The Four Types of Pain

“It’s just so painful to change positions!”, grimaces Paul. Paul has had a rough week of cleaning out the house that his deceased parents lived in for 50+ years. 👴🏻🏘️😧 As a healer, I sometimes attract people struggling with pain. Pain seems like it’d just be a cut and dry situation. You either feel pain or you don’t. You’re either uncomfortable or you’re not. If you feel pain, it’s bad; if you don’t feel pain, it’s good. What else is there even to think about, right?🙅👎🤢 I attended another seminar last weekend, and our instructor provided some insights about pain that I had heard several times, however, had not quite absorbed until now. I cannot take credit for the following remarks about pain; they come from the wise teachings of the developer of Network Spinal, Dr. Donald Epstein.❤️ 🧑‍🏫 Pain is any uncomfortable situation or experience that interrupts your ability to experience the magic or the sacredness of life. If you’re having a lovely conversation with a friend during dinner and your phone on the table beeps and you MUST check it; that’s pain.🍽️📵😎 If you’re in a beautiful place with someone you love intending to share special time together and all you can think about is work; that’s pain. Pain is an indication that something must shift NOW! ✨🌋🏕️ The purpose of pain is communication. The stove is hot, remove your hand…NOW! 1.) The first type of pain is the pain of avoiding pain. Common questions one might ask themselves with this type of pain are, “Why me?” or, “why not me?”.🧑‍🍼❓ “What is wrong with me? What is the cause of this? Who was right/wrong? Why can’t I make the breakthrough? Why am I so blocked?” People will do much more to avoid pain than they will to gain pleasure. Consider this; if there is a lion running after you versus a suitcase full of money in front of you, which would motivate the average human to act quicker? 🦁💸😀 Avoiding a certain amount of immediate pain wins over gaining immediate pleasure every time. 2.) The second type of pain is the pain of not believing you’re able to manage your circumstances. Ever ask someone how they’re doing, and they respond with something like, “How do you think I’m doing? My car just broke down!”🏎️💔🚁 This type of pain always links our beingness with our circumstances. Helpful questions to ask to work with this type of pain are, “What can I do to never disempower myself again? How can I express more of my courage now? What is really happening here? How can I face this now? What is on the other side?”✨🧑‍💼😐

3.) The third type of pain is the pain of not making enough progress or not progressing fast enough. “I’m 42, I should be married by now!”.

This type of pain occurs when the amount of bandwidth required to express who you are or who you are meant to be in the world doesn’t match your current energy levels. There’s not enough energy to make it happen.🗺️🔋🏏

Helpful questions to ask to work with this type of pain are, “What can I do to really be ready? How can I conduct an inventory and get rid of that which no longer serves me? How can I accept the old stuff/energy/patterns?”

This type of pain doesn’t go away until you do an inventory of who you are, who you must be, and recognize that there’s more.🧮😧

4.) The fourth type of pain is the pain of not knowing your gifts, not having your gifts received, or not accepting other’s situations or experiences as gifts.

Helpful questions to ask to work with this type of pain include “How can I grow the gratitude? How can I receive and embody the light that I am? What gift has been given to me? Where is the gift in this?”. And one of my favorite questions, “How can we be each other’s wisdom/medicine?”🙏🏽💡🎁

Pain sucks.

Commonly we have the thought, "Let me stop the pain so I can just continue the same life trajectory I was on before."🪃❤️😧

The cycle just continues and eventually we just end up dropping our standards for life. This is not the path for creating an extraordinary life.

Pain always leaves a gift.🍬🎁

Sometimes the best way for me to assist in facilitating healing for a person is by helping them to feel differently about their pain.

And words you’ll commonly hear spoken at my practice are, “I know this feels awful right now. But please know it won’t be like this forever. I don’t know when or how it will shift, but eventually it will.”🥻🌾🈁

This is an appropriate opportunity to re-plug my friend and colleague Dr. Jay Uecker’s book, “If It Didn’t Hurt”, where he discusses this topic extensively.

Here’s the link to the blog I wrote promoting his book a few months back.📚📗

Speaking of promoting, if you haven’t had an opportunity to give us a google review, please kindly take a few minutes to share any positive experience you’ve had in our office. CLICK HERE. We’re still working on our goal of having 50 reviews by the end of the year.

And finally, if you’d like to get on the schedule for one of our awesome services, CLICK HERE!✨🙌🏽

Have wonderful week!