When your love lives without an answer, when your soul does not rise to the stars, when it swallows stony air and suffocates from the moonlight - ****the candle of your sadness calls you at night to where they heal pain, hearts broken by love. (from the lyrics of the song “Candle of Your Sorrow” by A. Marshall and Riccardo FogliMalinconia) In this article I would like to meet the experience of pain in relationships. Sometimes I hear from clients in counseling that people try to avoid pain by all means - they drive it away, abstract it from it, try to cover it up with other experiences, deny it - in general, they do everything so as not to experience pain. Pain turns into something unnecessary, dangerous, and a ban on experiencing it is created. The illusion is maintained that it is difficult to survive pain, but it is much more difficult to restrain your pain and spend energy on constantly maintaining this state. Self-deception kicks in - if I don’t pay attention to the pain, it won’t happen. This is reminiscent of how a small child covers his face with his hands and thinks that everything that scares him has ceased to exist. So, some clients say: “I live and don’t pay attention to my pain, if I start experiencing it, it will become much worse.” Or: “I abstract myself from the pain - it is there, but I will pretend that it is not there.” By and large, this can be compared to what a person says: I don’t like my finger, I need to cut it off. Also, the feeling is your own, it is the same part of you as the body. How can you drive it away and get rid of it? By getting rid of pain, you get rid of yourself. Here we can say that the ban on experiencing feelings is one of the forms of manifestation of not loving oneself, not accepting oneself. In the Bible, the Gospel of Matthew defines: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Unfortunately, I can’t cite the source, but it says: “Can you imagine that the very poor and destitute person who needs to be loved is you?” Fantasy example. A person goes about his business, lives, and another wounded and suffering person follows on his heels. It’s hard to imagine what the first person would say to a wounded man: get out of here, get your wounds away from me, don’t show yourself, you’re my mirage. It becomes deeply scary when a person says that to himself. We try not to belittle the suffering of another, but we treat our own pain with contempt, writhing in agony, and doing our best to pretend that nothing happened. “I’m fine” then becomes “I’m petrified.” I don't want to feel what lives inside me. This is reminiscent of a pantomime participant who amuses others but deceives himself. At the same time, people outside the stage shudder in horror and sometimes even feel the pain experienced by another person. People feel that the other person is feeling bad and this deception only causes absurdity. It’s quite a painful torment to not pay attention to your own pain. By separating himself from pain, a person separates himself from loved ones who could share his pain and be with him. I believe that pain is a very important and necessary part of human existence. Pain testifies that we are still alive - that what is most significant in us and calls to life. Pain calls us to life, makes us feel alive. Pain indicates some need, the satisfaction of which is very important. When a person closes off from pain, closure also occurs at the level of other feelings - joy, love, confidence, trust, gratitude, etc. When you close off from pain, you also close off from life. The fear of pain begins to define human existence. And often this fear is experienced much more painfully than the pain itself. A person gets stuck in it. In an Art Therapy group, one participant drew pain in the form of a circle with dangerous centrifugal arrows. Where metaphorically you can take the fear of pain in the form of a vicious circle - you can endlessly walk in circles for fear of experiencing the feeling of pain, but never touch it. Monotony and isolation, doom.Refusal to experience pain is also associated with attempts to keep myself and my life under strict control - if I control everything, then life will be exactly the way I want. This is another dangerous fantasy that is doomed to fail. Life is unpredictable, spontaneous, and its main quality is uncertainty. All this, unfortunately or fortunately, is in no way subject to control. Failure to control may cause additional pain. Just as you cannot stop a moment, you also cannot seize life and order it to be as a person needs it. By opening up to the feeling of pain, without choosing strict control, you can feel all the facets of life, its spontaneity, dynamism. As D. Welwood writes: “Moving beyond one's judgments and narratives to feel this naked quality of one's life is a breakthrough that relieves pain and develops compassion for others.” Having recognized the freedom of life, a person himself becomes free. If you move away from the usual and established definition and understanding of pain, then the lines from “The Prophet” by Kahlil Gibran seem surprising: “If your heart were never tired of being amazed at the daily miracles of life, then your pain would seem no less amazing to you than your joy.” Pain must be respected and given time and space. When a person goes to meet his pain, this meeting happens. And it’s better to invite pain on a date yourself (by choosing as much time as you can spend with it) than for it to come to you without warning and possibly at the most inopportune time. Often pain tries to find a way out through tears. But some find it difficult to allow themselves to cry—some are afraid of “losing face,” others think they won’t be able to stop if they start crying. Tears are perceived as unacceptable weakness. Clarissa P. Estes writes, “Tears are a river that will take you somewhere. Crying flows like a river around the boat carrying your spiritual life. Tears lift your boat from the rocks, from the dry ground and carry it with the current to some other, better places.” In pain, it is necessary to discover the meaning hidden behind it. The word disease itself speaks about this - what stands behind the pain. According to V. Frankl, there is always meaning and a person strives, first of all, not to obtain pleasure and avoid pain, but to identify the meaning of his directly experienced existence. That is why a person is even ready to suffer, provided that his suffering has meaning. James Hollis also speaks about the importance of meaning in his work “Pools of Soul”: “The energy required to affirm value during sadness becomes a source of deep meaning. Not losing this meaning and not trying to control the natural flow of life is the true essence of the dual impact of sadness and loss.” He writes: “Nothing that was once real, important or difficult can be lost forever. Only by freeing your imagination from the control of consciousness can you truly experience the severity of loss and feel its true value.” Based on the above, I believe that experiencing pain requires great courage from a person, to be with what is there, what hurts, here and now. Living and experiencing pain is a type of life form. Clarissa P. Estes says that there are wounds that everyone has, and sometimes intimacy with a person can create a scar. That extensive damage can be the result of naive choices, being trapped, losses. And there are as many types of scars as there are types of mental wounds. “But although scars remain, it is useful to remember that the scar is stronger than the skin itself and can withstand impacts better.” Don't be afraid if the pain comes back. The return of pain will always remind you of a special sensitivity to life. Who I was (what relationships I had), who I am (what relationships I have), who I will be (what relationships will be important and meaningful to me). And it should be noted that some pain, as part of the grief process, is impossible.