Feel Your Pain and Set It Free

"Welcome suffering.  Leave your mind alone and the pain will dissolve."

-Sunyata,  Dancing with the Void

Awakening to your suffering is the only way to liberate yourself from it.  As a therapist, I see that my patients (and I) are stuck in a patterns of suffering and my goal is to help them (and myself) become more fully aware and awake within the pattern or the depression.  Helping the patient awaken to her suffering, will provide a powerful and lasting understanding of the situation including the energetic and behavioral patterns that created the suffering, that simply avoiding or numbing the suffering could not provide.  

Transformation can occur when the therapist does not take a preference of what to change the patient into, and only tries to help them become more themselves.  Gestalt therapist Arnold Beisser states in his article, "The Paradoxical Theory of Change", "that change occurs when one becomes what he is, not when he tries to become what he is not."  So, if I have a patient that is in a relationship with a man who is incapable of giving her love in the way that she needs it, and I see that if she breaks up with him now she can avoid years of suffering, and if I were to say, "So what I hear you saying is that your boyfriend is not able to be there for you emotionally in the way that you need in order to have your intimacy needs met." She may superficially accept this and then add a "but" followed by self-blame or hope for him.  I would be better off to say, "so how does it feel when you want to connect with your boyfriend and he is not receptive?" When she can become awake to the fact that she is indeed suffering and allow herself to experience this suffering, rather than avoiding it or looking for a solution, the experiencing of the pain will provide her with courage to face reality, and act based on this. If she does not face her suffering she will continue to act out of how she wishes things were or out of an idea of how things could be.  Experiencing the suffering will give her new insight on how to proceed with her challenge. If she simply seeks to avoid the pain, she may never face her energetic or behavioral patterns, and she may continue to project a non reality onto her situation. It takes immense courage to be with what it: what actually is and not a hope or fear about the future.

The healing that occurs through meditation works much in the same way.  We cannot heal our pain by yelling at it to go away, or by clenching, cringing, contracting, resisting, numbing, or ignoring it.  In fact when we tense up around or ignore physical or emotional pain, it becomes even more aggravated and inflamed and it digs its roots even deeper into our being.  However if we can be with our pain, neutrally, eyes wide open, heart wide open, as an observer it will eventually loosen to the point of uprooting or transforming. When we feel an undesirable emotion such as fear, anxiety, sadness, anger, confusion, or insecurity, it is important to welcome it.  We must experience all emotions, and observe ourselves experiencing them, and observe ourselves observing ourselves experiencing them. This is reality. This is awakening. This is freedom.

Bibliography

Beisser, A. "The Paradoxical Theory of Change." Article available online at http://www.gestalt.org/arnie.htm 1970

Stevens Sullivan, B. The Mystery of Analytical Work 2009

 Sunyata, Dancing with the Void 2001

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