It's Better To Feel Pain Than Nothing At All

Or is it?

It got me thinking....

I couldn’t help but wonder; when did we decide that feeling nothing was better than feeling something? In a world where we have notifications for everything; heart rates, dopamine hits, likes, messages, why are we so quick to mute our emotional alerts?

I once had a client, let’s call her Jenna, who walked into my office and said, “I just don’t want to feel anything anymore.” The heartbreak, the disappointment, the sting of rejection; she wanted it all gone.

“I’d rather be numb,” she said, crossing her arms like a woman refusing to participate in life’s cruel little jokes. And I got it. Oh, how I got it. But here’s the thing about pain; it’s like a fire alarm. Annoying? Yes. But also a lifesaver. Because while we may hate hearing it, it’s the very thing that keeps us from staying inside a burning building.

Neuroscience agrees. Pain is the brain’s way of saying "Hey, something needs your attention". When we numb pain, whether through avoidance, self-medication, or scrolling through an endless sea of memes, we also numb the ability to heal. It’s like freezing your credit card because you’re scared to check your balance. The problem doesn’t disappear just because you refuse to see it.

Take Noah, another client. He had perfected the art of emotional avoidance. He ghosted before he could be ghosted, numbed himself with work, and wore apathy like a designer suit. The result? He wasn’t devastated, sure, but he also wasn’t happy. Because you can’t selectively numb emotions. You numb the bad, you numb the good.

Studies show that our pain response and our pleasure response come from the same neurochemical pathways. When we suppress sadness, we also suppress joy. When we avoid discomfort, we also avoid growth. The nervous system doesn’t distinguish between, "Oh, let’s only turn down the dial on heartbreak but keep the excitement at full volume!" Nope. It’s all or nothing.

So, maybe pain isn’t the enemy. Maybe pain is just the signpost pointing toward something worth exploring. Maybe pain is the GPS rerouting us when we’re lost. And maybe the bravest thing we can do isn’t to avoid pain but to sit with it, feel it, learn from it.

Jenna eventually did. And in doing so, she found something unexpected on the other side: clarity, resilience, and, dare I say, hope. Because pain, when acknowledged, transforms. And while the fire alarm may be loud, at least it’s reminding us that we are, in fact, alive.

And isn’t that the whole point?