Daily Tips from The Marriage Library.com
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To Understand Pain,
Ask "How," Not "Why."
 
By Steven Stosny  
 
July 10, 2012                                                                       Issue 957           

  

Summary of this article

  

Dr Steven Stosny has a profound insight into anger, pain, and resentment. He is one of the best known therapists who has studied and treated it successfully in 1000's of cases.

 

God bless your family and your marriage.

 

Jim  

 
 

To Understand Pain, Ask "How," Not "Why."

 

By Steven Stosny in Anger in the Age of Entitlement blog

 

Dwelling on the possible causes of emotional pain is more likely to exacerbate it than to ameliorate it.

 

This is especially true when the hidden purpose of examining the possible causes is to assign blame.

 

To justify blame, we tend to magnify pain. Attributing blame then stimulates anger to punish the perceived offender. Biologically, the association of pain/vulnerability with anger is almost irresistible; anger has survival-based analgesic and amphetamine effects - it temporarily numbs pain and provides a surge of energy and confidence to ward-off threat.

 

But each repetition of this process reinforces perceived damage and vulnerability by making defense seem more necessary.

 

Over time, the blame-anger response congeals into chronic resentment, which is a generalized, automatic defensive system geared to protect an ego made fragile by the perceived need of protection.

 

To the resentful person, painful emotions are not motivations to heal and improve but punishments inflicted by an unfair world. They try to control what other people think by devaluing or coercing them, thereby reinforcing the vulnerability they seek to avoid.

 

The Illusion of Control: Looking for It in All the Wrong Places

 

Consider how little control we have over the things that most profoundly influence our lives. How many of us got to choose our parents? Did we decide the illnesses, accidents, medications, and substance use of our mothers during pregnancy? Who decided where and when they were born, how much money their families would have, what early childhood sickness or accidents they would experience, which schools they would go to and what kind of teachers and friends they would find there? Who chose whether other children would like or bully them, support or antagonize them, respect or humiliate them?

 

Controlling the Meaning of Your Life

 

You cannot control most of the major influences on your life, but you have absolute control over what they mean to you. If you control the meaning of events in your life by creating as much value as you can, you will have a sense of purpose and personal power. If you control it by devaluing yourself or others, you create a chronic sense of powerlessness, characterized by roller-coaster rides of adrenalin-driven resentment that crash into depressed moods.

 

Rather than focus on the possible causes of pain and vulnerability, try to sort out what each hurtful incident means to you and what you can do to heal and improve. But do this important assessment with self-compassion, not self-criticism.

 

Preoccupation with the causes of emotional pain tends to push us deeper into pain and bitterness; interpreting its meaning reveals motivation to heal and improve and moves us toward a brighter future.

 

 

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Jim Stephens
The Marriage Library
 20112011