Running Toward Clean Pain

Sometimes I’m not sure if I love running because it’s a hobby that clears my mind… or because I’m quietly testing how far I can push myself — especially on the days I don’t feel up to it.

Either way, it’s one of my favorite ways to shake off built-up energy. The restless kind. The negative kind. The kind that sits in your chest and won’t let you exhale fully.

When I was a kid, I was anxious all the time with pent up energy. I didn’t have language for it then. I just knew my body was always on edge. That feeling followed me into my early twenties. During that time, I experienced a few panic attacks. Some I could talk myself down from. Others ended with me passing out and nose-diving into the ground.

Understanding Your Nervous System on the Run

What I didn’t understand back then was that my body was constantly scanning. It was taking in everything around me — the noise, the tension in a room, the expressions on someone’s face. That’s exteroception. At the same time, it was monitoring everything inside me — my heart rate, my breath, the tightness in my chest. That’s interoception. Together, those signals told my nervous system how to respond.

Most of the time, it chose anxiety. Sometimes, it chose panic. Very rarely, it chose safety. And when you’ve lived with anxiety for most of your life, you eventually face a choice:

Clean Pain vs. Dirty Pain

You can choose what Resmaa Menakem, therapist and author of My Grandmother’s Hands, calls dirty pain — staying the same, letting anxiety and old trauma run the show, repeating the same patterns because they’re familiar. Or you can choose clean pain — the uncomfortable work of noticing your triggers, learning your body’s early warning signs, and sitting with the discomfort long enough to understand it.

Clean pain doesn’t feel good in the moment. But it leads somewhere.

Running is where I practice that. It’s where I replay conversations that didn’t sit right. Where I process arguments. Where I connect the dots.

I’ll think, Okay, I was in a crowded, loud room — that’s exteroception. My chest tightened. My breathing got shallow. I wanted to bolt — that’s interoception. And then I get to choose.

I can ignore it and keep cycling through the same reaction next time. Or I can make a plan. Maybe that plan is focusing on slower breathing before I walk into a similar space. Somteimes it’s staying present instead of mentally escaping. Other times it’s bringing Loop Earplugs because I know loud environments overwhelm my system.

The plan won’t execute perfectly. It never does. But I know how to help myself now. I know which environments spike my stress. I know how my body whispers before it screams. 

And that’s the part where most people get stuck.

The Subtle Power of Awareness

When you overreact in a conversation, when someone’s tone makes you defensive, or when a crowded room makes you irritable for no obvious reason, it’s not because you’re dramatic or out of control. It’s because your nervous system is fast and your body remembers before your mind does, and most of the time your mind doesn’t remember at all.

An environment (exteroception) or a sensation inside your body (interoception) can light up an old, unresolved experience in a split second. And your body reacts as if it’s happening again. The hardest part isn’t always the reaction itself. It’s what comes after.

It’s the replaying the conversation in your head. The “Why did I say that?” The embarrassment. The tight feeling in your stomach hours later. The promise to “do better next time” without actually knowing what that means.

That’s where the cycle tightens.

You react, you feel ashamed, you get frustrated with yourself, you vow to be different.
And then the next trigger hits — and your body moves faster than your intention again.

The frustration becomes its own layer of pain and here’s the subtle truth:
Staying stuck in that frustration is dirty pain.

It feels productive because you’re analyzing yourself. But it keeps you in the same loop — reacting, criticizing, repeating, and never changing.

Clean pain looks different.

Clean pain is pausing, even if it’s after the fact, and saying:
“What actually happened in my body?”

Not, “What’s wrong with me?” but, “What did I feel?”

Did your chest tighten and your breathing change? Did your shoulders rise or did your stomach drop?

That moment of noticing — even hours later — interrupts the cycle because awareness is there.

The Space Between Trigger and Reaction

The cycle only continues when the reaction goes unnoticed. When it’s labeled as personality instead of physiology. When it’s dismissed as “I’m just dramatic” instead of understood as “My nervous system perceived a threat.”

The moment you notice, you’ve already stepped out of autopilot. You may still react next time and you may still feel your chest tighten in a crowded room, and you may still want to bolt. But now there’s a sliver of space between the trigger and the reaction and in that space, you get to choose what happens next.

Not perfectly. Not flawlessly. But intentionally.

That’s the work.

And it’s less about never reacting again — and more about learning your body well enough that you don’t turn against yourself when it does.

Running — or any form of physical movement — can help you move through the uncomfortable sensations that surface as you process. Let yourself grunt, exhale hard, even yell if you need to — release the energy that builds when you choose clean pain instead of staying stuck.

Your body was wired to respond. It can also be trained to feel safe again.