Escaping Pain is an Epidemic, Nor Does it Heal

Escaping Pain Is an Epidemic. Nor Does It Heal

I see way too many people wanting others to escape their pain quickly so that the other person doesn't burden them. It has nothing to do with the person in pain and everything to do with them. "If you have pain, you cause me grief." Be real, many people are like this. "You change. Then I can feel good." However you define pain or hurt, it really doesn't matter. The point that I am making is that others will try to ease your pain rather than allow you to move through it. Many of us like to come to the rescue of someone who is in despair, someone who is lonely, or someone who is having a bad month. I didn't realize that escaping pain is an epidemic.

For example, when a child falls off the bike or falls for that matter, parents quickly grab the child to hug them, or go home and bake some cookies to ease the pain, or even, tell the child that the bike was bad. This is not what we want to do for others! Or, a friend is confused in her life's path, contemplating the direction, which causes some grief or isolation, and we take it as she have a serious problem, come to her rescue, and try to move her quickly into a place that feels good. Another bad choice! Or a sister has a drug addiction, and the siblings coddle her rather than confront her. When will we see what we're really doing?

Being a saviour will hinder the other. It can also make you look like the martyr. But you take away something very precious from that person. When we do this to them, we get them to evade their god given journey they are intended to be on. We take away the gift of learning. But there is something deeper than that, too. The person that's in the mess, usually gets pissed off because you're not allowing them to deal with what they need to. The person that's in the mess, when coddled, can also manipulate. I've seen this game played time and time again.

The rescuer or the saviour is usually more concerned about their own needs rather than the other going through the pain. If they allow the other to deal with their own pain, it puts them in a predicament. What is that predicament? Feelings of discomfort because they don't know how to deal with the other persons pain. Perhaps it reveals 'stuff' that the rescuer needs to deal with and instead they quickly shut the other person down. Or the rescuer has no compassion at all and would rather save themselves telling the person in pain they are in a place that is lacking divinity, shun them off, blame them for putting them in a place that makes them feel bad, and then gossip about it.

I think we, as the saviour, need to take another look at how to deal with other people's pain rather than avoid or deny it by colluding in our own mess about pain! As for the person in pain, we need to experience the pain fully rather than ask someone to take it away. We need to get out of this habit of needing to be rescued.

It is not easy to stay with pain, loneliness, or despair. The temptation is to nurse our pain or to escape into fantasies about people who can take it away. I remember that knight in shining armor. He never came. I learned a lot from him not coming, though. When you can acknowledge your pain, your loneliness, and your despair, in a safe place, you make your pain available for healing.

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