[PODCAST TRANSCRIPT]
Hello everyone, I’m Savannah Alalia, and welcome to the latest episode of the High Functioning Human podcast, where you connect to yourself as a high-functioning human. Today, I’m going to speak about the difference between pain and suffering. I’ve spoken about pain in various other blogs and podcasts, and I often say that pain is your friend and numb is your enemy. This is because I believe that the ability to feel pain and understand what needs to be done about it is a huge gift. It’s a key—perhaps the key—to understanding what it means to be a High Functioning Human with a deep connection to your body and to your intuition.
Now, where am I going with this? Well, there’s a twist. Pain should be a transitional state.
It’s meant to be a guide for you rather than becoming a permanent resident in your life. The challenge arises when pain leads to prolonged suffering, a state that’s all too easy to normalise. And when I’m speaking about pain here, I mean both physically and emotionally. You need to start thinking of pain as a signal rather than a state of being. Your body talks. When you’re feeling tired, you know you need to sleep. When you’re feeling hungry, you know you need to eat. Ignoring these signals will only make them worse or louder. The same is true for pain.
Pain is your body talking to you, saying that something is wrong. Human beings are, in their truest nature, endurance creatures. As hunter-gatherers, we survived purely due to our ability to keep going longer than any other animals. This capacity to outlast is part of why so many people seem to live their lives enduring or suffering constant pain. Endurance is great when it comes to running marathons or chasing wildebeests, but when you have chronic pain, it can be all too easy to let the pain consume you to the point where the thought of enduring any more becomes intolerable. In a fight-or-flight scenario, it can feel simpler to just give up that fight.
If you choose to continue to stay in pain, that’s where you’re straying into the realms of suffering. When you’re talking about the endurance of pain in everyday life, the choice to stay in suffering is nothing to be proud of. Imagine you’re dealing with recurring pain, perhaps a physical discomfort or an emotional wound. Initially, this pain alerts you to a problem. But what happens when you ignore or suppress the pain without dealing with the cause?
The problem with ignoring pain for too long is that your signals can dull to the point where you eventually become numb. This happens in other systems, too. For example, did you know that you can get so thirsty that the thirst mechanism switches off? I’ve written a blog called Uncomfortably Numb that addresses this, so make sure to check it out. Personally, pain has been a significant part of my journey, and I’ve been in and out of chronic pain since an injury twelve years ago when I cracked my sacrum. But really, the root of the pain goes back much longer than that, even into my childhood.
One of the reasons why pain can get stuck in your body for such a long time is that unless you feel safe enough to release it, your body can keep you in stasis, like a protection mechanism. Only by simultaneously addressing the emotional and physical knots together will you be able to work through them to reach any sort of long-term healing. As I addressed my own pain through various things, including fascial release work and other body work, I often found myself confronting even more intense physical and emotional pain as part of the healing process. As rough as it sounds, this is completely normal.
In these moments, being kind to yourself and recognizing that you are deserving of stepping out of that suffering is really essential. Believing that you deserve happiness and freedom must become a core belief, as this conviction is often what carries you through the toughest changes needed to move beyond pain.
When it comes to moving past pain, fascia release has been an invaluable tool in my own healing journey. My Your Face Symmetry program is an excellent starting point for those interested in using fascia release to target deeper pain and emotional stuckness, particularly through facial techniques. If this resonates with you and you’re curious about exploring how fascia release can aid you in your transformation, check out the Your Face Symmetry program. It’s designed to help you begin addressing any underlying issues that contribute to your pain, paving the way for a more connected and joyful life.
Remember, the journey to becoming a High Functioning Human is just that—a journey. There are no quick fixes, and you have to believe in yourself to make the changes that you deserve. Trust your instincts and follow your intuition, because the world needs your voice and the magic it brings to us all.
Jump on my mailing list to stay reminded and connected with your intuition, plus some special things I only share in email. I look forward to chatting with you next time on the High Functioning Human podcast.
Take care and talk soon.
As always, I remain a cheerleader for your inner self-worth,
