Pain-body Playdates

Pain-body Playdates

Back in the dark ages, I was a phoney. I hate to say it, but it’s true. I was passing myself off as a normal person when I was actually running around in my pain-body. Ok, so what am I talking about?

Pain-body is a concept Eckhart Tolle came up with.

Here’s the way I understand it:

I have a bad thing happen that I don’t fully complete, that is, I choose to deny that it happened, or had any impact on me, or I stuff the emotions away, or lie to myself about it; I have lots of ways to keep from completing whatever the trauma might be. That incompleteness creates a loop of thought and emotion, which creates a feeling. The more of those incomplete experiences I collect, the more dense the feelings become, and the more of those nasty loops I’m creating.

Pretty soon, I’m living in a place that is almost purely negative thought, negative emotions, negative feeling, negative filters, negative life. Yuckers.

And then I have to start pretending. I have to pretend I don’t feel like I’m falling apart. I have to pretend that I can stand living my life. I have to pretend that interacting with you isn’t exhausting. I have to pretend that I’m a normal person. And all that pretending just makes everything worse and worse and worse. So now I’m getting sick because the stress of my pretending eats up my immune system, and I start getting chronic pain, and sick and oh, god, I kind of wish I were dead, but that’s not okay, so it just goes into the pot of feeling bad.

So I’m all full up with pain-body, and it’s looking for other pain-bodies to compare notes, and before long, my life is full of misery buddies, and isn’t the world a horrible place to live.

Ick ick ickety ick ick.

Here’s the thing. This isn’t old emotion. It’s old trauma. We aren’t feeling feelings from the past, we are feeling brand new, fresh feelings about crap we’ve put in our emo basement and pretended to forget about. Over and over again.

Here’s the other thing. It isn’t Truth, it’s just old trauma we’ve already lived through. Yes, sometimes it is beyond horrible. But not addressing it means that it wins, the pain-body wins, and we just suffer, in the present, for junk that happened in the past. It’s like that ugly old tschotshka in my house that I have to tend by keeping it, by cleaning it, moving it. It takes up space that I forget was space. It requires care I could be giving somewhere else. And every time I see it, I feel kind of bad because the person who gave it to me was such a jerk.

Pain-bodies love those tschotshkes, the ones that make us feel bad, or guilty, or ashamed.

There are so many ways to clean up that old crap in your subconscious. Each time you get rid of some you have more room for feeling good. Each time you notice you are in your pain-body, and choose to come back into the light you weaken its hold on you.

I got rid of all the gifts that people gave me I didn’t like, either the gift or the person. I got rid of the old love letters that left me feeling melancholy. The photographs of relationships that don’t make me happy to think of.

Now I have room to just be me.

How have I changed from pretending to be okay to being okay?

(c) Pam Guthrie 2013 all rights reserved 09232013