Sometimes we choose our pain because it's easier than choosing to heal.
I was talking to a friend this week, and honestly, I hear from a lot of people all around me - "Life's so hard right now." "Things are so challenging." "I can't catch a break." Look, I get it. Life throws stuff at us. But something's been sitting with me since that conversation - I wonder if we just choose our pain, choose our stress, choose our depression, rather than heal.
I've been working with clients for years now, and I keep seeing the same pattern. We hold onto our stories not because we have to, but because of how they make us feel. And they're not good feelings - but it feeds something. It's how we assign it to our ego, our identity, our purpose. And that's the reason why we stay exactly where we are.
I'm not talking about the initial hit. The initial disappointment, the initial trauma - those things are real, and they're valid, and they happen to us. I'm talking about what we do after it. How long we carry it. How we wrap our whole identity around it.
For years, I held onto the pain of my past - harsh words, traumatic experiences, disappointments, failures, painful friendships, pain within my family. And I still hold onto some current things. I held onto all of it. Those stories are what I made my life to be. It was like I was living wearing sunglasses indoors. And boy, how funny that looks. But every new experience, I filtered through old hurt and old pain. A compliment felt like somebody's pity towards me. An opportunity looked like another chance to get hurt.
And the crazy part? Just like the sunglasses, after a while, we forget that we're wearing them. And it just becomes normal. It becomes safe. But here's what I realized - and this is where it gets uncomfortable - I was wearing my pain like a badge. "Look at what I've been through. Look at how much I've survived." It gave me value. It gave me something to talk about. It gave me an excuse for why things were the way they were.
Here's something I've learned: your brain literally wires itself around the stories that you keep telling it. Every time you replay that argument, that betrayal, that moment everything fell apart - you're strengthening those neural pathways. So when you've been "the person who got screwed over" for three years, your nervous system has organized around that. Letting go feels like losing yourself.
This is why people choose familiar pain over unfamiliar peace. Your ego loves a good pain story. "At least I know who I am in my suffering." But here's something that just kind of fell out of my mouth in conversation the other day: we choose how long we carry our pain.
The hard part isn't the pain itself. The hard part is choosing to let go of the identity we've built around it. Because if I'm not "the person who got betrayed," then who am I?
Taking off those sunglasses meant seeing things as they actually were, which honestly felt scarier than staying in the familiar darkness. But the light was always there. I just couldn't see it through the old lenses.
I'm not saying "just get over it" - that's garbage advice. I'm saying maybe we can hold our pain without letting it hold us. Maybe we can honor what happened without making it our whole personality.
Maybe the next time you catch yourself telling that story - you know, that story - you can ask yourself: Am I processing this or am I rehearsing it? Am I healing or am I feeding it?
And if you're feeling brave: What would I make room for if I loosened my grip on this?
Keep Growing,
Joel
What's hitting you as you read this? I'm curious what comes up.
PS - I still have 4 more "Let's Retire Retirement" books by Derek Coburn to give away free. If you would like one, reply to this email.
