We Are Not The Pain We Feel

I was doing a Reiki meditation the other day, and this phrase came to me: “We are not the pain we feel.”

I let the relief those words brought sink in. I felt better emotionally, and some physical pain left me as tension left my body.

That phrase helped me further release resentment towards the losses I’ve had, lingering anger that’s kept sticking, and cycles of pain I’ve kept reliving. I’d thought those would stay ingrained for much longer.

I wanted to share some other thoughts that came from that phrase.

The pain we feel

Is chronic. Because we’re yet to discover what helps. What helps us thrive when “it never ends”? We work with doctors too, but we all know or have observed ways we could improve our lives if we’re brave and keep trying.

Is acute. Because it hurts SO MUCH… right now. Maybe in waves. But they pass.

Lingers and leaves scars. It’s certainly an option to tear all that pain down and heal it cleanly. It’s also an option to shove it away and not look at it. But sometimes we have to just sit with that pain and let it cry.

Stays. Because it’s all we have left of someone or something we loved.

Happens for no reason we can comprehend. Maybe we’re born into pain, but it’s not all we are. Pain can become opportunity to reframe what feels destined, to shift what looks like fate. Remember the movie “A Knight’s Tale”? We can change our stars.

Is said to be “just in our heads”. Some psychological pain just wants heard because we’re told it’s “wrong” to feel what we feel. Some psychological pain settles into our bodies until we listen to what it’s there to tell.

Isn’t felt. Because we refuse to feel. Which is often deeper or repetitive pain. Pain so hurtful that we refuse to acknowledge it’s there or happened or was as bad as it truly was.

Is self-imprisonment. We trap ourselves in the pain we feel. As Teal Swan says, “What we resist, persists.” It’s absolutely within our power to heal if we stop believing pain is what we deserve.

Impossible = I AM Possible

“We are not the pain we feel” isn’t an invalidation. Because you are YOU, you are not Your Pain.

“We are not the pain we feel” doesn’t mean to make small what overwhelms your life. We can cope, medicate, let time fade… and we can heal, rejuvenate, and renew. We’re capable of both. Healing often requires multiple approaches.

Pain doesn’t conquer until you identify with it. Until you allow the pain you feel to be “part of you”, the pain is NOT YOU. When we DEFINE ourselves by pain, that’s when we close off from genuine healing and necessary personal growth.

Pain, unseen and seen, is real. Pain may not present in ways everybody understands, but if you feel it, it’s real.

We’re not the pain we feel, no. Pain… and anger, sadness, hopelessness, helplessness, and other negatives – but also joy, love, triumph, goodness, and other positives – are messengers, tools, and states of being.

Leaving pain behind isn’t about forgetting it, or ignoring it, or just trying to “flip a switch” on it. It’s also okay to leave pain behind in small measures, a little at a time, until we’re again able to stand fully in who we are.

Pain isn’t only about feeling like “damaged goods” and “not good enough” and “this is how it’ll always be” in whatever ways those feelings started. Pain also comes as signposts, guides, and lessons in how to move forward.

Choosing experiences that form our lives better is okay. Yet guilt makes it easy to punish ourselves rather than just face what needs done. Sometimes those things feel too big to deal with.

But dealing with those big things is what opens us back up to how our minds, bodies, hearts, and souls WANT to live. It’s OKAY to not want to feel pain.

Wanting out of pain isn’t a sign of being weak. Readiness to choose better experiences — which starts with just “wishing you could” — is a sign of strength.

You might not feel qualified, but what you do with the pain you feel is yours to decide.