The Pain Gap
Pain is a place. Pain is failure of movement
We know that Peace is our sense, in feelings and thoughts, of moments between one step in the eternal Anxieties>Soothing dance, and another.
Peace is made up of all the bridges between those moments, which we can sense in our minds and hearts.
Pain is: exactly the opposite.
Pain is a place. Pain is failure of movement.
When baby-You wants (to get food, to stop feeling hurts), Anxieties react. Baby turns on satisfaction seeking behaviour. We notice the behaviour and provide satisfaction. Baby’s Soothing waves lower the Anxieties to resting level.
But, what happens when there’s some interference in that Nature-perfected dance?
When the dance steps don’t flow, then movement judders, and jerks to a halt. The music stops, the needle scratching off the record (or for readers born after 1901, the iPod play pauses).
Baby-You is stuck. The wants and Anxieties and Attention-seeking Behaviours are calling out. But nobody is listening. The Soothing centre never gets a message to deliver parcels of soothing to Anxieties head office. The boss there, gets more upset. The desk gets pounded, the coffee gets spilled, the innocent co-worker gets snapped at: “Why aren’t they listening?”, the boss shouts.
Pain is absence of Connection
Now, baby-You is experiencing Pain. It’s the pain which baby brain was created by nature to recognise. Baby brain actually can’t tell any difference between “physical” pain and “psychological pain”. Science tells us that our adult brains can’t tell the difference either.
Just as Peace is a bridge:
Pain is what we sense when a bridge to Peace isn’t getting built.
When I say that we sense Pain as emptiness, does that sound familiar? Like we say “I’m gutted”. We feel empty inside. It’s hollow, cold.
When our Soothing is being allowed to work, the bridges built are warm. They can be Disney castles, reaching to the stars, circled by singing princesses, fireworks. And Shrek (I have tae get in somewhere, Donkey).
Peace means we know we reached out, and were heard: we connected. Pain means we know nobody listened: we’re alone.
Connection is warm: Pain is cold.
Pain is what we feel when the dance steps stop. Pain is the absence of movement.
We can see it so clearly, when we are doing all the steps right, but nobody comes to take our hand, to carry on the connected steps. We can’t see it so clearly, when we’re getting the steps wrong ourselves.
When our Anxieties:
aren’t switching on
aren’t prodding us to shout loud enough
are prodding us to shout too loud
are prodding us to send the wrong signals.
When our Soothings:
aren’t switching on (because it’s not recognising the satisfaction actually received)
aren’t stroking our Anxieties firmly enough
are stroking our Anxieties too firmly
are giving our Anxieties the wrong strokes.
Just as nature created our brains so that they can’t tell the difference between:
outside-in stimulation and inside-in stimulation
hurt felt in the body and hurt felt in our psyche
we are not born with techniques to discern between Anxieties failures and Soothings failures.
We learn, and can teach, scientific techniques and common-sense ways, to tell if it’s your body or your psyche that’s hurting.
We learn, and can teach ourselves to distinguish between Anxieties failures and Soothings failures. Both cause the same feeling of Pain. That’s what makes it hard to work out which sort of failure (or a combination of both) is halting the dance.
By gaining understanding, and with practice, we can get better at it.
I’m not here to change You. I believe in You.
You don’t need to find your pain. You already know that you sense it.
Maybe I can help you, and you can help me, to understand how the dance is failing. To learn better how to grow and start the music going again. Your music, unique to you.
I’m not here to change your music. I only want to help you dance to it.
From: I Want to Love But: Realising the Power of You