The ‘Pain Body’

Spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle says “There are two levels to your pain: the pain that you create now, and the pain from the past that still lives on in your mind and body”. 

Most of us would say we want to live without pain. However, Eckhart suggests we have a ‘pain body’ that seeks pain. And just like the needy monsters in the series ‘Stranger Things’, this pain body wants feeding. The hunger of the ‘pain body’ is only satisfied when we experience strong negative emotional reactions.

The Emotional Merry-Go-Round

Does this sound familiar?

• Do you and your partner bicker or argue too often?

• Do you both push each other emotional buttons, and end up angry, hurt or defensive?

• Do your relationships bring out feelings of shame, unworthiness, disappointment or feelings of being unloved?

• Are you and your partner ‘finger-pointing’ to each other (pointing ‘blame’ or ‘responsibility’ of how you each feel, back to each other)?

• Have you ever stayed too long in a relationship that fired emotional triggers, or find that time and time again, you are with different people but in the same relationship, with these same arguments?

These are examples of relationships that feed the ‘pain-body’ (the hurt creature) that lives inside you.

Relationships are not supposed to be painful. Like a ‘love-hurt’ merry-go-round, sometimes we can get stuck in a cycle of ups and downs. Our relationship is great, then a something starts the arguing and hurt, before things settle down. Then another emotional trigger starts conflict and pain, before it calms down again… you get the idea.

Are You Keeping an Eye on Your Shadow Side?

Psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung (1875-1961) told us we all have a ‘Shadow’ side; the unknown dark side of the personality. This hugely influential Swede believed to truly grow as a person, one must remove willful blindness to one’s own Shadow side. Jung believed that by not wanting to look at our Shadow directly, many people project them onto others; meaning that the qualities of others we struggle with in our most intimate relationships, are qualities we are not willing to acknowledge in ourselves.

That is, qualities we have not resolved in ourselves, like a lack of kindness, acceptance and love for our selves, are replicated from our external world. So for example if you haven’t 100% accepted yourself, you will attract others who will not 100% accept you; or if you are not kind to yourself, you will attract people who are not kind to you. This perspective shares a confronting and hard truth. We live in a culture of comparison, achievement, distraction and denial, so rest assured, you’re not alone here.

Your pain-body is part of your Shadow side. When we are upset reliving old emotional pain, we are feeding our pain body.

The thing is, we often point our fingers at others in blame or as the cause of our hurt. Sure, he or she may have behaved like a complete dingbat, however it’s the extent of our reaction that is significant.

The crux of the matter is that the emotion you experience in your body, in response to your relationship today, is often due to deep-set pain from your experiences of the past and your inherited emotional biology. Past experiences of fear, loss, rejection, betrayal and other hurts and trauma become the emotional ‘imprint’, from which we unconsciously seek to repeat in relationships again and again. 

You might be asking, do I really have a ‘pain-body’ that says “feed me!”, at the cost of crippling you moving forward in love, work and from being the greatest possible version of yourself? You may be asking “why would I (subconsciously) sabotage our relationships and those I love most?”. The simple answer is, because most of us don’t know we have a ‘pain-body, and we don’t know how to stop feeding the ‘pain-body’.

How to Manage Your Pain Body and Emotional Triggers

So how do we deal with the pain body?

At best, clearing the underlining, unwanted hurt (pain body) from the past, and addressing the root of the issue gets the quickest and best results. To do this you need to allow a trained healer, therapist or coach to guide you through the process. It can be a quick but profound process. Shifting the root emotional memory that has been locked in the body releases the self-limiting belief that acts like the magnet to negative behaviours.

Secondly, be mindful of ‘awareness’, ‘observation’ and ‘presence’.

1. Be aware when you are reacting to someone with feelings of hurt, anger or if you are offended, and consider it a ‘teachable moment’, what can you learn about yourself in that moment. This is difficult but not impossible.

2. Observe your feelings rather than react from your feelings.

3. Be present. Simply observe it and be the witness. Don’t judge it, be the space for it. Then gradually, its energy will decrease.

Try this as a personal experiment across the next couple of weeks and see what happens for yourself.

Self Directed Healing

At Authentic State Coaching, we are passionate about removing patterns of pain and trauma, enabling people to embrace their best self and greatest life in health, love and careers.

Through ‘Self Directed Healing’ we help people clear old triggers and dissolve the ‘pain-body’. This is like a life-hack; a quick and long-lasting remedy to your pain body. Imagine being set free from old hurts and unhealthy relationship patterns.

Read more about Self Directed Healing here.

Image Credits: Stijn te Strake | ScottWebb