The DIfference Between Pain & Suffering

Catherine Corrigan, author of What Is Healing? Awaken Your Intuitive Power for Health and Happiness, http://amzn.to/GRTW7z, a Health Intuitive, wrote this blog post. You can find out more about Catherine and her wonderful new book on her blog, www.catherinecarrigan.comCatherine’s book, What Is Healing? Awaken Your Intuitive Power for Health and Happiness, just reached Number 1 on Amazon in two categories last week – medicine and psychology and alternative medicine reference books.The Difference Between Pain and SufferingThere’s a difference between pain and suffering.Pain is the physical experience. It’s an ache in your muscles, the strain in your joints, the fever and chills, the throbbing in your temples, the congestion in your sinuses, the stabbing in your upper back, the shooting sharpness down your leg.Suffering is your emotional experience. Suffering may or may not be connected to physical pain. You can suffer emotionally even on a sunny day when nothing apparently bad is happening to you on the outside. Suffering is the negative story you are telling yourself about what is happening now, what has happened in the past or what could potentially happen in the future. As they say, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. As human beings, sooner or later we experience the vicissitudes of life. The rain comes. We lose our job. The value of our investments go down. We stub our toe, break our foot, catch a cold, contract an infection, get a bad report from our doctor.It’s easy when these things happen to take it all personally, as if somehow nobody other than you is going through anything halfway challenging. It is helpful from a spiritual perspective to understand that pain is actually an aspect of our collective human experience. We all experience birth and death, two of the most traumatic events that will ever happen to any of us. If I am doing a healing with a client, part of what I do is thresh out the difference between your physical pain and your emotional suffering. It is my experience that if you try to get rid of a physical pain without also clearing the emotions behind the pain – the suffering – you will not actually be able to clear the physical pain totally. It may morph into another direction, another organ, another layer of your energy field, but your pain won’t totally go away until you also let go of your emotional suffering at the same time. This is why if I am doing a healing, I identify the goal – say to get rid of the pain in your shoulder – and then find the emotion or emotions plural – behind the pain. Once I identify all aspects of the story of your suffering about the physical pain then I lock the information into your subconscious mind and clear the whole thing – the pain and suffering – at the same time. Many people are not able to get rid of their pain completely because they have not actually confronted themselves about their suffering. We can be so heavily invested in our tales of sorrow and woe that we have no clue how much every time we repeat that negative story the chemistry that story creates in our body mind triggers the physical pain. Next time you are in physical pain, pause to ask yourself, “What is the emotion I am suffering with this?” Identify your emotions in as great a detail as you can. If possible, see if the feelings began at an earlier age in your life. Many times our negative story started early on – even at birth. Sometimes we know this story because we have told it to ourselves so many times, possibly through our entire life. The quicker you can let go of your emotional suffering, the sooner you can be done with your physical pain. Posted by Deborah McTiernanAuthor of Lilly Noble & Actual MagicParanormal books for teenagersDares readers to believe in themselves and discover the magic within!