This Hurts...This Hurts...This Bloody Hurts

Sometimes pain isn’t just physical — it’s a full-blown existential crisis in a gum socket.

Wisdom teeth are the rebellious teenagers of the mouth — they show up late, cause chaos, and usually need to be kicked out before they destroy everything. In their wake, they leave behind a pain that isn’t just physical — it’s a full-blown existential crisis in a gum socket.

And let me tell you, this bloody hurts.

When one of mine started acting up — radiating pain like it was auditioning for a role in a tragic soap opera — I was ready to tear my own mouth out. I couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, and I was one bad night away from writing a formal breakup letter to my lower jaw.

Eventually, I found an obliging dentist—part healer, part plier-wielding sadomasochist — who agreed to remove the little beast. I thought, “Justice at last. This tooth has messed with the wrong mouth.”

Oh, how naïve I was.

Imagine a jaw so sore, so stiff, it behaves less like a body part and more like a medieval drawbridge…operated by inebriated hamsters. Post-extraction, I could just about open my mouth to release a howl of self-pity. Chewing? Just trying to eat a thin slice of banana made me look like I was attempting oral origami. Yawning? A dangerous gamble. Talking? I sounded like a ventriloquist dummy mid-nervous breakdown.

My jaw had gone full diva — every attempt to move it was met with the kind of outrage usually reserved for reality show meltdowns. Honestly, I wasn’t sure if I needed painkillers… or a confession booth and some dramatic lighting.

For weeks, the pain haunted me. And then came the infection. Oh, the infection. It didn’t just linger politely in my gum like an unwanted house guest — it wreaked havoc around my entire body, igniting fever, chills, and endless rounds of vomiting between bouts of searing, full-bodied excruciation.

It was as if the ghost of Wisdom Tooth Past had returned to avenge itself — hellbent on teaching me one final, punishing lesson. Perhaps that’s why they call them wisdom teeth. Maybe it knew something I didn’t.

In the darkest hour of this unholy saga —swaddled in duvet, delirious, jaw pulsing like a bad techo tune — I had an epiphany.  I realised pain doesn’t just demand to be felt — it wants to be met with surrender, patience, and grace. I realised that the only way through it was to lean into it, rather than resist it. That conniving wisdom tooth was communicating a message - to let go of control and allow myself to be human.

This experience changed something in me. As a therapist who works with clients living with chronic pain, I often witness the quiet endurance and emotional toll that comes with it. Resilience doesn’t even do it justice.

After meeting pain so personally, so viscerally, I found I could meet my clients differently — more empathically, more attuned. I understood more deeply the loneliness it can bring, the way it distorts time, and how much strength it takes just to be with it.

There are no magic fixes. Resilience itself is the magic fix. But what are we talking about when we talk about resilience? It’s easy to tell yourself to just shake it off, ignore whatever is bothering you physically, mentally, emotionally, but how?

What I remembered in my most desperate hour, when painkillers were mere drops in the bucket, when my own body made me feel so isolated, when an infection prolonged and amplified that suffering, is that that self-care – genuine self-care – is a vital tool for survival. One of those tools is to let it RAIN.

RAIN on your Pain: One of the things that helped me most during my ordeal was a simple, yet profound mindfulness practice called RAIN. I want to credit the American Psychotherapist and Mindfulness expert, Tara Brach for teaching me this. And if you’re interested you can find out more here. 

Practicing RAIN gave me a way to relate to what was happening without getting completely swallowed by it. Here’s how it goes:

• Recognise – I began by just noticing what was happening. “This is pain. This is fear. This is the feeling of being overwhelmed.” Naming it helped create a tiny bit of space between me and the suffering.

• Allow – Instead of resisting or trying to fix it immediately, I let the pain be there. I whispered to myself, “This is what’s here right now. Let it be.” It wasn’t easy. But every time I stopped bracing against it, I felt a little less trapped.

• Investigate – I got curious. Gently, without judgment, I asked: Where is this pain sitting in my body? What does it feel like — burning, aching, sharp, dull? Does it remind me of anything? What is it asking of me? I wasn’t trying to solve it —I just wanted to understand it.

• Nourish – This part mattered the most. I brought compassion to myself — soft words, a warm touch to my chest, even just saying, “This is hard. And you’re doing okay.” I started to realise I could comfort the part of me that was hurting, the way I might comfort a frightened child.

During my darkest hour — sweat-soaked, nauseous, aching — I found myself lying in bed whispering the RAIN steps like a prayer. I discovered something important in my mesmerising incantations: my pain wasn’t all of me. It was a part of me. And other parts of me — wise, calm, steady — could step in and offer it care.

That shift changed everything. It didn’t take the pain away, but it changed my relationship with it. And that made all the difference.

When we talk about pain, overcoming hardships, and resilience, we usually frame it as something that needs to be dominated, torn down, and resilience is a natural tool that we need to wield, warding off inconveniences and violently defeating our suffering. But what if we reframed those tools? And how do we do it?

Breathe slowly and consciously. It didn’t make the pain go away but it did create a bit more spaciousness inside of me. Even a sliver of air between me and that suffering helped.

Soften around the pain. Rather than tense up, bracing for the next wave, I began trying to meet it like you would a scared animal — gently, without force.

Welcome all your Emotions: There’s almost always more to pain than just the physical sensation. Beneath the surface, pain often comes wrapped in layers of emotion —unseen, unheard, but deeply felt. I learned this the hard way. At one point, desperate for some sense of clarity or relief, I started asking myself a single question — again and again — “What words best describe the feeling you feel about your pain right now?”

At first, it was frustration. Then fear. Then came waves of sadness, followed by flashes of rage. I even found shame tucked in there—shame for being knocked off course, for needing help, for not coping better. Each time I paused and named what I was feeling, I felt something loosen. It felt as though the pain had been holding its breath, waiting to be acknowledged.

And gradually, something remarkable happened. The pain didn’t vanish — but its grip on me softened. I wasn’t fighting it anymore. I was meeting it. Witnessing it. And that changed everything. It taught me that pain, like any messenger, just wants to be heard. And when we turn toward it — not to fix it, but to feel it — we often find it starts to retreat, even if just a little. That’s not weakness. That’s the quiet strength of presence.

Let others in. Even just texting a friend to say, “I’m struggling today” shifted something in me. I didn't have to do it all alone.

Ground through the senses. When the pain made me feel like I'm floating outside my body, I wrapped myself in my favourite blanket, breathed in the calming scent of lavender essential oil, and sipped something warm and comforting. Then, I gave myself the visual treat of a back-to-back Grey’s Anatomy marathon—because if I was going to suffer, at least I could do it in the company of McDreamy. These small, sensory rituals became anchors. They didn’t erase the pain, but they helped call me back to myself, to the safety of the present moment. Sometimes, grounding is less about fighting the sensation and more about finding ways to feel held inside it.

Who knew that a rogue wisdom tooth — hell-bent on vengeance — would be the unlikely messenger of such a profound lesson? But it was through that jaw-clenched, fever-slicked trial that I learned that pain isn’t pure torture, that resiliency is learned and earned, not through gory battle, but by figuring out how to come home to ourselves.