In my own psychotherapy practice, pain is a motivator to healing. It’s a common sight during sessions.
Emotional or mental pain, in particular. People want relief and recovery.
By pain, I refer to a person experiencing significant difficulty and suffering in handling life’s issues.
Dr. Leon Saul, a psychiatrist and professor from the School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, writes:
“No one is fully mature emotionally, or in perfect harmony with his desires, his conscience, and the outer world about him. This discrepancy between the desire and the fulfillment is expressed in the degree of unhappiness, emotional tension and ‘neurosis’ which everyone sustains.”
Those who are threatened by physical illness, marital distress, or mental suffering, they are the ones motivated to go beyond their present level.
As Fritz Kunkel once pointed out, no one makes any significant change in his life, circumstances, personality, or relationship until he is motivated by pain of some kind.
Melissa, a 57-year-old wife, was blacks and blues on her face when she saw me. For several years, she endured her husband’s physical and psychological abuse.
The “last straw” was when her husband threatened her with a gun and brought a woman into their bedroom. She reached her pain threshold and finally sought help.
With the deep wound and stab of abuse as a motivating force, Melissa finally sought out a therapist, a lawyer, and the police.
It took Melissa a long time to finally take the appropriate actions to save her self. Pain helped her.
Pain is a motivator to healing, yes. But it appears that everyone has his or her own gradient scale of pain before taking appropriate actions.
In a sense, people then should rejoice in pain. Strange as it sounds, pain can be an advantage.
Every moment of pain is an opportunity for growth, wholeness, and freedom.
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