Managing Pain through a lifetime of one kind or another

 When I was growing up in the 1950s I equated pain mostly with physical pain not psychological pain. I didn't equate the two really or even know how to define things in this way yet. Then I began to study psychology in College in the 1970s in my early 20s and began to realize more about separating physical pain from psychological pain. Then about 1980 or earlier I began to study more about Buddhism and how in Buddhism the view is that Pain is all mental and that physical pain really shouldn't be equated with mental or psychological pain at all.

This was obviously a progression to apply words and concepts to things that I had no concepts for in the more simplistic world I lived in in the 1950s when most people had not been to college then and about 1/2 of the people I met hadn't even finished High School at that time who were adults then. But, both my parents had graduated from High School. So, what I'm saying is even finishing High School was a really big thing for adults in the 1950s. And almost no one I knew had been to college except for my teachers in school before about 1960 or so.

So, as time moved on and I became more and more educated I could realize that the worst pain is always psychological pain not physical pain. In other words, what usually makes people kill themselves is not physical pain (in most situations) but rather psychological wounds that they couldn't cope with for one reason or another.

So, I have found that healing for me became much more doable in my life when I separated physical pain from mental, emotional and psychological pain. Why?

Because mental, emotional and psychological pain can often be addressed through counseling. Once I learned this I could begin to heal the types of pain in myself and others that often cause people either self destruct ( by accident) or to physically kill themselves in more obvious ways.

So, part of the way to heal oneself or others is learning to separate physical pain from mental, emotional and psychological pain. Once you do this and connect with a counselor to help you deal with your psychological pain it becomes more possible to stop yourself from self destructing by one means or another.

By God's Grace