How To Use Pain As A Platform For Growth
This picture was taken recently on the 4th anniversary of my husband’s death. The rough waves and dark sky parallel the emotions I was feeling the day my beautiful 46-year-old husband died in my arms after a 23-month battle with esophageal cancer.
To see this man I loved with my whole heart slip away breath after breath was excruciating. Knowing how badly he wanted to stay. And then to have to call our 8 and 10-year-old daughters to come in to see us, them unaware that this would be the moment they would learn their Daddy had died.
I have also faced intense physical pain. Suffering a severe brain injury 12 years ago, felt like it took every ounce of energy I had just to survive the pain moment by moment. As my arms and legs flailed around uncontrollably because their control centre had been smashed and I couldn’t will my extremities to stay still as I was consumed by the worst headache pain imaginable, constantly vomiting because my body didn’t know how to handle what was happening to me.
Now, I deal with chronic pain - both headaches and back/neck related. And, a lot of days my heart feels like it will be broken forever after losing my husband.
But, I am not alone in my pain. If you have hit 40 years of age and haven’t experienced any sort of pain, consider yourself lucky! Pain is something that impacts us all. It shapes and molds us like we are putty in its excruciating hands.
Human beings really dislike pain. We spend billions of dollars trying to escape it, whether it be distractions like shopping or numbing agents like alcohol and drugs or supplements and healthcare appointments to try to fix the pain by taking it away.
I believe we need to do what we can to help ourselves. But, sometimes one of the best ways to work with pain is to stare it in the face and know that it is just a part of life.
I am a different person now since pain entered my life. I am more compassionate, kind, scared, and perhaps more rigid. I also have more depth as a person. I can no longer find the same pleasure in frivolous small talk that I once had. I want to go deep. To understand people and to make real connections.
So, how can we befriend pain and use it as a tool to help us be our best in work and in life?
Tips To Turn Pain Into A Platform for Growth:
Pain entering our lives will shape us more than the lighter, “positive’ events. It forces us to reflect and to sit with what we don’t like and sometimes cannot change (at least in that moment). This is an opportunity for tremendous self-growth if you are able to be brave enough to ask yourself the questions, “What is this pain telling me?” and “What is important to me now?”
Often the best thing you can do when pain enters your life is to sit in it for a while. Like when swimming and caught in a current, the harder you swim, the more likely you will get sucked into it. Whereas, if you relax and let go, this is your best chance of survival. When you feel pain, just take out a journal and write a few notes about how you are feeling. There is nothing to change at this moment. Sit with it first, feel it, know it, and maybe even make friends with it.
Once you have felt it, start to think about what, if anything, you can do to move through the pain. For me, I felt the more I tried to “fix” my brain injury or even my heart, the less healing that happened. I needed to sit with it all for a long while and that was part of the lesson for me. I am a “fixer” and type A. I needed to learn to just let go of control and trust. That still continues to be my lesson every day but I have gotten tremendously better with it. But, eventually, there comes a time when you can start to take steps out of your pain. Look for those opportunities.
Remember pain can be a gift. If you never felt that heartbreak after a breakup, you would never have the chance to be with the person of your dreams. If you didn’t feel things were not right in your job, you would have never made changes that put you in a place that feels in better alignment with where you want to be.
When my husband and I got married, we played the song “God Bless the Broken Road,” by the country band Rascal Flatts at the church and it reminds me of this very concept. If everything in our lives went amazing all the time, we would never change course. We would never re-evaluate or self-evaluate and shift and grow. We need pain. Yes, it is often the hardest emotions and experiences to go through. I don’t wish pain on anyone and I wish I could remove some of the painful experiences of my life and have my husband right back here with me, raising our girls together. But I can’t. I have a hole in my heart that will likely always hurt. But, it is part of what has made me who I am. And your pain has shaped you, too.
