On Physical Pain

I'm going to take a risk here. I'm going to say some things about something I know only a little about: physical pain.I'm not sure why I'm writing this, and I don't really know where to put in loose but nonetheless ordered structure of this site. But great accomplishments start out as mistakes. There will be time for improvement.

 I know, from my years in the support communities, that many nons suffer from chronic physical pain. Fibromyalgia is mentioned frequently, but people suffer from other causes as well. I rarely mention it, but I have suffered from severe pain in my shoulders, neck, and upper arms, and chronic morning stiffness that affects my mood. My doctor tells me this fibromyalgia, although it seems different to me from what I read and hear of that disorder.

Physical pain is really important, especially if it severe or prolonged. Pain changes our perception of the world around us. In my case, pain changed my perception of stressful situations, even minor stressors. Take, for example, a red traffic light. For most people, it is simply an indication to wait, perhaps frustrating, but of little consequence. For me, traffic lights became a trigger for serious pain - pain that preoccupied my attention and  greatly reduced my ability to interact with others, especially my children. Thus, a traffic light became not just a momentary interruption, but a source of punishment. 

Pain changes how we live in our world.

Mind-Body Miracle

In my younger days, the word psychosomatic held this hideous connotation to me. It implied mental defect; craziness; and the danger of social isolation as a kook. I thought psychosomatic problems could never happen to normal people. 

Now I realize that pain is but on dimension in the complex miracle of our interacting minds and bodies. The idea of problems being psychosomatic (originating in the mind and made manifest in the body) or somato-psycho (originating in the body and made manifest in the mind) are both gross trivializations of completely interacting system. We experience our bodies through our minds, and the working of our minds is a primary determinant of what our bodies become. They interact continually, as each experience progresses, the two interplay, modulating and transforming the total experience.

As nons we all deal with emotional pain. Not that we have a monopoly on it, but our situations seems to bring it with high intensity. And many of us experience physical pain. And I suppose you know what I am going to say here: I believe it all part of spectrum of experiences that we perceive as bad for us. 

Taking responsibility

If we are to make our emotional lives significantly better, at some point we have to take responsibility for our choices, the decisions we make from day to day, and try to find balance through our own initiative. Of fundamental importance is the moment when we reject victimization, and instead realize that we are the product of our own choices and actions.

Now, so far I have waxed philosophic about how to look at life, and babbled perspectives which can never be proven true or untrue. Pretty safe stuff. But now I'm going to stick my head up where any self-respecting 12-guage could have at least a fighting chance at shooting it off. I'm going to talk about responsibility for physical pain.

Now, before I do this, I want to be clear. I've suffered with pain - I still do, but thankfully to a lesser extent. I know it is real. I am not in any sense demeaning or minimizing the experience of physical pain. It is real, and it hurts. And, although this doesn't make me shotgun proof, I could be wrong. I've been wrong before, and I try to make a practice of it. I know I'm learning when I fall down a lot when I practice my first love: figure skating. When I stop falling, I'll know I've stopped learning, and I'm not nearly ready for that yet.

And so I come, after shamelessly expending so many innocent words, to the insight I offer here. For those experience it,  I believe that we must take responsibility for our physical pain. I believe that we must abandon the idea that we are helpless victims of our bodies; that we are subjected to something we cannot control. We must stand up and choose to become free of pain.

I believe that pain is not a given, and that it's experience is not a given. Like music playing on the stereo, we have choices. 

How to Respond: We first have the choice of how to respond. Lets say the music is a symphony, maybe a nice Rachmaninoff one.We can respond with positive, creative thoughts. So doing, we may stimulate our thoughts and imagination; we may generate good feelings; and the experience can be part of our growth. We might, by contrast, react with distress. We might generate negative thoughts; negative feelings; as if we were victims of something perpetrated upon us. In this case, the choice of how to respond diminishes our lives.

I believe we have similar choices with pain. I have experienced this, through self-discipline. I expect that this, like all my experiences, reflect the common basis on which we all work, and so I believe this will hold true for others.

We need to listen to our pain; honor our pain; and do this in a way that values pain as part of our life experience. Let me elaborate from my own experience. I mentioned earlier that traffic is a stressor that can result in significant pain that occurs quite rapidly. In the past, I would brace myself against it; viewing it as an assault from outside my existence; hoping to defend my self but at the same time think, from experience, that pain leads to more pain in a cycle that can become crushing.

Today I respond differently. Today I treat pain as a message. I might even say a message from my body, but no. I think my body has become the messenger for needs that I have neglected. Today when I experience such pain, and I still do, I stop. I literally ask myself, "What is this pain trying to tell me?" I find that often just the act of making this inquiry of myself lessens the pain. And, when I can, I try to think about what I should be doing differently.

Whether to Listen: But we also have a choice of whether to listen. We have the option of turning off the stereo and simply choosing to have our sensory input stimulated in a different way. I believe that we have the same choice with pain.

Now, if you have chronic pain, especially debilitating pain, you are probably thinking I'm nuts. Well, I am, but let's get back on topic. I believe we have this choice because our perception of pain is an interaction of our bodies with our minds. And, to a large extent, we control our minds.

I'm struggling a little here but I'll press on. What I'm driving at here is faith. And I think with chronic pain we have faith in the wrong thing. I think we have faith in pain, and we lack faith in our own control or our life experience. I believe pain is like fear. Fear exists within us and is the creation of our mind. It is a perception that arises from thought, and from faith in what is possible and what we can or cannot do about it. I'm not saying fear has no root in reality. Nor am I saying that pain has no root in reality. But I am saying that what we experience is the product of our minds, and therefore it is within our control.

I could make a biblical analogy here. Chronic pain is the worship of a false god: the god of pain, to whom we acribe great powers. If there is any sin in life, surely this must be one. We must learn to honor the power of our life energy, our minds, and relegate pain to it's proper status as a mere messenger. The message. 

© 2004-6 Richard, 21CP and Dalkeith Press