Is pain essential for growth?

On discomfort, change, and evolution

The muscles that ache must tear in order to get stronger.

The heart that breaks forces you to learn lessons you didn’t know you needed.

The boss that fires you inadvertently thrusts you towards a new beginning.

Every setback. Every struggle. Every failure, disappointment, rejection, heartbreak, and loss all lead to the same thing: an opportunity for growth.

I use the word “opportunity” because it is one for the taking, but not all of us see it as such. Instead of doing the internal work required to grow, some opt for more cowardly alternatives such a making themselves the victim, assigning blame, or drafting the narrative that “bad things just happen to me.” But we are not those people, and this is a conversation for another time.

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Pain is a catalyst for growth. I know this from experience. My first heartbreak kickstarted a journey of self realization and self actualization, one that is essential to the architecture of the woman I am today. My next low point (the time I had the pleasure of dating a narcissist) resulted in me starting a company and taking my career in a direction I never could have anticipated. A few years later, the “failure” of that company has lead me here—to a new city, a new beginning and a new blank canvas.

At every low point in my life, what has lied on the other side of that pain has been instrumental positive change.

So I know that struggle stimulates growth, but is it a necessary requirement? Can growth exist without pain?

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I was sitting at brunch with a friend earlier this afternoon. It was the first warm day of the year in New York, and the first sign of spring. We had just finished eating at Cipriani, two orders of steak and eggs and a bottle of wine, and we leaned back in our chairs to share a cigarette.

“Do you think pain is essential for growth?” I asked in an exhale. He is a psychotherapist and neuroscientist, so the question felt appropriate. I passed him the cigarette.

“Not necessarily.” He said, flicking off the ash. “Growth comes from a disruption of predictability. It’s letting go of a previous experience, which can be experienced as pain.”

He gave the example of a child who’s mother’s breast milk gets taken away. First, there is a stress response. “Pain is an autonomic distress response,” he explains. But quickly the child learns to self soothe, and the pain passes.

Similarly, the pain we experience as adults is a disruption of our patterns. Our lives have become so incredibly predictable, and our brains are conditioned to anticipate these patterns. (98% of the thoughts we have today are the same thoughts we had yesterday) So when the rug gets pulled out from under us, and change is thrust upon us, that disruption of predictability is where the pain lies.

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So it’s not pain that’s essential for growth, it’s change. The former is simply a side effect of the latter.

Seeing as humans have developed a deep rooted fear of change, it comes as no surprise that many of us only experience it when forced—when we get dumped, fired, rejected. When our comfort zone gets ripped out of our hands.

When I asked my brain doctor friend on how one can create change without pain, he offered two suggestions.

“Psychedelics throw a monkey wrench into our brain’s predictability,” he said. “So does traveling.”

He went on to explain that by traveling he doesn’t mean booking an all inclusive resort and lying by the pool, but immersing yourself in a completely new environment, anywhere that forces you to take yourself out of your predictability patterns.

A trip. Whether a physical trip to a new country or a psychedelic trip inside your mind, a trip is a surefire way to create new neural pathways and accelerate growth-oriented change.

Michael Pollan elaborates on the topic in the below excerpt from his book How to Change Your Mind:

Habits are undeniably useful tools, relieving us of the need to run a complex mental operation every time we’re confronted with a new task or situation. Yet they also relieve us of the need to stay awake to the world: to attend, feel, think, and then act in a deliberate manner. (That is, from freedom rather than compulsion.) If you need to be reminded how completely mental habit blinds us to experience, just take a trip to an unfamiliar country. Suddenly you wake up! And the algorithms of everyday life all but start over, as if from scratch. This is why the various travel metaphors for the psychedelic experience are so apt. The efficiencies of the adult mind, useful as they are, blind us to the present moment.

So no, growth doesn’t require pain, but it requires discomfort. It requires letting go of familiarity. And to experience growth, you must seek discomfort. Perhaps this is why most wellness practices require discomfort to some degree—running, cold plunging, meditating. It’s all priming your mind and body to step outside of its comfort zone.

Another friend of mine sought out both discomfort and pain by running The Speed Project last week, a 350 mile relay race from LA to Las Vegas. “Now I know and understand myself and what I’m capable of in a new way,” he texted me the morning after completing the multi-day race. “You don’t have to run from the Pacific to the Vegas sign to know. I guess I did.”

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Recommendations from the Week

I just finished reading Acts of Desperation by Megan Nolan—a story about a young woman’s relationship with an older man. Nolan touches on deeply familiar feelings of obsession, self doubt, and the desperate longing for love.

I finally watched Nosferatu, a reimagining of the 1922 silent horror film. I’m a dark twisted fuck so I absolutely loved this film. Lily Depp’s performance was outstanding, the cinematography was to die for, and the ending scene is chefs kiss.

I also watched The Companion, which is a sneak peak into the exciting future where men can design their very own sex robot girlfriend. I’m all for a feminist slasher film, but I think it would have been a lot stronger if it was directed by a woman. As a woman who has experienced the objectification and misogynistic themes the film touched on (what woman hasn’t), I wanted it to really go there. Sadly it didn’t. Still a fun watch, though!

Lastly, I watched the Netflix series Adolescence. It’s a deeply confronting and honest view into the perils of social media and the complexities of “manhood” in this generation. A masterpiece.

And finally, some songs I’ve been listening to on repeat this week:

xoxo

Lily