Dharius Daniels - 5 Types of People Pain You Should Understand

Hey, listen to me: your greatest joy and your greatest pain in life will come from the same place—people. My question to you is, what are you going to do about the pain part? I don’t think we have issues or challenges dealing with the joy part; I think where we struggle is with the pain part. In this video, I’m going to tell you what to do about people’s pain. Let’s go!

You know pain is an inevitable aspect of all our lives. No matter how wise we are, some of the pain we experience cannot be avoided. Pain is a consequence of living in an imperfect world; it results from us making imperfect decisions and being impacted by imperfect people. The question is, when you deal with people’s pain, what do you do about it?

I think that when something like this is inevitable, we shouldn’t be uninformed about how to handle it. How we process the pain impacts whether or not we push forward or move backward. First of all, I want to clarify the types of people pain. I want to share five types of people pain with you.

First, there is people pain that comes from unappreciation. Have you ever felt that? There will be situations and seasons where individuals don’t express proper appreciation for the contributions you’ve made to their lives. Some won’t even value that contribution. This is one of the things I often share with parents: as a parent, you must be willing to play the long game. That means you must be willing to invest in and contribute to your children during a season of life when they don’t even recognize how valuable that contribution is. I often say that the older I get, the greater appreciation I have for my father. The more I become a man, the more I see how blessed I was to have a man like him in my life. So, there’s some people pain that can arise from unappreciation.

You can be in a romantic relationship with someone who doesn’t recognize the rarity of what they possess in a relationship with you. I don’t think that’s narcissistic or egotistical; I think that to steward anything properly, you need to recognize its distinction. It’s common sense to me. If I’m going to steward something well, I must be able to recognize that it’s not easily replaceable, or that it’s expensive to replace, or that it’s irreplaceable.

I’m not saying one person is better than another, nor that different people vary in their value in the eyes of God. Just because all of us are equally valuable in the eyes of God doesn’t mean everyone adds equal value to you. Sometimes, you’re adding unique value to people, and they neither see nor value your contribution. So you’ve got unappreciation; then you’ve got amnesia.

That’s a different kind of people pain. This occurs when you are making a contribution to someone—adding value either through who you are, what you are doing, or both—and they recognized and seemingly appreciated that for a time, but then forgot. It’s painful. That’s kind of what Joseph dealt with when he was in prison, interpreting his fellow inmates' dreams. One of them ended up getting out and, instead of initially remembering Joseph’s contribution, he forgot. I’m sure Joseph felt hurt, discouraged, and disappointed because sometimes people get amnesia.

The third type is entitlement. This is when people aren’t necessarily unappreciative of your contribution; they just feel entitled to it. They think you should do it for them, that you have to do it for them, or that you owe it to them. When you become aware of someone’s entitlement, it can be a source of pain for you because people sometimes don’t realize that you don’t have to do what you did.

Listen, when you grow spiritually, everything gets better. Spiritual life is not just one important part of your life; it’s the most important part because it affects every other part. However, you don’t get stronger spiritually by accident; it takes intentionality. You need to be fed, and you must learn how to understand, interpret, apply, and explain the Bible. The Bible is the blueprint to your best life, and I’m going to tell you that Sunday is not enough to equip you with the tools you need to improve your understanding of the Bible. I want you to join my community called BibleU, where I help you enhance your understanding, application, and explanation of the Bible to another level.

Here’s the fourth type of people pain: betrayal. This happens when someone’s ethical deficiencies or emotional immaturity leads them to behave in ways that cause relational, emotional, or financial harm to you. It’s when your trust is broken and they aren’t reciprocating the kind of positive and transformational value that you’re adding to their life.

Here’s the thing about betrayal: your goodness never makes you immune to it. Jesus was perfect.