Pain Points

September 2025 Newsletter "Nightvision" / Feature Story

What’s a pain point, you ask?

And what kind of question is that anyway - a bit dark, isn’t it? Especially now, with the first early warm days of spring arriving and a full moon shining so brightly. Geez… leave that stuff to the dead of winter!

My understanding is that a pain point is a node of intense, often uncomfortable feeling. A place in a story loaded with history. Something like a trigger, though perhaps more internal - a spot that’s hard to rest on. Because it hurts. And its roots often run deep into the psyche.

As a therapist, I often hear life stories or experiences, filled with pain points - little knots along the way that yearn to be felt, but which feel devastating when touched.

Why? Because pain speaks of threat.

 We’re taught: if it hurts, it’s not safe. If it hurts, run.

In other words, our culture equates pain with danger.

And yet - it’s often through listening to and feeling pain that we recognise our own healing.

The phrase feel it to heal it gets used a lot, and is useful, but I wonder if something softer might be closer to the truth:

• Feel it to know it.

• Feel it to love it.

• Feel it to flow with it.

Allowing ourselves to feel pain doesn’t necessarily make it vanish. But it changes our relationship to it. We’re no longer afraid of our own suffering. Instead of denying or numbing, we open the door (though maybe a little reluctantly) like greeting a messy, confronting guest.

Allowing pain might mean letting disappointment surface.

Letting grief flow.

Accepting a hard truth that reveals hidden shame.

And why do this? Because pain can be part of a process. It doesn’t have to mean a lifetime of suffering. More often, it points us somewhere new.

Think of childbirth. A tattoo. The tears after losing something precious. These moments hurt - but they also open into something meaningful.

In nature, pain and pressure are rarely meaningless.

Volcanoes erupt and new land is formed.

Plates grind together, shaping mountains and valleys.

Deer shed their antlers each year - raw and bloody - only to grow back stronger.

Some banksias and wattles need bushfire heat to release their seeds.

In these instances, destruction becomes the condition for renewal.

Pain is not the end of the story. It’s often the threshold of a transformation that does not deny the ordeal of its own creation.

So what’s a pain point?

I like to imagine it as the tiny spot where the fine threads of a spiderweb cross. A fragile junction, holding tension and load. If disturbed, it threatens the whole structure.

But in therapy, instead of undoing or avoiding it, we can pause beside it. We can say: I see you. I feel you. You’re pointing me somewhere - toward my own unfolding. And I trust you. You are part of something.

This is where I find Gabor Maté’s description of trauma as “wounding” so useful. Pain is the echo of the wound - the reverberation of impact. The kind of harm that no empathetic human would ever imagine themselves capable of causing, and yet which lives in us all: the mistakes, the imperfections, the parts that don’t always seem benevolent.

If ignored, pain often multiplies. Sometimes it takes one person’s courage to speak their truth in vulnerability, or someone’s complete breaking, for others to finally notice. On every scale - from a child who feels knocked down and unseen, to those who endure violation, to the collective suffering carried through generations - pain becomes a voice of truth. It asks to be witnessed, honoured, and heard so that deep healing, repair, is possible.

An Invitation 

This month at the Clinic, as the buds of spring crack open, we’re inviting you to consider your own pain points - not as threats to flee, but as thresholds. They don't need to be felt all at once (in fact better if they're not), but they might like to be noticed. Places that might be pointing you toward your own unfolding. Places where, using our nightvision, we don't need to run from quite so fast.

Our Clinic will be open September 15 - 19. Bookings are open now.

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About the Writer

Michelle McCosker is a vibrant and creative person, certified in both Holistic Psychotherapy and Art Therapy. Her life experiences and playful approach provide profound wisdom in her work. She gently guides her clients through old wounds at their own pace, utilising the resources already within their own inner landscape, offering compassion and clarity, helping them access their innate wisdom and self-acceptance. She calls this 'healing from the inside'.

Michelle also offers 1:1 online Holistic Psychotherapy and Art Therapy Sessions (online and in-person) outside of clinic hours.

Michelle is currently a Community Steward for the Connection Culture Community which includes care-taking the Clinic, Mentoring Students and offering focussed study sessions 'Empowered Practice' to Holistic Psychotherapy students studying Lee Trew's model.

Read more about her here.