Why we struggle to respond to our pain

We follow the path we think is set out for us - the one that we think will bring us happiness. But along the way, we hit bumps in the road - we realise that happiness is not simple to achieve. We stay in jobs or relationships that we hate - and we might feel there is no other option than to stay in pain. Stagnation feels simpler.  

We might question why we’re not able to leave, wondering why we’re not more courageous or more decisive. Like all animals, as humans, we want to scream or break away when we experience pain - but instead, we can often find ourselves stuck in freeze, which prevents us from being able to respond to our feelings, resulting in stagnation. 

Our parents’ responses to our pain when we were children directly affects our relationship with our feelings in adulthood. Let’s explore this through the lens of how your parents might have responded when you fell over as a kid and bruised yourself.

A healthy response to pain

After falling over, a child feels pain - which is a shock. Just like when someone drops a stone into water, the water responds with ripples and waves. After a while, the water will calm down. In the same way, if a child feels pain, they naturally respond and express it by crying or shouting. 

If parents can stay with them, remain attuned, and allow this process of ripples and waves to pass without disturbing the natural mechanism of the child's body, the child's body will only need a little time to return to calmness like water.

When children calm down, they may want a hug or help. This is when parents can begin to respond, hug them, and help tend to their wounds.

In this way, the child will grow up and know that they can express their feelings safely. The body develops a self-calming mechanism. After calming down, just like how they naturally approached their parents before, they will also take action to help themselves and get rid of suffering.

Denying your pain

Alternatively, the parents may have become nervous and told the child, "It's okay! It's okay! It's okay! It doesn't hurt!" They may have immediately picked them up to comfort them.

The parents absolutely did it out of love and the utmost good intentions. But the body's natural mechanism for calming down was interfered with. Moreover, the children did feel pain and something was wrong, but the adults kept shouting "it's okay," and "it doesn't hurt!"

The children felt the adults' tension, and that tension became the protagonist, while the child’s own pain suddenly became a supporting role. The child finds ways to calm the adult down, rather than receiving the soothing that they need.

As children, their focus becomes "don't make my parents worry." 

When these children grow up, they focus on others’ feelings rather than their own. They may often ask: "Will others allow me to do this? What will others think of me? Does everyone think it's okay? Will others feel comfortable?"

And when they have feelings, it is easy to deny themselves and say "it's okay," but it is difficult to express themselves properly and return to calm.

For a long time, they may be alienated from their true feelings, unable to receive the messages from their feelings, let alone have the strength to act for themselves. They make everyone around them happy, but when they are unhappy, they feel unable to move and unable to control their life.

Shame as a response to pain

Alternatively, parents may respond with shame. When children fall, their parents may have scolded them. They may have said, "Why are you so useless! Why are you so stupid! Stand up for me quickly!"

Just like in the last scene, the body's natural mechanism for returning to calm is interfered with. In this context, children learn that having feelings is inappropriate and shameful. When adults do not meet children's needs for help and comfort, children feel very uneasy and struggle to feel that they can lean on caregivers.

When they grow up, they may feel ashamed of themselves, or feel ‘wrong’ in some capacity for their emotional responses. They struggle to believe that their feelings are kind reminders, instead seeing them as shameful - repressing them as they don’t believe that the world will respond kindly to them.

They learned that feeling is something that shouldn’t be done, They might become numb for a long time and struggle to detect their feelings. 

Working with your response to pain

Three feet of ice cannot be frozen in one day. Freeze responses occur because denial, or shaming of feelings happened more than once. This time it may have been a fall, the next time it may have been a failure to do well in an English test, the time after that it may have been a lack of balance when learning to ride a bicycle, and so on.

Every feeling is filled with gifts. They tell us what needs are to be met. When we feel scared, fear sends us a message telling us what we need to be safe. After screaming to vent our feelings, we can run away and leave the dangerous situation. 

Our feelings are a compass. Our bodies are inherently capable of expressing emotions (such as crying or laughing). After returning to calm, people will naturally respond with actions.

Perhaps our parents' reactions to our feelings while growing up made us increasingly alienated from our own feelings. But - we are no longer children, and we can choose differently.

Starting today, we can reconnect with our feelings. We can thank our feelings for coming into our world and telling us important messages. 

You can get more in touch with your feelings through meditation, journalling, painting, music or any artistic creation. Seeking professional counselling and psychotherapy can give your feelings a safe space to be expressed, allowing yourself an opportunity to return to calm. Feelings offer us a powerful mirror - and can provide us with information and strength so we can live a more aligned life.