The Pain Box

Hey there. Welcome back to your Daily Mindfulness. In today's session, we're going to talk about something I like to call the pain box. Now we've all experienced various traumas of life, macro and micro. These experiences cause us to reassess who we need to be in the world in order to be safe.

And often what that means is that we put up walls of guarding to protect us from having to experience a certain kind of pain again. But we all have different kinds of walls. So examples, we want to make a friend, make amends with a friend, and that requires admitting that we might've been wrong. But the pain of not being right is too great, so we just stay in our self-righteousness. That's a wall.

We want connection in our relationship and that requires sharing our needs with the other person, but it's too painful to imagine having those needs rejected. So we settle for good enough connection. That's a wall. We want to be less judgmental toward ourselves and that requires not beating ourselves up as much for our mistakes. But there's this fear that if we don't punish ourselves, we won't be successful in the world.

And the thought of not being successful creates pain. So we continue to be our own harsh, harshest critic. That's a wall. Before we know it, we put up so many different walls that we get trapped in a box, confined to a certain kind of way of being and living that we don't actually want. I call this box, the pain box.

It's called the pain box because the only thing that keeps us in it is pain. The walls don't actually exist. When we're not willing to feel something due to the perceived pain it will cause, it becomes a barrier and we get stuck in our safety, our comfort zone. In most circumstances, it's the potential pain we associate with what we want, consciously or subconsciously, that keeps us in the same place with the same people, the same longings and the same frustrations, even though we most desperately want something else. So take a moment just to hear that and maybe evaluate and try to feel what some of your pain walls might be.

What do you wish you could express about yourself? What conversations do you wish you could have with someone? Is there a part of you that you wish you could share with others? What do you wish you could accept in your life? Whatever comes up, then just ask yourself, what would I need to feel or experience to move toward this? It's okay if you're not sure yet. But the discomfort, if any, that you associate with moving toward what you most want is your pain wall. In meditation were organically starting to shift our relationship to pain, to find a stability and a groundedness within it. But as you go throughout your day, notice where you might get stuck. The conversations you might want to have, the experiences you might want to do, the risks you might want to take, and what is the pain you associate with potentially getting there.

Instead of immediately retreating, what would it be like to take a breath, soften around it and take a step forward anyway? In this way, we start to expand beyond our pain box. Thanks for your practice. I'll talk to you more in the meditation. And as always, take care.