Clean Pain & Dirty Pain: The power to change the way we tell our stories

Envision a tree. It could be any tree – one you’ve formed a bond with, one you can see right now, or one you remember climbing as a child. See the tree in its entirety: branches, leaves or needles, fruit or

acorns or pinecones, its trunk, and even its hidden roots. Now envision one of its limbs is dying. It’s miscolored and lifeless. Its leaves are dropping. It still hangs on the tree’s trunk but no longer serves a

purpose. One day, a gale of wind blows through, and that limb falls right off the tree!

 

I'd like to share a perspective about what I call “Clean Pain” and “Dirty Pain”. Clean Pain is experiencing the event itself; Dirty Pain is how we relive the event after the fact. There are three perspectives from which to tell the story:

 

Clean Pain

From the perspective of the tree, losing a limb is painful. It requires time and patience to heal the area where the limb was lost. The circumstance creates an emotional and physical response for the tree the moment the limb falls off.

 

Clean Pain

Watching the event, you are also affected by the tree losing its branch. You had a visual attachment in some way to the tree, and it creates a feeling inside of you as you witness the limb fall. You probably even stood from your seat to see where it landed, if it hit anything or anyone important, or just to see what a tree limb looks like after it crashes to the ground.

 

Clean Pain

If the limb fell into a roadway, it may have caused a traffic jam, and people driving by may “rubberneck” to see what all the fuss is about. They are also affected by the tree limb falling, even though they weren’t in the vicinity when the experience happened.

 

Eventually, the tree begins to heal, or you clean up the pieces left on the ground, or you just drive on by and carry on with your life. Notice how, in each perspective, there is an event, there are effects, and each perspective has a different period of time for which healing is required.

 

The tree’s healing will take the longest; the witness of the branch falling will take less time; and the people driving by will take the least amount of time of all to recover from the actual event.

 

Dirty Pain is how we relive the experience by retelling the story.

 

Dirty Pain

Having healed, the tree may say this: One day, I was just minding my own business, and suddenly this gale force wind came through the valley where I stand, and boom! Knocked my branch right off my trunk! It took an incredible amount of time to heal. My sap covered my entire trunk, insects got stuck in it, and to this day, they’re still a part of me! Now, any time I see an insect, I tremble in fear. (This will require some internal healing on the tree's part.)

 

Dirty Pain

Sitting at home one day, looking at my incredible garden, a wind came through and tore the branch from my very favorite tree! I was so scared the limb would crash into my living room window. After the burst was over, I went out to the tree and had to clean up all the fallen

branches. It took three wheelbarrow loads to remove! I was exhausted. Now, whenever I hear the wind come through, I have to hide in the bathroom to make sure I don’t get hit by any branches!

 

Dirty Pain

I was late for my interview and missed out on the job opportunity of a lifetime all because traffic had slowed down due to a fallen tree limb in the middle of the road. This was my one and only shot at living the life of my dreams, and now it’s gone! All because a branch fell from a tree.

 

We can create an interesting shift when we notice which kind of pain sits beneath our stories —Clean or Dirty Pain.

 

Remember that Clean Pain is when we are actually going through the event – there is often a lot of emotion, confusion, and change happening, which can be challenging to untangle. It takes time.

 

Dirty Pain, on the other hand, is the way we retell the event long after it has happened – when we’re no longer actually being affected by the emotions, the confusion, and the change because that was all in

the past.

 

The way we tell the story creates an attachment to those old emotions; we relive the confusion and reattach to the change process all over again. This keeps us stuck and unable to flow into

the healing process.

 

What stories are you reliving by retelling them?

And what are you ACTUALLY feeling about those events from your perspective today?

Free Call

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The writing retreat of your dreams is about to launch,

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Why should I sign up?

Sometimes we just need to steal some time away from the day-to-day in order to care for ourselves. Have you ever needed a weekend to just process something you need to heal through? Have you ever yearned for a moment to really focus on the final push through a project? Have you ever hit a stop point in your book because you need time to untangle whatever it's trying to become?

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Lodging at a beautiful hotel in Durango Colorado

Every meal will be chosen by you and delivered to your door

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Yoga

Presents

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Details, please?

Durango, Colorado (airport code: DRO)

October 11-16

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