just because it hurts doesn’t mean it’s bad

We’re taught to fear pain.

To brace against it.

To pathologize it, solve it, or at the very least, explain it away.

But pain isn’t always a sign that something is wrong. Sometimes it’s a sign that something important is stirring. Something that wants to come to the surface. To be seen, known - held.

There’s a kind of hurt that doesn’t point to trauma or dysfunction, but to transformation.

A stretching pain. The ache of shedding an old self before the new one fully arrives.

The sharp edge of a truth pressing up against the walls of a way of being that’s too small to contain it.

Some discomfort is holy.

It means you’re getting closer to something that matters. To the part of you that wants out from under the performance. To a truth that no longer fits inside denial. To the clarity that only comes after you stop pretending you’re fine.

And when we rush to make it stop - when we numb it out, avoid it, drown it in booze or other substances, or label it as something far worse than what it is - we miss the wisdom inside it.

This is especially true in deep work: in grief, in altered states, in the disorientation that comes after big insight.

Whether through talk therapy or ketamine-assisted psychotherapy, I often see people brush up against a kind of pain that doesn’t need fixing. It needs holding.

So here’s the reminder:

1) Just because it hurts doesn’t mean it’s bad.
2) It might mean you’re coming into contact with what’s true.