How Do I Deal With Pain?

[LowPlanetary]

In order to be happy you need to grow your consciousness and other facets of your life. In order to grow those facets of your life you need to work hard. The whole point of working hard is to feel pain. IF i'm gonna be working all the time, while not being able to distract myself with lower consciousness instant gratification, how am i gonna be able to deal with it? I don't know if it's the same for everyone, I've just noticed that throughout my life i'm incapable of dealing with pain, and a lot of the time when i do i feel some sort of pain i start having thoughts like i'd rather die than feel pain. Therefore i take shortcuts to get what i need to get done by getting myself to enjoy it, but isn't that just running away? So the only way i can think of fixing this problem is by practicing feeling pain, but ironically it's too painful to practice feeling pain. But i guess this is just me being lazy, but i have no idea how to deal with it.

Edited January 7, 2017 by LowPlanetary

[Birdcage]

there is no way to avoid pain. you need to find the comfort between pain and pleasure. pain teaches you stuff as well and you come out stronger. 

I think you need to stay in the uncomfortable painful place in order to rise above it. stay there, cry, and welcome whatever is coming to you. you wont die. you will heal. stay there as long as you need to, until you are OK with it. accept it and then move on

[Tibor]

@LowPlanetary If you resist pain the more you atract pain. If you have none resistens there also will be no pain.

Its like taking the duality out of it. Pain exsists because of fear for it. Take the fear away pain will go.

[Christian]

I find pain to be a counter intuitive topic. I used to believe that pain was this real thing that just hits you when someone says or does something hurtful. But the new perspective I have adopter is that pain comes from resistance to reality or truth. And to an extend, there is a proportional relationship between pain and resistance meaning the more you resist truth, the more pain you feel. 

So if you want to get rid of pain, stop resisting the truth. Let it be and develop mindfulness over the pain. In other words, be the watcher.  Then the pain will lessen incromentally over time if you stay vigilent. 

Daily mindfulness/meditation helps a lot here. Watch Leo's videos on meditation to learn more, highly reccomend it. 

[Vaishnavi]

I totally understand and can relate since this was and to an extent is the case for me. You continue to avoid the pain only to realise at the end that there is no other way, really. But its like the cold shower, you fear it and you don't want it in the beginning. In fact it hurt and you want to run away but only if you decide to stay a little longer that you realise that its so worth it. 

Do you see all these marketers trying to sell us stuff? Why do we love the greasy food and netflix and the stupid cat videos? well because all these things promote instant gratification and helps us to avoid pain. Just like leo said, our culture is always up to spoil us. And now you might think what does it has to do with facing pain. Well it has a very direct relation. They make us more prone to instant gratification and help us to avoid the real work to be done. Try curing your addictions since they drain your willpower and make you more vulnerable.  I'd recommend you to become more aware and mindful about the things you choose to avoid pain.  It can be an addiction or any activity of yours which you choose to neglect the work you should be doing, (the painful activity)

Try taking up cold showers every morning and doing meditation for it works. And be patient above all, for i've been working on this for quite a long time now, but I still struggle with it. 

And and, read this book titled The war of art by Steven Pressfield. Probably one of the best books written which deals with this exact same issue, resistance. 

[LowPlanetary]

Yeah i understand the whole idea of building the discipline through meditation, which eventually allows you to be able to not resist pain, including doing other things, but my problem is getting myself to do those things that will help me not feel so much pain in the long run. But, stuff like meditation and mindfulness make you experience mental pain in the moment, and the only way to not feel that pain is to feel it. Since the ability to not be so effected or prone to pain isn't a way of thinking about things that you can influence just by the flick of a switch, it's through some more hard work. And i guess i'm just not patient enough to slowly build up my resistance, since let's say i start off by doing 5 minute meditation sessions, when i eventually keep ramping it up to 20 minutes that's when my motivation and willingness to do it starts to waver. And that happens in so many areas of my life it feels like i'll never get out of this rut of being so mentally weak and sensitive to the point where it's paralyzing. 

Except i think i used to be more mentally strong a few months ago, but i injured my dominant arm and i can't do what i seem to rely the most which is make art, now i'm just not motivated to do anything and motivating myself to feel pain just seems impossible. So i guess it's just really a problem with motivation.