Clean Pain vs. Dirty Pain

Here’s a concept I return to again and again.
If you’re a client of mine, you’ve probably heard me talk about clean pain and dirty pain.

I have to admit, I did not come up with the concept myself. I read it in a book by one of my favorite authors & mentors, Resmaa Menakem, LCSW, SEP, a few years ago and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.

Resmaa is a leading couples and trauma therapist and educator. He writes about clean pain and dirty pain in all of his books. And it makes sense, because whether you’re feeling pain right now because you’re struggling in a relationship, you’re grappling with gut-wrenching grief, you’re navigating systemic oppression or trauma, or you’re just moving through life- the concept of clean pain and dirty pain applies.

Ok so what is the distinction exactly?

Resmaa Menakem describes clean pain as the pain we encounter when we lean into truth, growth, and transformation. It is the pain of choosing integrity over comfort. He writes:

“Clean pain is the pain of facing what we fear.”
— Resmaa Menakem

Clean pain isn’t easier per say. In fact, more often than not it shakes us to our core. It asks us to stay present with sensations we’d rather flee. Clean pain is vulnerable, and often involves grief.
It requires what he calls somatic courage — the ability to stay with discomfort long enough for something new to arise.

He contrasts this with dirty pain:

“Dirty pain is the pain of avoidance.”
— Resmaa Menakem

Dirty pain is all the pain that accumulates when we don’t turn towards our truth. It’s the pain that comes with numbing the wound, denying the grief, self-abandoning, or pushing down the thing that is asking—sometimes begging—to be tended to.

Put simply, dirty pain is all the suffering that comes from avoiding the original pain— the clean pain.

Resmaa offers another distinction:

“Clean pain moves you forward. Dirty pain keeps you stuck.”

Most of us choose dirty pain. Why?

Dirty pain arises when our nervous systems go into old, automatic survival strategies: fight, flight, freeze, fawn.

This isn’t bad. It’s intelligent.Your nervous system learned at some point that these responses reduced danger or loss. Dirty pain often feels safer in the moment because it is familiar. It keeps us within known terrain—even when that terrain is painful.

Clean pain always proposes an opportunity for growth and evolution, but exactly how is uncertain— and that can be terrifying. Sometimes that growth can even include a loss of some kind, and most of us would rather put that off as long as possible (cue last month’s newsletter about the courage to grieve)!

Why (& how the hell) to choose clean pain?

The first thing I want to make clear is that choosing clean pain isn’t about erasing these survival strategies.

It’s about meeting them with curiosity and choice.

When something feels activating, we have to slow down and turn inward and feel. Activation means something important is happening that requires our somatic courage.

Clean pain asks us to look at what’s hurting us and have the courage to stay present with it, even though it’s uncomfortable.

It asks us to look at what’s hurting us and ask,
do I feel this now or carry it longer?

From that place, it asks us to take a courageous action that creates an opportunity for something new— instead of continuing an old pattern, keeping up a painful cycle, or maintaining the status-quo.

Clean pain might look like:

• naming a truth in a relationship even if your voice shakes (without softening it, managing the other person’s feelings, or demanding change)

• allowing yourself to be disappointed (without immediately minimizing or justifying)

• pausing before reacting (feeling the surge of defensiveness or blame and riding the wave before responding)

• saying “I don’t know (and might not be able to know the answer)” when your system wants certainty and control

• letting go of the fantasy and feeling the grief (that someone might not change, that the situation didn’t work out how you wanted it to, that the pain isn’t going to resolve without feeling it)

• feeling loneliness

• letting a season end

Dirty pain might look like:

• Trying to fix or change a partner (managing their behavior to regulate your own anxiety)

• staying silent to avoid conflict (and then feeling resentful later)

• self-abandoning to keep relationships (and then still feeling empty or lonely)

• always choosing the path of least resistance (staying in jobs, relationships, etc., that don’t serve you)

• intellectualizing your feelings

• intellectualizing others’ feelings

• over-performing to maintain the job/relationships/etc

• demanding answers or change

Dirty pain keeps the nervous system in repetitions of fight/flight/freeze/fawn.
Clean pain allows for completion.

Clean pain is how the nervous system learns:

• I can feel this and survive.

• I don’t have to abandon myself.

• I have more capacity now.

• An aligned life is possible for me.