A Coaching Power Tool By Russel Kruger, Life Coach, SOUTH AFRICA
Understanding the Difference Between Pain vs. Suffering
Learning objectives:
- Understanding, in the coaching context, the concept that a little pain often prevents long-term suffering.
- Learning how to use this distinction to shift and re-frame perspectives of self-development; to explore, empathize, innovate, navigate, and activate positive mind-management control.
- Learning how to assist clients to address difficulties and establish a new awareness, new insights, and actions, and persevere through the difficult times they face.
Model Summary:
If only I can take your pain to prevent the suffering:
A great long-time friend of mine developed a tumor on the left side of his brain. Unfortunately, the tumor had to be surgically removed. Prior to the operation, he experienced months of preparation, that ultimately culminated in many days of uncontrollable pain, anxiety, and uncertainty for his friend.
While undergoing the pre-operation preparation, my friend spent almost three months in the hospital. Together with him in the hospital ward, were three other male patients. The relationship between the four men grew, and an incredible bond was formed between them, as they all faced uncertain futures. Through the pain and fear, the men confided in one another and made discoveries and epiphanies regarding what was important in their lives.
Sadly, one by one, my friend lost every single one of his newfound brothers, as all three passed away after their surgeries. Not only was he struggling with constant physical pain, he now had to endure the pain of losing people he had grown to love.
Eventually, the time came for my friend to have his operation. Understandably he was afraid. His operation was intense and took him on a seven-hour journey of excruciating pain. And if things could not get worse, he was not allowed to use any form of pain control whatsoever.
My friend had to dig deep to hang in there and stay alive. At times he even prayed that he could just let go and accept death as the pain took over his body.
However, the conversations he had had with his friends in that hospital ward, came back to him. Between the pain, the epiphanies his friends had shared with him swirled around his mind. And he slowly began to reflect on the suffering he was facing in a new context.
He remembered the heartache on the faces of his friends’ family members when they were told that they had lost their husbands and father. He remembered how they had grieved inconsolably over the massive loss of the men they loved most in their lives.
What his friends’ families had to endure in grief, enabled him to suffer through the pain he was facing, and continue on, as my friend did not want his family to go through the same grief.
He realized the deep love the families had for their three days, and he realized the deep love his own family had for him. These realizations enabled him to fight and keep going through the excruciating pain he was enduring.
While he lay there, his mind and thoughts took him to the deep love he had for his own children. It helped him refocus his mind off the pain and look forward to the joy he would have once he was reunited with them.
His love for his family enabled him to find the courage to go through the pain so that his family would not go through the long-term suffering of losing their husband and father. The utter devastation he witnessed when his friends passed away, and the grief that was felt by their families, activated a deep desire in him to find the will to fight the pain and live.
Using Pain vs. Suffering to Motivate a Person
Hearing the difference between pain and suffering is something we can all relate to.
The International Association for the Study of Pain defines pain as; “An unpleasant sensory and emotional experience associated with, or resembling, that associated with actual or potential tissue damage”.
Medically, pain is regarded as a system of underlying conditions. Pain motivates a person to withdraw from damaging situations, protect a damaged body part while it heals, and avoid similar experiences in the future. In some debates regarding physician-assisted suicide or euthanasia, pain has been used as an argument to permit people, who are terminally ill, to end their lives.
The context of the pain we go through can determine the motivational aspect of whether we persist or whether we give up. Understanding the Medical Association of Pain regarding how our body relates, as a warning system, also allows us to press on and gives us a reason to persist through the pain. The old adage of “no pain; no gain” has been the foundation of many sports teams’ preparations.
When one has to consider the long-term emotional pain, in context to the everlasting suffering one faces after the death of a loved one, the short-term physical pain almost becomes nothing in relation to the long-term pain. This often has an incredible bearing on how we, as humans, find a way to innovate and navigate new paths or solutions, when we are faced with highly stressful situations.
Enduring Pain to Prevent Suffering:
Often, we need to establish why we would put ourselves through physical or emotional pain. We need to take into effect the long-term positive result of our suffering. In the case of my friend, he related two aspects to enabling his pain to be transformed into gain.
- Once he saw the benefit of staying alive in order to see his family again, his entire thought process shifted. This, no doubt, kept him going on. This was indeed a positive shift.
However, he also related a negative past event that kept him alive. This was in the context of re-framing what he had suffered himself when his own father was brutally murdered some years back. This too, gave him added power, as it allowed him to empathize with people who had lost a parent. It gave him enormous power to ensure his children did not go through the same trauma and indeed gave him a positive force and strong desire to see his children grow up.
- In essence, as my friend did, we need to discover WHY we are willing to go through pain. Why we are willing to endure pain? We need to establish what drives the choice to accept the pain and explore the power of a positive outcome, through the tool of re-framing our minds.
Example: The Undisciplined Child
Consider, if you will, the disciplining of a child.
In days past, it was not unheard of to punish a disobedient child with well-controlled hiding. There was short-term emotional pain for the parent who executed the hiding, as well as short-term physical pain for the child who received the hiding.
We can however re-frame this short-term pain when we consider the possible long-term suffering of both parent and child if the child grows up with no boundaries or discipline. In adulthood, the undisciplined child is more likely to make painful decisions because of their upbringing.
For example, the child, now a grown-up, and having been taught that there are no consequences in life, assault someone because they cannot control their anger management issues. The person the grown-up child assaulted then dies. The grown-up child then ends up being imprisoned. This terrible outcome stems right back to their childhood, and the lack of short-term pain and discipline in their life.
In this context, the short-term pain, or the hiding, far outweighs the long-term suffering or the imprisonment. We must consider how hiding reinforces the discipline to control one’s emotions, instead of reinforcing the lack of self-control.
Ultimately, when one deals with a particular problem through short-term pain, for long-term gain, it often reignites the passion and desire to fulfill the necessary steps to endure this short-term pain, knowing it will benefit in the long run. This often is an enabling factor to activate change and then take action.
Re-Framing:
We need to look at positive values to reinforce the desire to take necessary action, and to fight through the pain we are enduring, in whatever circumstances we may face.
Consider these positive values, as an example or reason to complete a vigorous training program, that perhaps would take an incredible amount of time and pain to complete.
Honor, respect, recognition, adventure, commitment, determination, discipline, optimism, self-trust, challenge, and health – are all values that would drive someone to go through whatever it is they need, to achieve the intended result.
In every negative situation, focus on how you can:
- Explore different options to turn the situation into a positive one.
- Empathize with yourself and go easy on yourself. You don’t have to compete or beat yourself up.
- Innovate ideas that will inspire you to take lessons learned from your hard times.
- Navigate a new mindset and path forward, that is positive.
- Activate rewards of self-recognition and celebrate what you can learn in all situations.
The Key to Unlocking the Power To Endure Pain vs. Suffering
Consider, in your own context, what drives you and what your belief systems are, in relation to enduring short-term pain that you may be going through, in order to reach an intended long-term result.
Recognizing the reason, the aim, or the “why” you want to achieve change, is the catalyst to action and fulfilling your desire and end result.
Finding a purpose to endure the sufferings of today, is nothing compared with the joy of achieving the end result. It is the key to unlocking the power to endure these short-term sufferings, knowing there is a positive long-term end result waiting for you.