Why Difficult, Fearful and Painful Experiences Can Be Good For Us

It’s very natural for people to be of the mindset that we shouldn’t have to do anything that’s too difficult and that we should avoid hardships and pains. At our most basic level, all animals and humans wish to avoid these while also seeking to experience as much comfort and enjoyment as possible. This is a part of our basic programming and all of it helps us survive. However, when humans act on these impulses automatically and without reflection, we weaken ourselves over time and maintain a high level of ignorance about how humans and the world really work. Consequently, this inborn tendency has initial benefits, but in our complex and advanced human world it actually does a lot of harm. In fact, just presenting this information to you means that I’m going to explore something that you probably won’t like so it wouldn’t surprise me if most of you decide not to read this post! Funny how that works. 🙂 And it should be noted that some of us find relief or enjoyment from some kinds of pain, but we’re not addressing this here.

Nonetheless, let’s start by clearing something up. Life will always be comprised of difficulty, pain, losses, fear, disappointments and, potentially, traumas. It would be silly to think that this will ever change. Therefore, wishing or daydreaming about a life that’s free from these isn’t a great use of our time. While our impulse is to avoid thinking about pain (pain = difficulty, fear, loss, physical pain, emotional pain, trauma, etc.), it’s vital that we spend some time doing exactly this so that we can live a better life. We can even achieve a wonderful level of contentment within ourselves if we change our relationship to painful experiences. And we do this by contemplating this subject matter in a focused way by using something like a journal, which is strongly recommended. Journaling helps us focus our contemplative efforts and this improves both our memory and ability to develop wisdom. However, we mustn’t hurry as we do it. Wisdom and memory are further enhanced when we relax into our activities, mental or physical as it allows our awareness to expand, to take in more information and to see things clearly. Realistically, very few of us will take such an exercise seriously so I can only hope that this reaches someone who will explore all of this and create their own benefits from it.

Now, when we’re in the middle of experiencing any kind of pain it sucks, it always will because pain is pain. It’s good to give ourselves the freedom and room to express ourselves when we’re in pain, but we should work hard to refrain from causing others pain. Just because we’re in pain doesn’t mean that it’s okay to get vengeance, take things out on other people, do harm to them or purposefully try to hurt them emotionally. Instead, we need to focus on OUR experience of pain by feeling it, observing it and allowing ourselves to fully experience it. However, when it comes to experiencing or remembering trauma or some type of abuse, you will probably need to limit or ignore my suggestions. These are difficult situations and it’s important to work with a therapist as you move slowly toward this goal of fully experiencing pain.

The point in allowing or making room for our pain is so that we can observe our experience, our mind and how our body deals with pain. Why? Doing so allows us to get to know how we work, but there’s also knowledge and wisdom in pain and our reactions. If we’re not paying attention to our experience then we cannot learn. If we don’t learn then we stay ignorant, automatic and completely stuck. Yet, much of the learning that takes place occurs after the initial pain is experienced. This is when we can contemplate and reflect upon what happened. When we work with painful experiences this way, we give ourselves the ability to transform pain into something good or useful. This can happen with pains that are small or large, mild or intense. So far we’ve been talking about this in the abstract, so let’s bring it down to the real world using a couple of examples to see how this really plays out.

In every family we have unhealthy or problematic psychological and relational patterns that are passed down from one generation to the next. I jokingly refer to these as “family traditions” because it’s just good to have a sense of humor when dealing with difficult things. Regardless, none of us intend to pass down these family traditions but we do. We aren’t to blame for them, nor are our parents, because they began years and years ago. If you’re the youngest generation experiencing the negative aspects of these then you have a choice. You can experience the hardship and pains, learn about them, how they get passed down and you can make efforts to change yourself so that you don’t continue the family tradition. Early on in my therapy during middle school I recognized that I had traits of my parents in me, for better or worse. In fact, I remember sitting in my english class with my journal and writing down a list of my parents’ traits. I then took stock of which ones I had already taken on. After that, I started to note which traits I admired in my parents and which ones weren’t healthy or all that good. Consequently, I was starting to decide which family traditions to carry on, which one’s I wanted to change and learn from, and others that I wanted to tweak just a little bit. In the years that followed, I continued to learn from my parents and my experiences with them. The more I learned the more I understood how and why they did what they did.

When we think of younger people in middle school, high school and college, there are a lot of difficult things that they experience. Relationships are hard to navigate, developing social skills can be frustrating and painful, going to college and living on our own can be scary, and so on. Yet, each time we experience something painful we can choose to learn, grow and develop compassion for ourselves and others. For example, there are many times when younger people have social mishaps, don’t maintain good emotional boundaries or don’t manage their academic work very well. Rather than seek reassurance or look for someone to fix the problem, it’s best that they learn how to improve. In fact, learning how to embrace and take ownership of failure, mistakes and poor choices will go a long way. Young people may need help and guidance as they learn how to do this on their own, but in the end they will be able to navigate life’s ongoing challenges with great ease, lesser stress and more compassion (for themselves and others). When it comes to trauma and abuse, this process can take some years and each person will transform it in a way that’s unique to them. Some might become advocates for others, therapists or even lawyers. By learning from trauma/abuse and successfully getting through the devastating effects of it, the individual naturally becomes extremely powerful and has an amazing potential to help others who have experienced something similar. It can also help the individual determine what aspects of society and culture contribute to individuals acting in these ways. All of this is vital information and wisdom. When it’s shared, it has the ability to create more peace for so many.