How to probe pain ("I'm just fine" isn't helping)

Learn to move fwd by facing the dark

Life in the twenty-first century often feels like navigating a "Chaos Era".

We face constant, compounding challenges, leaving us feeling exhausted and wondering how to handle it all. Many of us are told, or tell ourselves, to just "tough things out," "grin and bear it," or "power through". But what if that approach isn't just ineffective, but actually harmful?

Stop "Powering Through": Probing Your Pain Can Make You Shatterproof

"Shatterproof: Twenty-First-Century Thriving" offers a powerful alternative. Instead of avoiding or suppressing our pain, the book posits that our "darkness can be our greatest motivator and our greatest teacher".

Becoming shatterproof isn't about having impenetrable armor; it's about learning to grow stronger because of our difficult experiences, much like the Japanese art of kintsugi repairs broken pottery with gold, highlighting the cracks as part of the piece's history and beauty.

The first crucial step on the Shatterproof Road Map is to probe Your pain.

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Why Do We Avoid Pain? The Disconnection Drivers

If pain can be such a powerful source of truth and power, why are we so determined to avoid it? The sources identify three primary reasons, or "disconnection drivers":

1. The Pain Paradox: This is the self-imposed pressure to "tough things out". We might believe that successful coping looks like unwavering composure, making us feel like a failure when we show vulnerability or buckle under pressure. While denial or announcing "I'm just fine" might offer temporary relief, it actually prolongs and intensifies our suffering in the long term. This phenomenon, where avoiding short-term pain creates more long-term pain, is the "pain paradox".

2. Toxic Positivity: Sometimes, the pressure comes from others. When we share our pain, well-meaning people might respond with phrases like "Stay positive!" or "Everything happens for a reason!". This is toxic positivity: pressuring someone into silence or compliance by insisting everything is, or will be, fine. It makes us feel like our emotions are "wrong" and pressures us to convince ourselves and others that things are okay, which is like putting a "Band-Aid on a bullet wound". We don't need permission to pay attention to our pain, and we need to surround ourselves with people who can meet us where we are.

3. Freeze-or-Faint: Beyond conscious choice or external pressure, our bodies have involuntary responses to extreme danger or helplessness. While we know about fight-or-flight, the sources highlight the less understood "freeze-or-faint" system, which causes total physical and emotional shutdown, disassociation, freezing, or fainting. This response kicks in when our brain registers extreme psychological stress as a mortal threat, even if we aren't consciously aware of it. It's a confusing experience to become completely emotionally numb involuntarily.

These drivers steer us away from engaging with our pain, but avoiding it doesn't make it disappear; the "body keeps score".

Pain as a Source of Power and Truth

The Shatterproof approach flips this script. Pain is not a personal failing. Instead, it's a "power source" and a "source of truth".

• Pain is a potent warning system that demands attention. Like physical pain signaling bodily injury, emotional pain signals an unmet psychological need.

• Pain forces us to challenge our preconceptions and reassess the status quo. It rouses us from complacency.

• Pain provides a path toward change. By tracing our pain to its external triggers and the frustrated needs (confidence, choice, or connection) behind them, we can discover self-limiting behaviors and empower personal reinvention.

Paying attention to suffering doesn't mean inviting it, but accepting our emotions to find new ways of fulfilling our needs. Admitting we are cracking or breaking is what clears the path forward.

Tools to Probe Your Pain

The sources offer practical tools to help you consciously confront your pain, even when physiological responses like freeze-or-faint are active:

1. Engage Your Safety System: Feeling safe internally is essential when facing difficult emotions.

   • Forgive your body for protecting you the best way it knows how. This validates involuntary responses.

   • Examine the words you’re using in your personal narrative. Are you seeing yourself as a "victim or victor?". We have the power to change our narrative.

   • Practice positive social interactions, giving and getting support, self-compassion, singing, and listening to lullabies or folk music. These methods can help reprogram your nervous system for safety.

2. Befriend Your Pain: Approach your pain with curiosity, treating it as a visitor. Ask:

   • How long have your emotions been visiting?

   • What are they doing during their visit (to you)?

   • Is this their first visit? This approach can help you understand what the pain is trying to tell you and can actually reduce negative emotions and foster positive ones in the long term.

3. Mood Release: This is a technique for articulating acute negative emotions. Whenever you feel the urge to suppress, complete these sentences:

   • "Right now I am thinking…"

   • "Right now I am feeling…" Putting experiences and feelings into words provides greater awareness and control over them. Naming emotions without guilt or judgment helps take away their power.

Growing Forward by Facing the Dark