Chapter 7: Pain Without Suffering: Unraveling Emotional Pain from Physical Pain
Another step on my Journey Through Calamity
I’ve learned how to work with my longtime chronic pain mindfully, but working with this acute traumatic pain is far different. I have been working successfully, with the support of a trauma therapist, to unravel my traumatic fall at the airport from my grief over my father’s death. I now need to unravel my physical pain from my thoughts and emotions about it.
There is a direct correlation between my physical pain and my emotional pain. When my physical pain is particularly intense, my emotional pain increases. It usually manifests as fear and anxiety: Will I ever be able to fully use my arm again? Will my pain be with me forever? Will I need another surgery? Will I ever be able to do yoga and Pilates again? And on and on.
My journey through calamity toward healing includes calm abiding and mindfulness meditation -- on and off the cushion. This involves returning to the present moment when thoughts arise, knowing them to be insubstantial and fleeting, like leaves floating down a stream. Letting go into the present moment includes feeling my breath and directly experiencing the sensations of pain in my body simply as energy, with nothing added.
Zen teacher Shinzen Young has said “Pain plus resistance equals suffering”. I try to remember and work with this as well. My anxious and fearful thoughts are the resistance that causes me to suffer. When I let those thoughts go, I can experience my pain simply as it is. As the well-worn adage says, “Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional.”
Using Shinzen Young’s teaching, the direct experience of pain is the focus of my meditation. For example, I might feel the sensation of burning or throbbing in the location of my pain. As thoughts and judgments arise, I notice them lightly and return to the direct experience of pain. When I work with my pain in this way, I am fully in the present moment. My thoughts, judgments and resistance are gone, and so is the suffering that I’ve added to the pain with those thoughts, judgments and resistance. I also notice that the pain is impermanent -- it is ever shifting and changing.
Separating my current traumatic pain from my myriad thoughts and attendant suffering is much different than working with chronic pain. It’s a work in progress, especially when the pain is most acute. I am determined to use these meditation and contemplation tools as part of my healing on my “journey through calamity.”