weaker and weaker as all drugs seem to do. The side effects became harder and harder to deal with too. Eventually he decided to stop taking all the drugs, and accept the pain. He slowly weaned himself off of these drugs. He was in the midst of this pain when he revealed his story to us.
If suppression doesn't work, and anger doesn't work, and drugs don't work, then what works? Well, what I have found to really work in healing our inner pain, is completely opposite of what most of us do. It was the opposite of what I did for most of my life. What really seems to work is actually confronting the pain. Not as in "I'm going to show you, you pain!" but more along the lines of accepting that the pain is what you are feeling at the moment it comes up, and just melting into it. Feel it as completely as possible. Use the awareness of your body to feel what that inner pain is doing to you physically. Where is the pain located in your body, how do your muscles feel, how do your feet and legs feel, how does your abdomen feel? Feel it as completely as possible without buying all the thoughts and stories that may pop into your head because of the pain. Just stay with the pain, and if you can, forget that it is pain. Just try to see it as a total body sensation which you have never taken the time to really get to know. Out of that curiosity, be there to witness what is going on in your body right after your inner pain has risen to the surface. Don't blame the person who happened to say just the right thing which triggered you. Your pain is not because of them. Just stand in courage like a warrior who is willing face the inner demons. When you notice that you've been trying to convince yourself of some story line about the pain, or when you notice that you are getting angry at someone, just become more interested in the actual sensation that is coursing through your body. Feel it fully as if it were the first time you ever felt anything like it. Notice what happens when you stand tall and feel the pain. If you start to have tears come up, don't label yourself as weak. It is the opposite of weakness to feel your pain fully. Tears are a actually your way of healing the inner layers. Tears are actually a sign of your courage. You have the heart of a true warrior, when you can feel the pain fully.
The most amazing thing happens when you do this practice. As you become more and more adept at it, you begin to realize that the painful feelings need the stories and angry judgments to keep going. As you feel the feelings fully without judgments, without trying to "fix" or rid yourself of those feelings, then you realize that you really can feel those feelings. You also realize that the feelings aren't evidence that your entire life has failed, or that you are the victim of life's injustices. You realize that the feelings are just feelings. They may be hard to feel, but they are just feelings. You really aren't in the immanent danger that you have always assumed you were when those feelings have come up in the past. Each time you feel those feelings fully, without believing the stories, you begin to notice that the feelings dissolve. They fade away. If its very difficult to feel those feelings, then try taking deep long breaths while you are feeling them. If you can only stay with those feelings a few seconds before being swept away by the beliefs that arise because of those feelings, then don't feel like a failure, and don't give it up. The next time your pain arises, try again.
Over time, you will become more and more adept at the practice, and each time you stay with the strong feelings that arise, they will become weaker and weaker. In time you will live in greater and greater peace and your pain will arise with less frequency. You may actually see the activation of your inner pain as a blessing. Just as during world war II when the British air force was shooting down German planes faster than the Germans could make them, and they saw it as good fortune when an enemy plane came on a mission, you will see the arising of your inner pain as a blessing. It will be an opportunity to work on that pain.
One day, you will realize that you are no longer upset when someone pokes you in that same spot. You won't be upset when someone calls you stupid, or whatever it is that has triggered you. Your inner bruises will be healed, and you will see that you are not a "loser" or a victim, or a failure. Those stories were just as false as a rope being mistaken for a snake. You might think a coiled rope is a snake because the room is dark, but when you turn the light on, you will see its harmless. The same is true with your inner pain. When you shine the light of your own awareness on it, you will see that it has nothing to do with who you are. You will realize that you can work through whatever comes up, and life will take on a whole new tone. You will be able to finally rest in confidence and peace.
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