Safe in the Arms of Pain

*Full disclosure: My only real training in psychology is from my bachelor’s degree, and I am not trained in medicine. Please do not take my theories or opinions as science – they are just thoughts and observations…*

The American Psychological Association defines psychic pain as “intolerable pain caused by intense psychological suffering (rather than physical dysfunction). At its extreme, prolonged psychic pain can lead to suicide attempts”. From grade 3 to grade 10, I was bullied virtually every day because I was different, and I was vulnerable, and I was a dweeb. I was very naïve about everything, and I didn’t know how to protect myself from the constant verbal and non-verbal messaging that I was not worthy of the acceptance or approval of the other kids. I was going to church with my parents religiously (and I use that term deliberately), but no matter how hard I tried I could not manage to live the Christian life successfully, as it seemed everyone else managed easily. I know now that was not the case, because everyone just hid their problems and insecurities, but at the time it seemed as if I was the only person in the Christian world who was a total failure. I didn’t want to admit to anyone that I was a failure, so I put on my “spiritual face” and pretended, all the while being slowly torn apart inside. These two words, rejected and failure, have clung to my heels my entire life, and I have never fully shaken them off.

So why did I tell you that? I think most if not all of us carry a lot more psychic pain than we admit to others, and it scars us maybe more than we admit to ourselves. I think that as we are hurt mentally and emotionally, and it builds over time, sometimes we take it inside ourselves and we take ownership of it and let it define us, as if we are accepting the messages we are hearing and feeling as truth. Beginning to believe those messages made them sink in and mold themselves to my bones, and thus became psychic pain, buried deeper than my conscious mind could defy. Carrying that psychic pain around for years changes you, so that you can no longer imagine yourself without it, and as much as it may be hard to believe if you have not experienced it, the pain becomes almost comfortable in its familiarity. Then it is often (I won’t try to speak for everyone else) painful to try to let that psychic pain go. It can be very scary to think about what you will have to face if you try to be free of the pain, and it can be very scary to think of yourself without it. I am now in my 50s and I still cannot dance, because the fear of judgement is buried so deep in me that it seizes my muscles until I am rigid in my movements (Right now that same fear makes me want to go back and erase this entire post, but I still choose not to hide). Carrying that psychic pain is familiar, and safe, and in its own twisted way, comfortable. Trying to step out of that pain and be free of it can be terrifying, even if its “only” trying to be free in dancing.

In all honesty, this post is more personal than I was planning on being, but this is an important discussion. I know I’m not the only person who has faced this kind of bone deep mental and emotional pain, and I also know that no one gets out of it alone. We have to make it okay for us to talk about it, because it is only in darkness that it thrives. When that pain is brought out into the light it loses some of its power, and when it is countered with love and acceptance there is a real chance that it will wither up and die. And so I have shone some light, and together we can learn to be safe as well as free of such pain.