Mandy Phillips is a life coach, teacher, and presenter in Omaha, Nebraska. She specializes in helping clients move past their “shoulds” and dirty pain to create a more peaceful, loving, and creative life.
Learn more at HappybaraCoaching.com.
Clients of McGill Law receive 50% off their first one-hour session with Mandy.
The teen years tend to be hard for families even under the best of circumstances. For the kids, their hormones are wreaking havoc on bodies and moods, they’re forming identities and individuating from the people who raised them, and they’re comparing their own inner worlds to the outer worlds of folks online. For caregivers, we’re doing our best to guide our kids toward health and happiness while simultaneously navigating anxiety and getting our feelings hurt and egos bruised by the people we love most in the world.
As the parent of a teen who has been through more than I could have imagined at her age (a global pandemic and loss through adoption, to name just two), I find myself constantly trying to navigate rough patches without getting in my own head in order to focus on what my child needs.
Enter the concepts of Clean and Dirty Pain. Defined by psychologist Dr. Steven Hayes, “Clean pain is the original discomfort we feel in response to a real-life problem. Dirty pain is the pain we get when we needlessly struggle to control, eliminate, or avoid clean pain.”
In very concrete terms:
When you hit your thumb with a hammer, it physically hurts. It just does. That’s clean pain. But when we add a narrative to it like, “I’m so clumsy. I always do things like this. Why am I so careless?” (maybe with some spicier language), we’re adding suffering and expanding the pain. That’s dirty pain.
In parenting terms:
Your child drops out of the school play. You feel a little disappointed because they seemed to enjoy it. Clean pain. But then you think to yourself, “He was going to make it on Broadway, and now what? He’s always quitting things. Is he going to drop out of high school next?” That’s dirty pain.
Or maybe:
Your child gets in a car crash after making a poor choice. You feel scared but relieved that no one was seriously hurt. Clean pain. But you begin to ruminate: “This is just the beginning! If I don’t lock this kid in the attic for the next four years, they’ll never survive adolescence.” Dirty pain.
The anxiety, worrying, and stories that we add to situations, whether they’re parenting-related or not, can lead to ruptures in our relationships and erosion of trust, and can burden our mental health. But there’s hope!
Here are a few ways to manage dirty pain:
Notice when a thought is causing you pain and ask yourself, “Is it true? Can I absolutely know it’s true?” Very often the answer is no, and realizing that can provide us a little space from the thought and relief from the pain. (For a more thorough examination of your thoughts, check out The Work of Byron Katie.)
Ask yourself, “How would an alien describe this situation?” An alien wouldn’t know all of the cultural baggage we bring to our assessments of life events, and that cultural baggage is often where our dirty pain and suffering comes from.
When you find yourself ruminating, say in your mind or out loud, “Thinking.” Just that awareness can loosen our grip on the story we’re telling ourselves.
There’s no overnight cure for the stress and heartbreak that comes with parenting, but we can alleviate our own suffering much of the time by recognizing our own dirty pain.
Ready to move past the stress and overwhelm? Mandy offers personalized coaching to help you break free from negative thought patterns and create a more peaceful, fulfilling life. Learn more about Mandy and schedule a consultation here: Happybara Coaching.
Clients of McGill Law receive 50% off their first one-hour session.