Learning to live with pain, not in pain
· · 7 min read
Neal Tricarico unpacks the difference between living in pain and living with it, and why incorporating grief into your life instead of being ruled by it is the real work of long-term healing.
There is a real difference between living in pain and living with it. One is drowning, the other is learning to carry weight you never asked for without pretending it is not there. The pain does not leave, but it stops being the whole room.
TL;DR
Living in pain means grief has swallowed the rest of your life. Living with it means grief has been given a place at the table alongside everything else that still matters. Researchers call this growth through struggle rather than after it, and it is never a one-time event. It is a practice you build over years, and the goal is not to stop hurting but to stop being ruled by it.
Key Takeaways
- Living in pain is when grief becomes the whole room; living with it is when grief takes a seat alongside everything else you still are.
- Post-traumatic growth is change that grows out of the struggle itself, not a reward handed out once the pain is gone.
- Distress and growth coexist in the same person, so carrying pain well never means waiting to feel better first.
- "With" is a practice, not a destination, built one deliberate step at a time over years.
- The pain does not have to leave for your life to get bigger around it.
What separates living in pain from living with it?
The difference is not the size of the pain. It is where the pain sits in relation to the rest of you. When I was living in pain, the grief was the whole room. Grief had moved in and pushed everything else to the edges. I was breathing, answering, showing up, but from inside the pain rather than beside it.
Living with the same pain looks different. The pain is still real and still heavy, but it has a place. I can sit at dinner with my family and feel the missing seat and still taste the food. I can do the work and feel the ache behind it and still do the work. The grief is with me, not wrapping around every single thing I touch.
That is the whole distinction in one image. Not smaller pain. A larger life, with the pain inside it.
Why is the pain still here after all this time?
Because grief does not run on a clock. The mind expects the pain to eventually drain out, but that is not what happens. What changes is not the amount of pain, it is your relationship to it. Researchers describe grief as a process that reshapes over time rather than one that simply ends, and they warn against the idea that healing means the feeling stops Understanding grief.
For me that took a long time to accept. For the first stretch I was waiting for the day the grief would be smaller, and the waiting itself was exhausting. Nothing was draining. I was getting stronger around it, and I missed that because I was watching for the pain to disappear instead of my capacity growing.
How do you incorporate pain instead of being ruled by it?
You stop trying to be done with it. Incorporation is not a finish line, it is a habit, and the first move is giving the pain permission to be present without giving it the wheel. When I stopped fighting grief off and started letting it sit down next to me, the pain did not get easier to hold. I got better at holding it. That is the opposite of the closure lie, the false promise that grief ends Post-traumatic growth is not closure.
The research on post-traumatic growth points the same direction. Growth is measured in changes that grow out of the struggle, not changes that arrive once it is over, things like a deeper appreciation for life and greater personal strength that coexist with ongoing distress What is post-traumatic growth?. You do not graduate out of the pain. You learn to hold it with more of yourself than before.
For me that looks like getting out of bed and then deciding, rather than waiting to decide how I feel first. The action comes first, and a lot of days the feeling never catches up, and I move anyway. Not denying it. Moving while it is still heavy. And this is not a glow-up, the story where it all works out and the pain retroactively becomes worth it Post-traumatic growth is not a glow-up.
What does twenty years of practice look like?
It looks ordinary from the outside, which nobody warns you about. Nobody hands you a certificate. One day you realize you carried something all day that years ago would have put you on the floor by noon, not because it got lighter but because you have been lifting so long it is part of how you move.
That is the long game of grief, and it is why the work is never a one-time decision. Even the researchers who study growth are careful to say it is never a guaranteed outcome and never a smooth line, which is exactly why it reads more like a practice than a result Post-traumatic growth. I have written before that the wound itself is the way through, not the obstacle to it The wound is the way.
The twenty-year version of me is not less sad than the two-year version. He is just less surprised by it. The grief still shows up, but it has stopped being an interruption and become something I know how to make room for.
What changes when pain stops being the whole room?
What changes is everything around the pain. The pain itself stays. But once it is not the whole room, there is suddenly space for the rest of your life, and that space is where the growth happens. Joy can sit next to grief without either one being fake. Purpose can show up without erasing the reason it was born. Pain does not get the final word.
It is not that the pain shrinks to make room. It is that you stop giving it every inch of the house. I still miss my son every single day, and I still find whole days that are more than the missing. Both are true at once, and holding them together is what I have been practicing all along.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the pain ever actually leave?
Not the way you are hoping. Grief does not end so much as it changes shape, and the pain becomes something you live alongside rather than something that swallows you Understanding grief. What changes is your capacity to carry it.
Is this just acceptance?
Partly, but acceptance here does not mean you are okay with what happened. It means you stop spending your energy fighting the reality of it, so the energy can go toward living inside it. You can accept that the loss is real and still hate it with everything you have.
How do you practice carrying it?
One deliberate step at a time, usually before you feel ready. Get moving, then decide. Give the pain a place instead of fighting it off, and let action lead while the feeling lags behind. Over years that practice stops being something you do and becomes how you live.