Why We Shouldn’t Be So Frightened of Pain kathryns-blog.com /not-frightened-of-pain/ Kathryn » Posted by Kathryn on Wednesday, 25 May , 2016 in Articles Inspiring Thought and Growth | 0 comments The old saying “What doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger” has some merit. What doesn’t kill you may leave you as a cripple, or without a limb! But there is a big difference between losing an arm and getting a scratch. We go through so much trying to protect the ones we love as well as buffering our lives so that we avoid as much pain as possible. I mean, it sounds logical and almost evolutionary to avoid pain, but is it a good thing? What is avoiding pain doing to us and our families? Are we strong enough to cope with the real world? What are some of the benefits of pain? I’ll discuss these and more below.
Are we really doing the best for our children? I remember when my daughter was in day care, she often came home with bumps and bruises. They had to do a couple of incident reports when she was a toddler because one of the blessed darlings was going through a biting stage. I was always relatively laid back about these sorts of things. Not that I liked her getting bitten, but part of living in our world is people skills, and adults can bite quite hard too. So many children are being wrapped up in cotton wool so it’s refreshing to see that people are starting to see this as a bad thing and making changes now. I grew up in a small town, alongside some incredibly volatile people. If I had not been taught respect as a child, and had the small pain of discipline then, I could have had the absolute snot kicked out of me as a teenager. When babies learn to walk they fall over so much, but then they get back up again and keep trying. Pain guides us to what is not working and alerts us that something needs to change.
Without Pain We Wouldn’t Stop If we never got sick or had pain we wouldn’t know that our bodies were injured or under attack. We wouldn’t stop when we were burnt out, we wouldn’t sleep, we wouldn’t take care of ourselves. If you are one of those people who learns from getting out there and doing things, the pain of getting something wrong, of loss or of sadness teaches us to try harder and do something differently.
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If you spend your life running away from pain you won’t ever learn and you won’t ever grow. You’ll just spend your life running and avoiding things. Pain is unavoidable, no matter what you do. When someone you love dearly passes away, that horrible ache is a reminder to you that they meant something to you and that you did love and appreciate them. Learning how to embrace the lows of life, grieve properly and feel gratitude for the goodness in the world gives you a depth of compassion and empathy that wasn’t present before. You can have a much stronger connection with others who have experienced the same thing and help them through it.
No Pain No Gain You know how exercising burns? Your muscles for days after ache but if you push through and keep up a good exercising routine and protein rich diet your muscles grow. Do you know why that is? One theory is that weight exercises cause micro-tears. So the idea is that you lift the heaviest weight that you can (with good form please) and after a few sets your muscles won’t let you lift any more. The theory is that by lifting this weight you are damaging your muscles just infinitesimally, enough for your body to recognise that it needs to repair the muscle. You finish your exercise routine and have protein (a shake or as food) and then your body utilises this and goes in and makes your muscles stronger so that it can cope with that load better next time. Now you keep repeating until you have some lovely big muscles! This theory lines up with Homeopathy a little as well. Another example is when we get immunised. We have injected into us a small (what I believe is) “dead” virus with the cure. Our body fights this small disease and learns how to combat it if it encounters it again. One other theory (and I’m so sorry I can’t find the page to back this up) by Dr Michael Mosley I believe, is that vegetables, particularly greens, have small amounts of poisons in them as well as all of the vitamins and nutrients in them. By ingesting the vegetables whole, we are doing the same thing as above. The poisons slightly damage our bodies and then the vitamins come in and repair us, thus making us stronger.
Credit: www.theherald.com.au
I will point out though I haven’t heard anyone else with this theory, though there is a lot of arguments and studies showing that vitamins might not be as good as we once thought they were, at least in the long term.
Sooo… Life is life. Without the night how can we appreciate the sunset or the stars? A little pain makes us stronger, makes us push harder, makes us try more, makes us appreciate life and love and food and friendships and everything! Don’t be afraid of your children falling down. Life is learning how to get back up again and knowing that the people
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you love will be there when things really get hard. Humanity has come a long way in the past 150 years, but we have so much to learn still. In many ways this world is perfectly designed for us to grow and learn in‌ or we are perfectly designed for it. I hope for humanity’s sake we start learning faster soon. Take Care. Kathryn. Digital Marketer and Entrepreneur You can find me on Facebook Email me at: Kathryn@WomenSeekWisdom.com Check out my Home Page
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