How can you transform your pain instead of transfer it?
If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it.
Richard Rohr
Some days it feels like pain is everywhere. We are living in unprecedented times as we face a world wide pandemic, economic instability, and social unrest.
The pandemic is just one example of how we’re experiencing pain. Each day we learn of more people who are suffering and dying indiscriminately. More and more, we’re living in greater isolation, resulting in loneliness. We’re also spending many more hours in extremely tight quarters with family members working on going to school at home without the balance of healthy activities like social gatherings or sports. And in a New York Times recent article, we learn that there have been huge increases of domestic abuse as Americans spend more time at home with less external resources for support.
Without the regular support of co-workers, extended family, friends, communities of worship, clubs, or hobbies, we can find daily life at times unbearable. We’re just not used to living this way.
So where do we go from here? How can we move past our own feelings of pain, heartache, and frustration without taking it out on others? How can we stop what Richard Rohr, author and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation, calls transference and instead enact transformation?
The Consequences of Ignoring Our Pain
Rohr sees pain as emotional wounds that create emotional scarring, denial, and perceived weakness to the point of disguising or even hiding who we are. When there is no room inside us anymore to contain our pain, we need a release valve--otherwise our pain results in screaming, scapegoating, and exporting our unresolved hurt. This pattern, and the consequences of it, is the most common storyline of human history.
We see people venting or even worse, shutting down, refusing to have any conversation at all about what is bothering them. This happens when we can’t or won’t acknowledge we’re hurting. Admitting hurt for some is admitting weakness or failure. Some imagine that I am not whole or I am not enough. It takes tremendous courage to look inside ourselves and resolve our “emotional wounds.”
When we hold tightly to our wounds we can become cynical, negative, or bitter. This becomes our own story line and we transfer it. Rohr writes that tragically when we transfer pain, it’s “usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers and invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.” It also leaves us feeling isolated and alone. For some of us, it only provides a momentary relief and then becomes longer-term embarrassment, shame, and justification for our behavior.
How We Can Transform Pain into Healing
Instead of lashing out, Rohr suggests to sit with the pain, say to ourselves it’s okay. When we sit with it, we allow ourselves the ability to think, identify, and finally process our feelings. We are a society that doesn’t believe we should sit with pain, but this approach is not a successful long- term strategy.
“Healing is a long journey. And only through the journey can we begin to heal,” Rohr says.
In order to heal, our work is speaking about and sharing our pain. Sharing the pain allows us to be vulnerable and to connect with the pain we feel inside. Why feel our pain? Brene Brown writes, “Connection is why we’re here; it is what gives purpose and meaning to our lives”. Connection will get us through these difficult days to come. Connection builds trust and allows us to have meaningful and courageous conversations instead. We do not connect when we debate on social media or project our pain at someone else.
Judith Orloff, MD and UCLA Professor of Psychiatry, states, “When I feel pain, I will notice it and respond with compassion as I also focus on healing its source. She believes to start healing you must take action, which she calls, “Set an intention.”
Finally, American Budhist nun and author, Pema Chodron believes, “When we protect ourselves so we won’t feel pain, that protection becomes like armor, like armor that imprisons the softness of the heart.” We need to believe that our hearts are bigger than our hurts. If not, we will continue to transfer and not transform our pain. Chrodron thinks, “Knowing pain is a very important ingredient of being there for another person.” In Chodron’s book, The Places that Scare You, she writes, “When we practice generating compassion, we can expect to experience the fear of our pain. Compassion practice is daring. It involves learning to relax and allow ourselves to move gently toward what scares us.” When she speaks of compassion work, it is a transformation that centers on the internal work of resolving pain and having compassion for ourselves and others.
The pain that we can change is our own and that’s something we can actually DO right now. When we control our own pain, we set the tone as a parent in our home, as a citizen in our nation, and as a member of the global community. Changing ourselves is what gives others the belief that they can do so the same.