{"id":766,"date":"2025-04-01T21:23:42","date_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:23:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=766"},"modified":"2025-04-01T21:23:43","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T20:23:43","slug":"what-do-we-do-with-our-pain","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rebelrebel.org.uk\/?p=766","title":{"rendered":"What Do We Do With Our Pain?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Reflection #99 (23rd February 2025 at Essex Church \/ Kensington Unitarians)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I want to start my reflection (and I should say though this is listed as a mini-reflection in the OOS it turned out to be not-so-mini after all) with an echo of those words from the Franciscan teacher Richard Rohr: \u2018All great spirituality is about what we do with our pain… If we don\u2019t find a way to transform our pain, we will always transmit it to those around us or turn it against ourselves\u2026 If your religion is not teaching you how to recognize, hold, and transform suffering, it is junk religion.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Pain is an unavoidable part of life \u2013 physical pain of course, but also emotional and spiritual pain \u2013 it\u2019s the more emotional and spiritual aspects of pain that are our primary focus this morning. And pain comes in many guises \u2013 sadness, grief, anger, frustration \u2013 all sorts of big, difficult feelings. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One of my favourite contemporary spiritual teachers, the Buddhist psychotherapist Rick Hanson, has got this to say: \u2018Painful experiences range from subtle discomfort to extreme anguish\u2014and there is a place for them in life. Sorrow can open the heart, anger can highlight injustices, fear can alert you to real threats, and remorse can help you take the high road next time. But there is no shortage of suffering in this world. Look at the faces of others\u2014including mine\u2014or your own in the mirror, and see the marks of weariness, irritation, stress, disappointment, longing, and worry.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He goes on to speak about the Buddhist teaching of \u2018first and second darts\u2019 which describes how our brain\u2019s negativity bias can cause us to unnecessarily amplify our experience of pain. (This is \u2018darts\u2019 in the sense of seeing painful experiences as arrows that pierce us). He says: \u2018Some physical and mental pain is inevitable. To use a metaphor from the Buddha, the unavoidable pains of life are its \u201cfirst darts.\u201d But then we add insult to injury with our reactions to these darts. For example, you could react to a headache with anxiety that it might mean a brain tumour; you could greet a romantic rejection with harsh self-criticism\u2026 Most absurdly, sometimes we react negatively to positive events. Perhaps someone complimented you, and you had feelings of unworthiness; or you\u2019ve been offered an opportunity at work, and you obsess about whether you can handle it; or someone makes a bid for a deeper friendship, and you worry about being disappointing them. All these reactions are \u201csecond darts\u201d\u2014the ones we throw ourselves. They include overreacting to little things, holding grudges, justifying yourself, drowning in guilt after you\u2019ve learned the lesson, dwelling on things long past, worrying about stuff you can\u2019t control, and mentally rehashing conversations. Second darts vastly outnumber first darts. There you are, on the dartboard of life, bleeding mainly from self- inflicted wounds. There are enough darts in life without adding your own!\u2019 Wise words from Rick Hanson.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The question at the heart of today\u2019s service is \u2018what do we do with our pain?\u2019 And quite a few of the things that we humans typically do with our pain are\u2026 not especially helpful. At least not in the longer term. As we just heard, when we experience the unavoidable pains in life, the \u2018first darts\u2019, we do often build them up into something even worse with a rain of \u2018second darts\u2019. But there are a few other things that we tend to do with our pain that I want to mention. We might deny it, minimise it or squash it down \u2013 pretending that the bad stuff isn\u2019t happening (or that it isn\u2019t really bad! Rationalising it or otherwise doing mental contortions to avoid facing reality). I think there\u2019s a certain amount of this going on in relation to global events at present \u2013 it\u2019s all too big and too awful to take in \u2013 and many people (understandably) are kind-of looking away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But pain that is denied, minimised, or squashed has a tendency to come out sideways, I think. We carry it inside us as an amorphous bad feeling which builds and roils and looks for an outlet. We might find ourselves dumping our rage and frustration on people who have got nothing to do with the real root causes of our pain, and lashing out at the unlucky ones who just happen to be in the line of fire when we snap, often our nearest and dearest, as they are usually the closest to hand. At a societal level this might look like scapegoating or witch-hunts. We can see this happening all around us now: so many people who are genuinely suffering poverty, insecurity, precarity and so forth, but who are wrongly projecting those legitimate grievances onto various scapegoats: refugees, or trans people, or \u2018the wokerati\u2019 or some other group that absolutely did not cause their suffering. Partly this horrific behaviour is a result of intentional and systematic misdirection by the super-rich, their media outlets, and their bot farms. But partly it\u2019s because the people \u2013 and, even more, the systems that are causing all this pain \u2013 seem unreachable and impenetrable. We can feel impotent and helpless in the face of it all. It’s like Sunny Moraine said in the quote I shared earlier: \u2018As things get worse, we are going to get progressively more angrily frustrated at our inability to reach and hurt the people who are making things worse, and that\u2019s going to increase the urge to attack anyone we can reach, indiscriminately\u2019. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So one of the less-than-ideal things we humans tend to do with our pain is pass it on to others. You may be familiar with the saying \u2018hurt people hurt people\u2019 \u2013 it\u2019s a phrase which has issues, for sure \u2013 but there is a kernel of truth in it (not unlike Philip Larkin\u2019s famous line \u2018man hands on misery to man\u2019). But sometimes our pain leads us to turn inward and engage in behaviours that are ultimately self-harming instead. Some of us self-medicate, numb ourselves, suppress the bad feelings with alcohol, drugs, food \u2013 or we compulsively engage in other distracting behaviours like endless scrolling or shopping or exercise or sex \u2013 activities that temporarily take our minds off the sources of our pain. Some of you might be familiar with the work of Gabor Mat\u00e9 in this field; his associate Stephanie Hollington-Sawyer said this: \u2018addiction\u2026 originates in a human being\u2019s desperate attempt to solve a problem: the problem of emotional pain, of overwhelming stress, of lost connection, of loss of control, of a deep discomfort with the self. In short, it is a forlorn attempt to solve the problem of human pain.\u2019 <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Another response to pain is withdrawal \u2013 that\u2019s one we might not immediately think of because, by its very nature, it tends to be invisible \u2013 when we are in pain there can be a temptation to retreat into our little individual caves and drop out of life. We might come to conceive of \u2018other people\u2019 as the primary source of pain and consequently hide ourselves away to protect ourselves from further hurt \u2013 letting go of relationships, dropping out of communities, disappearing from public life \u2013 or maybe just neglecting our connections with others, not actively maintaining them, being flaky, uncommitted, not putting our whole self in. We can fall into a state of passivity, even fatalism, that leads us to disengage. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

So far I\u2019ve mostly been diagnosing the problem, in a way; delineating all the not-so-great things we typically do with our pain. So what could we do instead? What might be more helpful or healthy? First off, I\u2019d suggest, we need to acknowledge it, make space for it, so that we can truly feel our pain rather than pushing it away, denying it, or burying it. I think there\u2019s some wisdom in that notion that \u2018the only way out is through\u2019 and that the process of healing and transforming our pain starts with accepting and allowing it. This is connected to a second thing we can do: we can express our pain. But let\u2019s find places and spaces that are appropriate to allow and express our pain \u2013 or to use a more religious term, to lament \u2013 maybe we need regular and ongoing professional support from a therapist or spiritual director \u2013 maybe we have good friends who can make space for us to let it all out once in a while \u2013 or maybe we can share in carefully-held small groups like we do here at church. We all need places where we feel safe to be real. And if we can process our pain and suffering in such places maybe we\u2019ll be less likely to find it \u2018comes out sideways\u2019, ricochets around, and hurts others. This work is not easy but we have a chance to consciously break the cycle of pain and refrain from passing it on. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would be remiss of me not to mention that another thing we can do with our pain is to pray about it. If you\u2019re at all familiar with the psalms, you\u2019ll know that there\u2019s a long tradition of crying out to God \u2013 and not making it pretty or polite either \u2013 just pouring out your unfiltered anguish to the One Who Listens. Or you might have a regular set prayer that helps you to get things in perspective \u2013 just this week I have reminded a few people about the Serenity Prayer \u2013 \u2018God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.\u2019 One reason why this prayer means so much to so many people is that it points to a middle way \u2013 it cajoles us out of despair \u2013 and focuses on what we can do to transform our painful situation. When our pain is arising from injustice it\u2019s crucial to do what we can to take action and make change. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And one more thing that we can do with our pain is let it change us for the good. Perhaps it will leave us more compassionate for the sufferings of others; more empathetic and tender-hearted. This doesn\u2019t happen by default. Pain can leave us contorted and bitter. But we do have some choice in the matter, I reckon, and our tough experiences can sometimes \u2013 somehow \u2013 be alchemically transformed \u2013 and transformative \u2013 breaking us open to connect with all the other suffering souls. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As we draw to a close I want to return to the wise words of Rick Hanson who offers this thought for us to take into the week ahead: \u2018This week, take a stand for yourself, for feeling as good as you reasonably can. A stand for bearing painful experiences when they walk through the door\u2014and a stand for encouraging them to keep on walking, all the way out of your mind. This is not being at war with discomfort or distress, which would just add negativity. Instead, it is being kind to yourself, wise and realistic about the toxic effects of painful experiences. In effect, you\u2019re simply saying to yourself something you\u2019d say to a dear friend in pain: I want you to feel better, and I\u2019m going to help you. Try saying that to yourself in your mind… Focus on where you can make a difference, where you do have power; it may only be inside your own mind, but that\u2019s better than nothing at all.\u2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And I\u2019ll leave you with just a few final words by the great American writer, theologian, and civil rights leader Howard Thurman, words to take to heart in this moment, I reckon: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018This is important to remember: given the fact \nof pain as a normal part of the experience of life, \none may make the pain contribute to the soul, to the life meaning. \n\nOne may be embittered, ground down by it, but one need not be. \n\nThe pain of life may teach us to understand life and, \nin our understanding of life, to love life. \n\nTo love life truly is to be whole in all one’s parts; \nand to be whole in all one’s parts is to be free and unafraid.\u2019\n\nMay it be so for the greater good of all. Amen. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Reflection by Jane Blackall<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n