Why Don't We Know We Are in Pain?

First of all, it is a pain that doesn’t hurt. At least you don’t KNOW it is there because it is a long way from feeling and knowing,  both in time and space.  How can we know we are in a pain from  a time that pain is installed years before KNOW came into being.  And that pain is lodged deep in the brain far away biologically from where KNOW lives its life.  We only know we hurt when KNOW meets feeling and embraces it.

Who makes the first step?  KNOW should but only if it is clear that imprinted feelings exist.  Otherwise, how can we KNOW it?    I mean how can we know that certain headaches (migraines) come from a birth with diminished oxygen?
There may be  a thirty year span between the event and our knowledge of it.  But there is no gap at all between the  gap and the experience of it.  Alas, the gap is covered over by chemicals that are designed to shut down the experience of pain.  They cannot block pain; only the experience of it so that we don’t know we are in pain. That is why we become addicted to pain killers while none of us knows that deep pain exists.  If we know it exists and try to feel it, repression rushes in to block the terrible hurt.  Blocking becomes life saving.    It keeps us from undue suffering and being overwhelmed by it.    It helps us go on solving problems in math and physics but never solving what is wrong inside of us.  Strange, we can go on looking into outer space but never delving deep into inner space.  And somehow that  fixation on the planets may be driven by something deep inside.  For now, this is surmise only but a surmise based on years of clinical practice.  It seems to me that the more far-out, and deeper the pain, the more far-out the interests.  That is why those who come to me after many LSD trips often have  a “One With The Cosmos” ideology.  It is a sign of flooding of the  brain circuits.  Once that happens, any idea seems to be accepted and adopted.

The more people experience their deep imprints the less the force of the strange ideas. That is called, “getting real”.  We can test ourselves; when we fervently believe in some Indian Guru or far-out beliefs it can be a measure of hidden pain.    It is systematic in those who have taken hallucinogens; those drugs lessen defenses and allow the brain to be overwhelmed.  The results are psychotic ideas.

Can you imagine being afraid of tight spaces at forty and the birth trauma?  Usually,  that seems too weird a notion. Yet it is accurate as by now hundreds of patients have relived being squeezed into immobility and act-out the need to keep moving.  Even being inside a tinted-glass, silent car can set off a panic attack.  And most certainly, an elevator ride can induce anxiety.  More; when patients truly relive an early even the vital signs move up and down in coordinated fashion. Not so, in abreaction or going through the motions of feeling without experiencing it.

The reason we cannot pinpoint it is because those who live in their head are often charged with finding the kernel of the problem; they search for concepts and theories for answers; exactly where it does not exist.  Those far from their feelings cannot imagine where the answer lies.  Why?  Because the pain drives people away from KNOWING about feeling.  Remember,  KNOWING means pain and that means repression and not knowing.  So what a dilemma.  Those most erudite who seem to know the most, actually know the least about the problem at hand.  That problem is first and foremost, feeling.