When the Pain-Body Wakes
There are moments when we react to something happening in the present and, almost immediately, sense that our reaction isn't entirely about what is happening now. Someone makes an innocent comment, and we feel a surge of anger. A partner becomes distant, and suddenly we feel rejected or abandoned. A colleague challenges us and something inside becomes defensive, small or furious. The reaction can feel disproportionate to the event, and afterwards we may wonder, What happened to me? Why did I react like that?
Eckhart Tolle offers one way of understanding these experiences through what he calls the pain-body. He describes it as accumulated emotional pain that can become activated by circumstances in the present. When it is dormant, we may feel relatively peaceful, but something happens that resonates with an older wound, and suddenly the pain comes alive again.
It can feel as though an earlier version of ourselves has entered the room. The person standing in front of us may be our partner, but emotionally we may be responding to someone from our past. The situation is happening today, but the intensity belongs to something much older.
This doesn't mean our present experience isn't real or that everything difficult is simply a projection from childhood. Sometimes something happening now genuinely needs to be addressed. But becoming curious about what else has been activated can give us more choice in how we respond.
When Old Pain Finds Something Familiar
Pain has a strange way of recognising itself. When an old wound becomes activated, the mind can become extraordinarily good at finding evidence to support it. If rejection has been activated, we notice every indication that someone doesn't want us. If betrayal is familiar, we search for signs that people can't be trusted. If anger is present, the mind produces increasingly convincing reasons why we have every right to remain angry.
A loop can develop. A thought creates an emotional response. The emotion generates another thought. That thought intensifies the emotion, and soon the story and the feeling are continually reinforcing one another.
Tolle describes this as the pain-body feeding itself. We can become so identified with the experience that we no longer recognise it as a pattern moving through us. We simply believe the story.
This is particularly difficult in relationships because two pain-bodies can begin interacting with one another. One person withdraws, activating the other's fear of abandonment. They pursue connection more intensely, activating the first person's fear of being overwhelmed or controlled. They withdraw further. Both people become increasingly convinced that the other person is the problem.
Old pain has entered a present-day relationship.
Becoming Aware of the Moment the Pattern Begins
There is often a moment before we become completely consumed by a reaction when something shifts in the body. The jaw tightens. The chest contracts. The breath changes. Heat rises. We feel ourselves wanting to attack, withdraw, defend, explain, control or disappear.
This moment matters because it offers a little possibility of choice.
Instead of I am angry, we may be able to notice anger is arising. Instead of immediately following the thought, we can notice that the mind is producing a story. Instead of acting on the impulse, we can feel what is happening in the body.
That doesn't mean distancing ourselves from our emotions. It means developing enough awareness to experience them without immediately becoming governed by them.
Feeling the Pain Without Feeding the Story
Becoming aware of the pain-body doesn't mean suppressing it or pretending to be peaceful when underneath we're furious. Nor does it mean spiritually bypassing difficult emotions.
There is an important difference between feeling an emotion and continually feeding the story surrounding it.
Perhaps anger is present. Can I feel where anger lives in my body before rehearsing everything the other person has done wrong? Perhaps there is hurt underneath it. Can I allow myself to feel the hurt without immediately turning it into evidence that nobody loves me? Perhaps I want to push someone away. Can I feel that impulse and become curious about what it is protecting?
Sometimes this creates enough space for something underneath the familiar reaction to become visible. Beneath anger there may be grief. Beneath control there may be fear. Beneath criticism there may be vulnerability. Beneath the impulse to withdraw there may be a longing to be met.
But there is another subtle trap here.
We can stop feeding the story and still become caught in the wound.
When Healing Becomes Another Loop
Sometimes we tell the same painful story repeatedly because something within us is still trying to make sense of what happened. We may have spoken about it in therapy, coaching, spiritual spaces or with friends. We understand why we feel the way we do. We know where the pattern began. We may even be able to name the childhood wound underneath it.
And yet we continue returning to the same place.
There can be genuine value in telling our story. Being heard and having our experience acknowledged can be profoundly important. But remembering isn't always the same as integrating. Repeatedly entering the same story and emotional state can sometimes keep us in relationship with the wound in the same way.
This is something I've become increasingly interested in through my relational and group work. Sometimes a person can be deeply connected to their pain while being much less connected to what is available in the present moment.
The pain may say, Nobody was there for me.
That may be completely true.
But what happens when someone is here now?
Can I feel the grief of not having been held and simultaneously notice that someone is offering to hold me now? Can I remember not being seen while allowing myself to be seen by the people sitting in front of me? Can I acknowledge that I didn't receive the love, protection or attunement I needed without unconsciously making the past absence the only experience I'm capable of receiving?
This doesn't rewrite history. The group cannot become the parent we didn't have, and a present experience doesn't make an earlier wound disappear. But something new can exist alongside what happened before.
That is a very different kind of healing from endlessly trying to empty the pain.
Bringing the Heart Into the Work
One of the things relational group work adds is the possibility of bringing the heart and relationship into an experience that may previously have been processed largely through the mind or alone.
We can understand ourselves brilliantly and still struggle to receive.
We may know intellectually that we're lovable while finding it almost unbearable to take in somebody's appreciation. We may understand our fear of vulnerability but instinctively look away when someone really sees us. We may long for support while automatically saying, I'm fine. We may know that our needs matter while finding it extraordinarily difficult to ask directly for what we want.
This is where another person, and particularly a group field, can become part of the practice.
Rather than only asking, What happened to me?, we can begin asking, What happens in me when something different is available now?
The work begins to move from understanding ourselves towards experiencing ourselves differently in relationship.
The Body Is Part of the Story
These patterns aren't only cognitive. We experience them physically.
This is why embodied awareness is an important part of my coaching, de-armouring and group work. We can notice what happens before the story fully takes over. Perhaps the throat tightens when we want to speak. The chest contracts when somebody moves closer. We stop breathing when attention comes towards us. Our body wants to move backwards when our mouth is saying yes.
These responses can become useful information.
In individual somatic work, we can stay with these experiences and explore what happens when there is enough space, support and awareness for something different to emerge. In relational work, there is an additional dimension: we can discover what happens while another person is actually present.
That can reveal things we might never encounter alone.
Healing in Relationship
A group can become a powerful place to explore this because everyone in the room is part of the experience. We don't only learn through what happens to us. We also learn through witnessing other people.
Someone else's willingness to express anger may show us how uncomfortable we are with our own. Watching somebody ask directly for what they need may reveal how difficult we find receiving. Witnessing grief may touch grief in us that we hadn't realised was close to the surface. Seeing somebody take up space unapologetically may show us how quickly we make ourselves smaller.
Sometimes another person's experience resonates because it is familiar. At other times it reveals a quality we've pushed into shadow because somewhere along the way we learned that it wasn't acceptable for us.
The group therefore becomes a relational environment in which we can notice ourselves in contact.
And this can be particularly valuable when we are looping.
If I keep returning to nobody sees me, the group can gently bring us back to the people who are looking at us now. If we repeatedly tell the story of never being supported, there may eventually be an invitation to notice whether we can receive support that is available in the room. If we’re consumed by what somebody failed to give us twenty years ago, the work may be to honour that pain while also bringing our heart into contact with what is here today.
The intention isn't to rush away from our wound or replace pain with positivity. Sometimes the grief needs to be felt. Sometimes anger needs expression. Sometimes being witnessed in the truth of what happened is itself important.
But we don't necessarily have to make the wound the only place we know how to live.
From Catharsis to Integration
This is also why I don't believe the biggest emotional release is necessarily the deepest piece of work. Read: Spanda and the Sacred Vibration of Being
Crying, shaking, shouting or expressing long-held anger can feel enormously powerful. Sometimes it is exactly what has been needed. But intensity alone doesn't tell us whether something has integrated.
I'm increasingly interested in capacity: Can I experience anger and still remain connected to myself? Can I feel grief while allowing somebody to sit beside me? Can I experience love without immediately pulling away? Can I receive appreciation without deflecting it? Can I say no without disappearing from relationship? Can I feel powerful emotion without losing all awareness of the people around me?
The question becomes less How much can I release? and more How much of myself can I remain present with?
That includes our pain, but it also includes love, pleasure, support, power, vulnerability, joy and connection.
Exploring This Work in a Group
I bring this relational approach into some of my workshops and events, creating facilitated spaces where we explore ourselves not only through individual reflection but through connection with other people.
We might work with presence, eye contact, embodied awareness, honest expression, giving and receiving, boundaries, asking for what we need, being witnessed and noticing what happens when we allow ourselves to be affected by another person. Sometimes your own experience becomes the focus; at other times, simply witnessing somebody else's process can reveal something unexpected about yourself.
The intention isn't to analyse or fix one another. It is to create enough connection and awareness for us to notice how we actually relate: where we open, where we protect ourselves, what we find difficult to express and what we struggle to receive. The group becomes part of the practice, offering opportunities to experience ourselves in relationship rather than only understanding our patterns intellectually.
