Pain that is Not Transformed will Always be Transmitted?

I am always so inspired by Brene Brown. If you haven’t watched any of her talks on YouTube or read any of her books, do yourself a favour now and google her. You too will be nothing but inspired. She is a research psychologist and specializes in shame and vulnerability (in a nutshell).

Another person I find particularly interesting is Russell Brand. Russel is a former heroine addict, a comedian and such an insightful person, having written his own 12 step programme for recovery as well as a number of books on addiction. He has the most amazing vocabulary and for me, has an ability to connect with people in a way that not many other people I’ve listened to or watched, can.

So today, I was watching a talk show that Russel Brand has which is called Under the Skin and he was interviewing Brene Brown. Quite a combination of thought-provoking individuals to listen to. One of the things that Brene was talking about is how important healing is. She had this to say : “Pain that is not transformed will always be transmitted.”

I would like you to pause there and read that sentence again – Pain that is not transformed will always be transmitted. How profound is that? Or you may ask what exactly does she mean?

This is my interpretation – when we experience pain in our lives, we hold onto it, like a security blanket that can become what defines us. I’ve mentioned a number of times that the decisions that we make come from that place inside of us that we believe ourselves to be. We manifest exactly what we believe we deserve. When we experience pain and we don’t work through it and we hold onto it, we transmit that pain onto others, whether we are aware of it or not.

So often relationships don’t work out because the two people coming into that relationship have what is often referred to as baggage that they bring with them into the relationship. We bring along with us every experience, every hurt and disappointment and every negative emotion that we’ve ever felt, that we haven’t let go of. And sometimes we believe that we have let go of them and then that one thing happens that triggers all those emotions again, and everything comes bubbling back up to the surface and we end up transmitting the pain that we should have transformed.

I’m not a psychologist, but I know enough through the experiences of my own life to know that I have done these exact things over and again. And we all do it and then question why we don’t get what our soul knows that we need or what our hearts long for. We have to know that we live what we have been exposed to and by that I mean, when we as children were exposed to relationships that were tumultuous or where we were treated badly, we grow up believing that we’re not worthy of more. We grow up believing that it is normal for us to be treated badly and to not have anything in our lives and so we live that truth. And even if our intelligent thought processes tell us that we should be worth more, if we don’t work through the pain that was caused through being treated badly, we will always be taking that pain into all our relationships and the end result will be, constant chaos and heartache.

This is why I say that healing is so important to our wellbeing. We do this through setting boundaries and setting boundaries means that we let people know what we expect from them and we expect from ourselves, our absolute best at all times.

During the interview, Russel asked Brene whether she thought that people were always doing the best that they can. And an interesting conversation ensued from there. If you had to ask yourself, do you believe that people are doing the best that they can, you’d probably say no. From my perspective, I say that you have to remember that you are included in that collective and do you believe that you are doing the best that you can with what you have? Brene Brown’s response went something like this. She has done a number of interviews with some clergymen and she asked them to write down on a piece of paper the name of a person who they believed was not doing their best. She then asked them to consider if God had to step into the room and tell them that the person that they had thought of, was in fact doing their best with what they have, would that change how they saw that particular person? Of course it would.

I think however, that we have to also define what is our best when we’re looking at ourselves. It’s not for us to judge others and so we need to show compassion for others and always give them the benefit of the doubt – they are doing their best with what they have. Because we have no way of knowing and if we assume that we do, then we’re just actually being arrogant and judgmental of that person. But for ourselves, we know ourselves enough to know if in any instance, we’re doing our best or not. And how do you judge that? It takes being brutally honest with yourself.

Sometimes we’ll slip, sometimes we’ll do our best, sometimes we’ll do even better than our best. It’s all about always checking in with yourself and keeping yourself on the road that you believe that you deserve to be on. Because you owe it to yourself to work on the issues that hold you back from achieving your best. You owe it to yourself to heal the pain and the hurt that you have experienced in the past in order to move forward in your life. And you owe it to your family and loved ones to heal the pain and hurt so that you don’t transmit that pain and hurt to them in your interactions with them.

Learn to find God in everyone. Recognise that we are all an absolute perfect extension of the Great I Am, our Father/Mother God who created us all. Look for the Divine and acknowledge that it resides in you and in everyone else too – there is no separation, only that which exists in our minds and that which we create ourselves. Learn to work on healing your soul and you will find peace and harmony and you will see the shift in your life and find the light burning brighter and the sun shining down on your face.