1st Order Pain & 2nd Order Pain

Is your pain 2nd order or 1st order pain?

One of my clients recently reminded me of the concept of 1st order vs. 2nd order pain.

1st order pain is the original pain we feel.

2nd order pain is the pain we feel from resisting feeling 1st order pain.

The 1st order pain can be things like a loved one's death, social rejection, romantic betrayal, professional failure, or just plain old physical pain.

2nd order pain is the pain we feel when we think we can escape the original pain. It's the pain we feel after procrastinating for 2 weeks on a project later this morning. It's when we cover up our pain with addictions — and the actual problem just keeps getting worse. 2nd order pain is when we avoid confronting someone about their shitty behavior because we're afraid of getting blown up on and so get walked all over like a rug for months and years.

2nd order pain is when you know you're supposed to be doing something that's aligned with your soul and you are scared as all hell of putting yourself out there and being torn apart — and so you stifle yourself, ignore your values, until you despise yourself and want to die.

I think most of the problems of the world come from people not wanting to feel 1st order pain.

Buddhism says something similar:

Pain is unavoidable. Suffering is not.

Pain in this case is 1st order pain.

Suffering is 2nd order pain: the bullshit we throw over 1st order pain to try and escape it.

Here's the thing:

1) 1st order pain is never as painful and scary as we think it is.

2) 2nd order pain prolongs the pain — with interest.

If you're stuck in life, if you're re-running the same cycles or hitting a glass ceiling and you're not sure why, you might be feeling second order pain.

You might need to put down TikTok, shut off the vape, cancel your night out and writhe on the ground in agony this evening.

1st order pain sucks. It's scary. It's old. It might go back generations.

But it's better than poisoning yourself for decades with the fear, shame, guilt, self-criticism, and anger of 2nd order pain.

As Peter Kingsley said, if there's something in you that burns, it's meant to burn.

So let it burn.

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