People have all different ideas about pain. There is a well known phrase, especially among bodybuilders, that says “No pain, no gain”. That concept is not only incorrect, it can be dangerous. Some people associate pain with growth, as in growing pains, but the truth is that the pain that is associated with growth is usually a result of trying to grow too much too fast.
Pain is a warning that we are doing something that is going to require healing. The degree of pain is determined by the amount of healing that our subconscious predicts it is going to require. These predictions are not always accurate… for example, paper cuts hurt far beyond the amount of healing that is going to be necessary. Pain can range from a mild discomfort for something that just needs a bit of down time to disabling, where you cannot function properly, to incapacitating, where your subconscious actually shuts down your consciousness due to the severity (by the way, although I appreciate this function, saving me from experiencing the most excruciating pain, I find it disturbing that my subconscious can shut down my conscious mind).
When you can refer to it as “pain” rather than pain, a mild discomfort can be merely a sign of strenuous activity. This is essentially your subconscious saying “Okay, we’re doing something, putting out effort, and we’re capable of doing it, but we’re going to need to rest to restore the energy we’re using”. This can be a good thing, depending on the circumstances. It is a positive sign when working out, for instance, or when you sink a lot of energy into a new project. You end up, as long as you don’t push it too far, with that “good tired” feeling, where you’re satisfied that you have accomplished something worthwhile.
When pain goes beyond that mild discomfort to something more severe, however, that is your subconscious telling you that need to stop because you are inflicting damage, not just using up energy. This is true whether it’s physical pain or emotional pain (emotional pain contains pretty much all negative emotions… depression, anger, sadness, etc.). If you are working out, and you start feeling sharp pain, that means that you need to stop right when you feel it, not push through it, as you’re no longer building, but tearing down… you might be hurting your joint, tearing a muscle too much, or something else, but you need to stop. The same goes for emotional pain. If you start feeling depressed, for example, it means that you’re doing something that is inflicting damage to your self. You need to stop, clear your mind, take a bit of quiet time for yourself, and figure out what exactly it is that you’re doing that’s causing the injury, so you can stop doing it and find another way to get to where you were trying to go with the action that is bringing you pain.
If you are severely depressed a lot of the time, then you probably have both old injuries (which can be healed), and currently existing patterns of behavior which are causing it. The same goes for anger, hatred, fear, or other negative emotions. They are caused by your own behavior or thought patterns, though they may, and likely do, appear to come from outside. This is because you can only be mentally affected by outside factors to the extent you allow it. For instance, if someone always finds ways to bring up your weight, and it makes you depressed, that is because you are allowing that person’s words to shape your own self image. You do not have to do this… your self image is your own to shape as you desire. If you find yourself feeling negative emotions due to other people, make sure you take a look at how much you are allowing other people to define your own image of who you are… who you are inside, which is again affected by who you are outside only to the extent you allow it to be.
The truth about pain is that it’s a wake-up notice from your subconscious. Sharp pain, or long lasting dull aches, are a warning that you need to stop and evaluate what you are doing to find the problem. Once you find the problem, you can go to work on correcting it. Mental pain, which is what I know best how to heal, is almost always a factor of letting something other than you conscious mind determine who you perceive yourself to be. This is most often either mistaking what you do for who you are or allowing what you think other people think about you (which is at best an educated guess, as even what they say they think may not be what they really think) to determine who you think you are. If you can take the time to change those two behaviors, most negative emotions (or mental pain) will dry up and go away.
