What We Do With Our Pain
Download MP3Pain touches every life, but pain doesn't shape everyone in the same way. Two people can experience rejection, violence, neglect, abandonment, betrayal, or loss and build completely different lives afterward. In this episode of Born Tired: Where Survival Meets Healing, I reflect on what happens after suffering becomes part of our story and the different ways we learn to carry the wounds we never asked for.
I talk about generational trauma and the roles we inherit inside dysfunctional family systems. The caretaker, peacemaker, black sheep, scapegoat, or the person who learns to understand everyone else while carrying their own pain quietly. Many of the coping mechanisms that help us survive childhood can follow us into adulthood, shaping our relationships, nervous systems, boundaries, and the ways we respond when we feel threatened or hurt.
This episode explores something I have wrestled with throughout my own healing: how someone can be deeply wounded and still become the source of suffering for other people. I reflect on the desire many of us have to understand the people who hurt us, their childhoods, trauma, family history, and the experiences that shaped them. Sometimes that understanding gives us compassion, but it can also reveal a difficult truth. Understanding why someone became who they are does not erase the impact of what they did.
I also talk about the difference between being affected by trauma and using our trauma to justify harming others. Healing does not mean the past suddenly stops affecting us. I live with C-PTSD, and I know what it feels like for an old wound to find its way into the present or for your nervous system to react before your mind understands why. Healing does not require perfection, but accountability asks us to recognize when our wounds are affecting the people around us, repair what we can, and continue doing the work.
This conversation also reflects on compassion, boundaries, and the realization that we can't heal another person for them. We can spend years understanding, explaining, forgiving, accommodating, rescuing, and hoping someone will eventually choose differently. But no amount of empathy can make another person confront wounds they are unwilling to face. Sometimes healing means accepting people as they are instead of exhausting ourselves trying to turn them into who we hoped they would become.
For me, cycle breaking has meant learning that compassion and boundaries can exist together. I can understand where someone came from without following them there, acknowledge someone else’s suffering without sacrificing myself to it, and recognize the ways my own pain has shaped me while refusing to make the people I love responsible for wounds they did not create.
Somewhere along the way, my pain stopped being only something I survived. It became therapy, boundaries, writing, raising my children differently, and eventually this podcast. It became wisdom. Pain may be inevitable, but what we build from it is where our power begins.
Gentle Reminder:
This podcast includes conversations about trauma, alcoholism, addiction, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family systems, enabling, hypervigilance, parentification, mental health, and lived experiences. Listener discretion is advised.
🤍 Support the podcast:
Buy Me a Coffee — https://buymeacoffee.com/mzd5yc89kkk
📌 Follow me:
Instagram: @borntiredpodcast
Threads: @borntiredpodcast
TikTok: @borntiredpodcast
Substack: https://substack.com/@borntiredpodcast
Credits:
Written & narrated by Eirene Torres
Audio production by Carlos Torres
Original music by Carlos Torres
Disclaimer:
Born Tired is a personal storytelling podcast based on lived experience. This content is not a substitute for professional mental health care and does not provide medical or clinical advice. If you are struggling or in crisis, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or local support services.
I talk about generational trauma and the roles we inherit inside dysfunctional family systems. The caretaker, peacemaker, black sheep, scapegoat, or the person who learns to understand everyone else while carrying their own pain quietly. Many of the coping mechanisms that help us survive childhood can follow us into adulthood, shaping our relationships, nervous systems, boundaries, and the ways we respond when we feel threatened or hurt.
This episode explores something I have wrestled with throughout my own healing: how someone can be deeply wounded and still become the source of suffering for other people. I reflect on the desire many of us have to understand the people who hurt us, their childhoods, trauma, family history, and the experiences that shaped them. Sometimes that understanding gives us compassion, but it can also reveal a difficult truth. Understanding why someone became who they are does not erase the impact of what they did.
I also talk about the difference between being affected by trauma and using our trauma to justify harming others. Healing does not mean the past suddenly stops affecting us. I live with C-PTSD, and I know what it feels like for an old wound to find its way into the present or for your nervous system to react before your mind understands why. Healing does not require perfection, but accountability asks us to recognize when our wounds are affecting the people around us, repair what we can, and continue doing the work.
This conversation also reflects on compassion, boundaries, and the realization that we can't heal another person for them. We can spend years understanding, explaining, forgiving, accommodating, rescuing, and hoping someone will eventually choose differently. But no amount of empathy can make another person confront wounds they are unwilling to face. Sometimes healing means accepting people as they are instead of exhausting ourselves trying to turn them into who we hoped they would become.
For me, cycle breaking has meant learning that compassion and boundaries can exist together. I can understand where someone came from without following them there, acknowledge someone else’s suffering without sacrificing myself to it, and recognize the ways my own pain has shaped me while refusing to make the people I love responsible for wounds they did not create.
Somewhere along the way, my pain stopped being only something I survived. It became therapy, boundaries, writing, raising my children differently, and eventually this podcast. It became wisdom. Pain may be inevitable, but what we build from it is where our power begins.
Gentle Reminder:
This podcast includes conversations about trauma, alcoholism, addiction, emotional abuse, dysfunctional family systems, enabling, hypervigilance, parentification, mental health, and lived experiences. Listener discretion is advised.
🤍 Support the podcast:
Buy Me a Coffee — https://buymeacoffee.com/mzd5yc89kkk
📌 Follow me:
Instagram: @borntiredpodcast
Threads: @borntiredpodcast
TikTok: @borntiredpodcast
Substack: https://substack.com/@borntiredpodcast
Credits:
Written & narrated by Eirene Torres
Audio production by Carlos Torres
Original music by Carlos Torres
Disclaimer:
Born Tired is a personal storytelling podcast based on lived experience. This content is not a substitute for professional mental health care and does not provide medical or clinical advice. If you are struggling or in crisis, please consider reaching out to a qualified mental health professional or local support services.
