Pain is not the enemy

As purpose-driven leaders, we can come to understand that the wholesale transformation we envision for ourselves and the world will likely not come to pass. We will never fully arrive. There is no actual destination. 

Instead, we learn to find purpose in the journey itself. We seek fulfillment in everyday progress. We strive for a more modest growth, in ourselves as individuals, in our organizations, and in our societies.

Yet still, many of us feel stagnant. Not only does wholesale change elude us, but that sense of everyday growth does as well. We face the same challenges day after day, year after year. We get into the same arguments, make the same mistakes, or find ourselves in the same destructive relationships or behaviors. Or, despite tangible growth in our personal lives or careers, a seemingly impenetrable sense of sadness or emptiness persists. 

And so we employ many different strategies to break ourselves free from these ruts. As individuals, we start working out more, go back to school, travel, take up a new hobby, or move to another town. As organizations, we rewrite our mission statement, institute a new organizational structure, or bring in new leadership. As nations, we vote in a new political party, pass a new bill, or create a new holiday.

But, despite our best efforts, we often find ourselves right back where we started. The same challenges persist. We can’t help but feel the growth and purpose we yearn for elude us. We are stuck. Our journey has stalled.

Pushing forward with a broken leg

It’s easy to chalk up our stagnation to some sort of personal failure. We tell ourselves that we haven’t worked hard enough. Or maybe we aren’t smart or creative enough. We can also blame someone else or society. 

But often, we are simply misreading the problem at hand. We are trying to grow by expanding our knowledge or changing our circumstances or habits when we actually first need to heal by processing and integrating our emotional wounds. Growth is developing and harnessing new aspects of ourselves and our genius. In contrast, healing is releasing toxicity that impedes growth and re-integrating old aspects of ourselves that have been repressed.

Often, we can’t move forward in our journeys because we have not healed from past wounds. It’s as if we are climbing up a mountain with a broken leg. We stubbornly push forward up the hill. But in doing so, we only injure ourselves further. Pushing forward is not only ineffective but actively harmful. What we truly need is to stop, rest, and heal.

Wounding and wounds

We all experience emotional wounding – events that cause us psychological and perhaps even spiritual damage – throughout our lives. These woundings occur in myriad ways: acute events like the loss of a loved one or a physical assault; abuse or neglect over many years; even perhaps as memories or behaviors passed down from previous generations. In some cases, they are personal: a romantic rejection, a failed creative endeavor, a betrayal from someone we trust. In others, they are systemic: living in a society that tells you that you are ugly, deviant, or otherwise less than; or experiencing, bearing witness to, or being complicit in pervasive poverty, injustice, and violence. 

These wounding events lead to emotional wounds that stay with us long after the event has passed, sometimes for our whole lives. They are parts of our psyche that have been removed, obscured, or infected such that we adopt toxic, false beliefs about ourselves. Common emotional wounds include:

• I am invisible
• I am unlovable
• I am nobody
• I am empty
• I am weak
• I don’t belong
• I am not enough
• I am ugly
• I am evil

Emotional wounds are the messages we tell ourselves about ourselves that unduly and unfairly limit who we are, what we can accomplish, and what we are worthy of. We might also call them toxic beliefs, limiting beliefs, or shame.

Pain is our loyal messenger

On a practical basis, our emotional wounds are experienced as emotional pain. Pain is the messenger delivering us these toxic messages. Some of this pain might be quite conscious and deeply felt, manifesting in our lives as depression, rage, anxiety, or hatred. Some of this pain might be repressed and hidden, manifesting in our lives as apathy, emptiness, meaninglessness, detachment, or even physical ailments.

Regardless, emotional pain often becomes a driving force in our lives, knocking on our door incessantly at all times of day. Indeed, this pain can become so difficult and relentless that we do whatever we can to mask or avoid it. We numb ourselves with food, drugs, and alcohol; TV, gambling, and pornography; ambition, achievement, and workaholism; apathy, cynicism, and judgment. 

Through this numbing, in effect, we make our pain into the enemy that we must vanquish or escape. We make pain the major impediment in our lives: to happiness, to growth, to purpose, to meaning. We believe it’s our pain that we must heal. 

In my view, this is a tragic misunderstanding. 

Of course, some emotional numbing is often as necessary and constructive as anesthesia is to someone recovering from surgery. It is not helpful to re-traumatize ourselves or otherwise suffer needlessly. Sometimes, for our own well-being, we must ignore the knock at the door. 

And yet, as with physical pain, often the numbing becomes a problem in and of itself. We become addicted to food, alcohol, achievement, and cynicism just as we become addicted to opioids. These addictions fuel a downward spiral that depletes our well-being, distracts us from our purpose, and even leads to new forms of pain. 

It’s not actually our pain that stands in our way, that infects our lives. It’s our wounds that hinder us. It’s our wounds that need to be healed. Our pain is simply the loyal messenger that will keep delivering its message until it is heeded. It is our pain pleading with us to stop, rest, and heal. It is our pain telling us we cannot keep pushing on up the mountain safely and effectively.

When we truly stop and listen to it, pain can become one of our wisest and most important guides, alerting and directing us to the wounds we must heal, so that we can truly move forward with our lives.

What has your emotional pain been trying to tell you?

Peter Schulte Leadership coach Bellingham WA USA About | Instagram | Donate