Welcome to the universe is your therapist. We are your hosts, Dr. Amy Hoyt, and Lena Hoyt, we are sisters. Take a seat, and let's dive into this week's episode.
Welcome back, everyone, I'm so excited to be with you today. Today's topic is pain versus suffering. And I remember years ago, maybe 12 or 14 years ago, hearing the Buddha's saying, if you're human pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional. And as I started thinking about that, and kept going on my journey of education for my clients for my career, I started to put together a concept that a lot of my clients have found really helpful. And it's a really clear way to figure out what is pain and what is suffering. And I call this dirty pain and clean pain. I may have gotten this concept from Martha Beck's book, finding your own North Star, I think I might have. Anyway, that's a great book, read it if you get a chance. The concept of pain versus suffering is extremely helpful when we have a lot of emotional reactivity. When we find ourselves burdened by anxiety or depression, when we find ourselves falling into a place of paralyzation, numbing, or withdrawal, or when we find ourselves being reactive and having much too large a reaction to something that doesn't warrant it. The suffering is the idea that it is not required, it is not inevitable, that it has to do with the way we conceptualize our world. And the way that we engage in understanding things that are happening. The way I explain this to clients is the clean pain is the event itself, there lots of things in this life that create pain or discomfort for us because we're human. And that is the inevitable pain, the pain of something not going well, the pain of having made some kind of mistake, the pain of any event that you can't control that has impacted you. And so that is the clean pain and the clean pain occurs when we have something difficult happens. So for example, if I have gotten into a fender bender, which I have lots of times because I have ADHD, and apparently that's one of the symptoms. If I've gotten into a fender bender, there's going to be clean pain from that, it wouldn't have been high speed, but I would have bumped the car in front of me. And the clean pain is the event that has created some challenges for me. First of all, it's really upsetting. Second of all, it's disruptive. But the dirty pain is what happens when I start thinking about all the things that are related in my mind to this event. The dirty pain are the thoughts that we have about ourselves or the event that are blaming, shaming, critical judgmental. What when I have a fender bender, and I then for the next week spent a lot of time in my head, thinking about how foolish I am. When will ever learn why do I keep doing this? Why does this keep happening to me, I'm going to be having a lot of suffering, the event has occurred and it's done with the thoughts that I'm having about myself and the event are continuing. And so even though the event happened a week ago, my thoughts and my nervous system are really preoccupied with the concept of blame or criticism or judgment. And so when I'm able to understand how to label clean pain versus dirty pain, I can start to examine my emotional reactions and then any thoughts that are associated with those. One other way to really help with this, and it's very difficult for humans to do it's really challenging is to think of yourself as a reporter maybe from 30 years ago when they reported facts better. But think of yourself as a reporter and you're only reporting the facts. That's all you're going to do. This is called up objective observation as opposed to subjective. And with objective observation, what we're doing is we are reporting or stating exactly what happened according to what we hear or saw, not according to our surmises, not according to made up motivations that we have for what happened. And so if I were able to understand the concept of clean versus dirty pain, and also understand the objective, explanation, explanations or reporting about it, this is what I would say to myself. On Tuesday morning, I bumped into the back of someone's car, we pulled over, there was no damage to the car. And we both drove away. That's it. That's what happened. It was something those were things that I could see or hear. It's exactly what happened without my own narrative coming into play and making terrible meaning about what happened. When we are able to do that, we can identify it and understand that we are likely, if we are in emotional distress or suffering after the event far after the event, we're likely engaging in dirty pain. And the brain is really automatic at assuming motivation for things. It is a really difficult thing to challenge. But once you understand the concept, there can be a lot of freedom from suffering. I'm gonna give you an example. So if I am waiting at a restaurant for my friend, and my friend is 20 minutes late. I can be uncomfortable concerned, have some emotions around that. But when my thoughts get going, and make up reasons for why my friend is 20 minutes late, I have now entered the realm of suffering. And this is something that I can notice and can take steps to eliminate. If I sit in the restaurant and think oh my gosh, I cannot believe this. Clearly, my friend does not care about me. Okay, that's suffering. If I'm in the restaurant, and I think, Hmm, well, she obviously doesn't prioritize our friendship. Okay. Note in this instance, that she was 20 minutes late to lunch. That's, that's it. That is the fact. That doesn't mean that she doesn't care about me that she doesn't prioritize our friendship. All of those are made up motivations that I'm using to explain the incident. And it could be that she is stuck in traffic, and her phone is in the truck, because she practices safe driving and hates getting texts while she's driving. There are lots of possible explanations for this. So this is the second thing that we can do. That's really helpful when we have an event, and we have a lot of narrative that we're making up about the meaning of that event. What we can do is we can stop ourselves and say, What are other possible explanations for this? This does a couple of things. It allows us to practice flexible thinking. It takes us out of some of the dirty pain or the suffering. And it helps us understand that the motivation we're giving or the explanation that we're giving to the event is not the only one. I remember when I was working with young teens. And I first started figuring all of this out. And I had a kid that came into session, a lot of anxiety. And he had been to school and at lunch, there were a bunch of kids sitting at the table and they were passing around a bag of chips, but they didn't offer him any. And he was the only kid that didn't get offered the chips. And he came in and he was really distressed about that. And so we talked a little bit about the feelings that come when we are singled out the feelings that come when
maybe we're not included. And then I realized that if I could help him find other possible explanations, it might calm his nervous system down and eliminate some of his suffering. These alternate explanations did not have to be realistic or accurate. So I brought up my whiteboard and we made a list of crazy and maybe realistic reasons or explanations why he didn't get the chips. Now you This teenager that I was working with was really, really, really slim. And so we started making these lists. And he said, they don't like me. I said, Okay, that's a possible explanation. What's another one? He said, I can't think of any. And I said, Okay, what if they thought you're overweight? And so they didn't give me any chips because they were trying to help you be healthy? And he said, That's ridiculous. I said, I know. But is it possible. And we determined some really crazy explanations for that event, that didn't have to be so personal and didn't have to include rejection for my, for my client. And again, I'm not saying that, that my crazy explanation was accurate. What I'm saying is that, as we get better at practicing flexible thinking, as we get better at understanding what happened from a Just the Facts standpoint, when we get better at understanding what is clean pain, and what is suffering or dirty pain, then we have the opportunity to take steps to remediate that, we can take steps to reduce some of the suffering that occurs. Again, this takes a lot of practice, but it is so freeing and I would encourage all of you to take an opportunity to put this into play sometime in the next week or two, find an event at which you have a lot of thoughts and feelings. Report it as just the facts what you could see or hear. Identify any pain that comes from that. And then identify what thoughts you have around it and what you are making up or surmising about the motivation or the reasons why this thing happened, this painful thing happened. I would encourage you to do that. It's a really great exercise, you probably won't remember it until after the event occurs. And that's fine. When we are in a lot of pain and suffering emotionally, our blood flow is cut off to our prefrontal cortex and that's where our tools live. Our interventions live. And so the most encouraging thing I can say is that once you come back into a state where your nervous system is not in fight or flight, then take an opportunity to use some of your tools then it won't have been in the moment but it can still offer benefits and relief. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the universe is your therapist. Please take a look at our program peace after trauma. We look forward to hearing from you and hope that we can work with you. Thank you.
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