The Doorway of Pain

The Way of Change is Hard but Not Impossible

For us, the way 'out' was through.

We found that pain was the doorway. By approaching our painful, challenging experiences with curiosity, support, and compassion, we transformed crisis into opportunity—moving from survival mode into aliveness, stepping into more purpose, creativity, and connection.

Hi, we’re Sam and Helen.

Through our healing journey, we found that pain was the doorway. By leaning into what we know about our pain and meeting it at the edges, we were able to use these painful, broken images of self and the world as a doorway to transformation. By approaching our challenging experiences with curiosity, support, and compassion, we turned crisis into opportunity—moving from survival mode into aliveness and stepping into more purpose, creativity, and connection.

Each of us has a unique story, and we are no different. We’ve faced some of life’s hardest struggles—overcoming homelessness, surviving financial collapse, dealing with job loss, and navigating mental and physical health challenges. These experiences, along with our patterns of addiction, avoidance, and aggression, have shaped who we are today. What we discovered in our journey—both personally and through working with others—is that pain and crisis are messengers, revealing opportunities for change. Every pain, every crisis, is a chance to evolve beyond dysfunctional ways of engaging with life and to transform how we relate to ourselves and the world.

Have You Had Enough Pain Yet?

Many people have been in pain for so long that they’ve become numb to it, simply to survive. But pain is more than something to endure—it’s built into our systems as a powerful motivator for change.
Pain is an incredible force for transformation. It’s the rub, the irritation that pushes us to seek something better, to create change. It’s the signal that something in our lives needs to shift, inspiring us to move toward healing, growth, and improvement.

Pain Has Purpose

The role of pain and crisis is to confront the reality of our experiences and situations. They serve as a wake-up call, shaking us out of a dysfunctional normal—the habitual numbing and rationalizing that is no better than internalized gaslighting—that has gone on for far too long.
The difficulty of pain and crisis lies not in the pain or the crisis itself, but in how we respond to it. We often cling to the way things are, fearing dissolution and change. We struggle with a loss of control, becoming desperate for change while feeling hopeless that anything can be done. Looking around, we may feel as though everyone else is in the same situation and no one can help, leading to collapse and hopelessness. From a nervous system perspective, this is known as "flop." Alternatively, we may act out in frustration and anger, which is part of the fight/flight response. The good news is, these are protective mechanisms that, when understood, can be used to return us to balance.

Change is a kind of death—a little death that comes before a rebirth.

Crisis is a message telling us it’s time to take advantage of this ‘little death,’ or risk actual death, whether the slow suffering kind or the brutal immediate kind. The good news is, the thing that is ready to die is the dysfunctional and outdated coping strategies that are causing more harm than good. It’s the death of one way of engaging with life and the tender growth of another.
Difficulty comes when we don’t know how to do this or lack the resources to pass through the doorway of pain and crisis and learn a new way of engaging with life.

What’s Needed to Make Change

Knowing How
Change requires more than a desire for something different—it requires practical skills, strategies, and philosophies that transform knowledge into embodied wisdom. While some of these can be learned from others, much of it is already within us, though often suppressed by our attempts to maintain the status quo.

Support
Having others who’ve faced similar crises is essential. They can guide us, role-model resilience, and share their insights. We are relational beings, and trust—built through honesty and showing up as we are—helps co-regulation happen. This is especially true when those around us have also gone through their own transformations.

Resources
Access to information, education, and meeting basic needs like nutrition are crucial. Knowledge empowers not just because we can use it, but because it gives us choices. Inner resources, combined with supportive systems, lay the foundation for lasting change.

Perspective
Understanding what we’re living for—our higher purpose, our gifts, and the power of truth—fuels our motivation to change. When we see our challenges through a new lens, we open ourselves to growth and transformation.

Dysfunctional Adaptive Behavior

Adaptive behaviors help us navigate the obstacles in our path. They are the choices we’ve made to cope with difficult situations, and they can be both conscious and unconscious decisions. Some of these adaptive behaviors were formed when we were very young, even as infants.
Behavior becomes dysfunctional when it causes us more harm than good. It diminishes our aliveness, limits our free, authentic, and inspired expression, ruins our health, and causes relationship problems. When we shine a spotlight on this, we begin the change process.

To Grow or Not to Grow

We want change, we want something new. But the secret is to first commit to growth, understanding that without this commitment, change remains a dream.
To grow is to face pain and learn its message. To grow is to choose courage. To let go of comforts and securities from outdated adaptive coping strategies. To suspend doubt that grace and resilience are present and possible.

• We accept that we have suffered.

• We forgive the world and the people in it for harming us.

• We forgive ourselves for not knowing how and for making mistakes.

• We ask for help.

• We trust our ability to survive and learn how to thrive.

• We act purposefully, not as a crutch, but as a positive demonstration of love.

• We let go of doing it alone and turn to others and God.

Our Genius Design

Within us, there’s a voice of truth calling us to let go of dysfunctional behaviors. It becomes especially loud when our coping mechanisms are no longer serving us, screaming for change.
Our systems are designed to seek balance, and when we truly recognize this, it feels like genius. We naturally adopt coping strategies to manage stress, but when they fail, we often stick with them because we don’t have better options. This creates a counterbalance: sabotaging or resisting our efforts—like giving up or cutting ties with supportive people. It's like the saying, "cutting off your nose to spite your face."

An example based on clinging and giving up

• Clinging as a dysfunctional adaptive behaviour is painful and eventually leads to us giving up.

• Giving up puts at jeopardy the things that are worth clinging to—those things support our health, vision and purpose for the future - which is also painful.

• Both clinging and giving up carry a voice of truth and a voice of deception—forcing us to be discerning.

• Neither clinging, nor giving up is entirely right, but both offer wisdom that the other lacks.

• We harvest wisdom by discerning the behaviours that don't work and those that do - what it is right to 'give-up' and what it is right to 'cling to'.

The art of change involves the intention to change, seeking your unique path, witnessing both the good and the bad, understanding, and evolving dysfunctional behaviors.

This is the work we do at In-stead.io.