When Life Hurts: Turning Pain Into Growth Through Faith and Responsibility

What can a person do when tragedy, loss, or upheaval strikes? How is it possible to cope with the feeling that the trauma is simply too big to hold?

When human beings face intense pain, the mind often reaches for protection. One of the most common protective mechanisms is to shift responsibility and guilt outward: to blame others, attack everyone, dismiss them, belittle them, and paint the world as entirely bad.

The result is anger, resentment, and a deep conviction that “people are evil,” “everyone is against me,” “they’re all plotting to harm me.” Often the bitterness doesn’t stop with other people, but it can turn upward as well: Why did God do this to me? Why do I deserve it? What did I do wrong?

On the one hand, we cannot judge a person in grief. Pain, helplessness, and shock can trigger automatic reactions. On the other hand, from the perspective of clarity and truth, those accusations don’t actually solve anything. Iyov’s response to his wife captures that tension: “Shall we accept the good from God, and not accept the bad?” (Iyov 2:10)

This is where inner conflict becomes unavoidable: the clash between emotion and reason. Here we introduce an additional dimension that does not cancel either one: faith.

Faith Is Not a Personality Switch

People tend to talk about faith as if it automatically produces calm: no fears, no anger, no sadness, or depression. However, that assumption can be dangerous.

When a person discovers that faith did not erase their fear or grief, they may fall into despair. And yet, faith was never meant to replace emotional work or character refinement.

Rambam, in Hilchot De’ot, addresses the discipline of character traits — especially anger, and describes practical methods to uproot it, even to the extreme of distancing oneself from anger “to the other end.” If faith were simply a shortcut for fixing traits, Rambam could have offered an easier method: “Just believe it’s all from Heaven, and you won’t be angry.” The fact that he doesn’t, illustrates something essential:

Faith and character work are two different tracks. They interact, but they are not the same tool.

Expectations, Disappointment, and Survival Mode

Much of human behavior operates on internal templates of unspoken beliefs about how life should work.

A common template is: If I invest, I should get results.

A person invests in children, marriage, work, kindness, spirituality — and expects that investment to produce reward. Reality is more complex, however. Sometimes the person’s “investment” was based on assumptions that weren’t accurate. Sometimes what they believed was helping actually caused harm. Sometimes life simply does not reward effort in the way we hoped.

When the results don’t arrive, or when things deteriorate, the nervous system shifts into survival mode. The person becomes bitter, and they feel cheated. They ask, “I worked so hard — and this is what I got?!”

Then the protective mechanism activates, and they blame everyone else. If others appear to succeed easily, the pain sharpens into a sense of injustice and humiliation.

A mature response would be: “If reality doesn’t match my expectations, maybe I need to reassess my approach, my strategy, my communication, or my priorities.”

However, many of us don’t respond from maturity in moments of threat, but from old reflexes, and patterns carved by childhood experiences.

A child who once got their needs met through explosions of anger may grow up believing anger is a “tool.” Another person may learn to use tears to evoke mercy. These tools sometimes “work,” and therefore the brain stores them as survival strategies. Over time, they become automatic, and then they become identity: “This is just how I am.”

When the tool stops working, the individual doesn’t question the tool, but they blame the other side: “If my anger isn’t working, something is broken in them,” or “If my tears don’t move him, he must be cruel.”

This is how couples get trapped: two people are using survival strategies, and each is convinced that the other is the problem.

“Everything Is From Heaven” Requires Practical Effort

Faith does not automatically change a person’s traits. In fact, it can be misused as a spiritual excuse:

• “If I’m suffering, I must be ‘right’ to be aggressive about getting what I want.”

• “I’m probably a soul that came back to suffer — so there’s nothing to do.”

This is not faith guiding action, but faith being used to avoid responsibility.

A classic idea attributed to the Vilna Gaon compares Torah to rain: rain falls equally everywhere, but what grows depends on what’s planted. If the soil holds fruit trees, rain produces fruit. If the soil holds thorns, rain strengthens thorns. In the same way, spiritual language can empower what’s already inside a person, for better or worse.

Habit is often stronger than belief. Belief can be inspired in a moment, while habits are built over years. Faith doesn’t override the nervous system automatically. It can motivate change — but change still requires training.

In Kabbalistic language, there is a level of consciousness where a person can sincerely say, “Everything is from Heaven,” and remain calm. But there is also a more grounded level of the self that needs simple, concrete, practical reassurances: structure, benefits, routines, and emotional regulation.

A hungry person cannot live off “Everything is from Heaven.” They need food — or at least practical clarity about when food is coming, and how to stabilize themselves meanwhile. Faith alone does not fill immediate human needs.

Certainly, everything is from Heaven — but that truth is intended to create responsibility, not erase it.

The Spiritual Trap: Faith as Denial

Sometimes a person uses faith as a way to numb reality: “There’s nothing to do — everything is from Heaven.”

That can sound holy, but often it functions like a sedative. It quiets the discomfort without solving the issue. If faith is treated as a magic solution, then when reality doesn’t improve, the person may blame faith itself and crash into a spiritual crisis.

Faith is not intended to help us escape reality, but to help us face reality.

If someone loses their job, “Everything is from Heaven” is true — but it is not the end of the story. The next question is: What can I learn? What needs to change? What new path is opening? What practical steps must I take now?

If there are problems in parenting or marriage, saying “Everything is from Heaven” cannot replace honest evaluation, conversation, boundaries, and growth. Otherwise, faith becomes a way to preserve dysfunction.

Faith Points to Good, but You Must Reveal It

Faith teaches that there is goodness in the world, even when we cannot see it yet. But faith does not always reveal that goodness instantly. The revelation often comes through time, effort, and character work.

A person who loses a job may eventually discover a different career that allows for more family time, deeper learning, a healthier pace, and more meaningful direction. But initially, they may feel empty and ashamed because their old “definition of success” was tied to salary, status, and achievement.

The brain doesn’t change its reward system overnight. It takes time to detox from old meanings and build new ones. This is why there are no true shortcuts.

Faith supplies the frame: “This can lead somewhere good.” Character work supplies the process: “Here is how I become capable of living that good.”

Don’t Ask “Why?” Ask “How?”

In acute pain, “Why?” questions are often a dead end. Even if someone could answer them, the suffering person usually cannot absorb the answer yet.

The healthier shift is to ask:

How do I move forward from here?
How do I build meaning now?
How do I stabilize my emotions?
How do I create new habits and new definitions of success?
How do I rebuild relationships with wisdom instead of reflex?

Faith is the foundation that makes those questions possible. It tells the person: “There is a path. There is a future. There is meaning beyond what you see right now.” However, the healing itself is built through concrete inner work.

Tears Are Not a Lack of Faith

A person who cries while letting go of the past is not “weak in faith.” Often, those tears are the human process of separation, and accepting that what was will not be the same again. That grief can be a healthy demolition that makes room for rebuilding.

The real obstacle is not tears, but the constant comparison — judging the new stage of life by the old stage’s rules. As long as the person continues measuring the present against the past, they remain trapped. When they release the comparison, they gain the freedom to discover new life, new experiences, and new sources of genuine satisfaction.

And then, slowly and steadily, an authentic new beginning becomes possible.