Our entire lives are driven by avoiding pain.

We overwork to avoid the pain of feeling worthless.

We please others to avoid the pain of feeling rejected.

We’re perfectionists to avoid the pain of feeling criticized.

We overthink to avoid the pain of feeling anxiety.

When we feel pain, a lot of us blame the stress around us. We think a new friend group or a fresh start in a different city will fix everything….

We repeat these patterns every day, numbing out or running away from the wounds inside of us. Eventually, our nervous system feels burnt out from all the effort, and we crash. We change our jobs, location, and partners without acknowledging that the pain is internal.

But here’s the thing: the stress isn’t just out there, it’s inside us. We carry it with us no matter where we go.

Changing your environment might give temporary relief, but it’s like putting a band-aid on a deeper wound. Your patterns— the fears you avoid and the ways you cope —will keep generating stress until you face them.

It’s not easy to look within and address those fears, but that’s where true freedom lies. The hard truth is that until you are willing to own your pain, it will own you. Own your pain, confront those fears, and break the cycle. Otherwise, you can keep running, but the stress will keep following.

This is one of our biggest goals in therapy, both individual therapy and relationship therapy – we learn to get comfortable sitting in discomfort. We learn to accept pain as a natural part of life that we cannot avoid feeling, and we learn to heal our relationship with it.

Seems challenging?

Send me a message and we'll do the work together.