The High Cost of Pain Avoidance
How to Welcome Pain as your Teacher for more Joy & Intimacy in Relationships

By David Stanley Bell

Why Do I Do This?

"I’m so stupid; I'll never let myself get hurt again!" How many times have we heard this said or even said it ourselves? "I told you you’d get hurt if you follow your emotions and not your head." How many times have we heard this statement on the heals of the first? Heartbreak is very painful, especially the first time. We open ourselves to feel joys that may be the greatest we have ever experienced, only to discover when the relationship has gone awry, the pain of heartache may be the most intense pain we have experienced. We think this big bear trap is a painful and embarrassing place, we feel foolish.

I think most of these feelings result from generations of mindset that tell us that if we got hurt, then we must have done something wrong. A key lesson I learned from Almine Barton, and one hard for me to swallow at first, is that all emotional pain comes from unmet expectation. We have a shopping list of fantasies that define what we thought a relationship should be and we suffer when these things are not realized consistently.

Pain Is The Teacher

When we learn to drop this expectation and enjoy the uniqueness of the relationships we experience, the pain is quickly transformed to wisdom and joy. This can take a few experiences to master, and we can only learn by engaging and surrendering to the lessons that each relationship presents to us. Then each experience raises us up to higher intimacy, passion and wisdom along this freeway to passionate living. To seek to avoid pain by emotionally "holding back" or intellectually controlling the situation, just takes us off at the first off ramp. You know, were most "normal" people go.

Even engineers, notoriously known for high IQ and low EQ, know that control systems and null seeking systems are "error driven" to the proper aim point. No error, no steering signal to guide us to the proper aim point. In fact, the larger the error, within limits of the system of course, the higher the gain that drives us to our aim point. We may overshoot or have bounded oscillations, but we will get there. We learn through mistakes. They are necessary. In the higher picture, we will see that they aren’t even mistakes. They are our timely opportunities to experience just what we need to grow.

Pain by itself is merely pain,
but the experience of pain coupled with an understanding
that the pain serves a worthy purpose is suffering.
Suffering can be endured because there is a reason for it that is worth the effort.
What is more worthy of your pain than the evolution of your soul?
~ Gary Zukav - from "Seat Of The Soul" ~

When you welcome your emotions as teachers,
every emotion brings good news,
even the ones that are painful.
~ Gary Zukav & Linda Francis - from "The Heart Of The Soul" ~

Opportunities to find deeper powers within ourselves
come when life seems most challenging.
~ Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) ~

It is by going down into the abyss
that we recover the treasures of life.
Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.
~ Joseph Campbell (1904-1987) ~

Where only Fools Go?

Usually not far from the hurt/done-wrong mindset is another that tells us that we need to protect ourselves from getting hurt. This is an ancient mindset that still lives strong in our egos.

This response once served us well, long ago when physical survival took up much of our time and energy. But emotional pain is like getting a positive indication on a beachcomber's metal detector. It means we have found something beneath that needs attention. We need to re-train ourselves and replace this response with another response.

To protect ourselves and do the "smart things"is to deny ourselves of the very experiences we need to learn and move to higher levels of awareness. Thus, as I believe it to be, to protect is to debilitate, to protect another is to deny them of their own life path to truth, to their true selves. So who is being foolish?

"Character cannot be developed in ease and quiet.
Only through experience of trial and suffering
can the soul be strengthened, ambition inspired,
and success achieved."
~ Helen Keller ~

I was fortunate to have been born and raised with strengths in using both halves of my brain and I have I questioned everything and sought for truth and meaning through intellect, art and spirituality for as long as I can remember.

In the beginning, I developed quickly in intellect and science and the "artist" stayed within certain "allowable boundaries." Then late in my thirties, I accelerated my emotional and spiritual growth to balance my intellect. I know the strengths of both sides and how they can be used together. I do this to help all of us bridge heaven and earth.