By Adam Bradshaw
Co-Founder, Chronic Pain Guide & Coach, MS Psychology
A recent article in the New York Times titled, “Treating Chronic Pain Takes a Team. I Had to Build My Own,” does a great job outlining what it takes to piece it all together to manage ongoing, chronic pain.
This article was a great reminder of why I do what I do to help others manage chronic pain. I have heard story after story after story of how piecing together a team gave tremendous hope, opportunity, and relief to manage the situation and to heal. Nevertheless, along the way it often feels like we’ll never get there. It never ends it seems. People do not know what to do or where to start and simply cannot seem to piece it all together efficiently to find the help they need to create the necessary space to heal.
It takes time. It takes very hard work. It takes patience. It takes moving along one step at a time – wide open to it all!
It just piles up on us and overwhelms us otherwise. Thus, I am always reminded it is a journey that, like most things in life, must be broken down one step at a time so we can focus on what is right in front of us. What is here and now? It is about each step along the way and being with them fully. In this way, we learn what we need to continue to piece it all together. Thus, it gets easier and easier to find the right next step and to know where to turn to next.
Ultimately, it can and often does take a team to treat and manage chronic pain and to actually heal in the process. Of this I have no doubt, but piecing that team together can feel impossible and take years! For many, by the time they have learned enough to manage their pain they are so exhausted that there is hardly any energy left to finally, actually heal and move on with life. We get stuck. We simply manage to survive. We cope and learn to live with the bare minimum.
Thus, we have to turn to others to ask for help. To find not only the right people to be a part of our team of practitioners and healers, but also to piece together the right tools. The right tools that help us so we have the energy left to truly heal and not just manage the situation once we piece it all together.
After well over 10 years I am still piecing it together, but things are better and better by the year. The capacity to just be with it all has grown tremendously and the knowledge to know what to do next simply flows. It is no longer such a constant struggle. Now it is time to figure out how to move on. How to take the final steps, but this process continues to unfold in right timing as it gives me and others the lessons they need along the way to see who they truly are. What they are truly capable of. What it means to heal and grow from the inside out. Not the outside in as most Western medicine and society too often would have it.
We water the seeds over time and watch them grow. Watch them flourish and bloom. In the meantime, we notice the seeds that were overly nourished and watered that no longer serve us to be who we truly are. To truly heal. We cut down that which no longer serves us so that it can be the organic matter to fertilize the ground around us and feed us. These are life’s hard earned lessons. To earn them it takes more than just ourselves. It requires asking for help. It takes a team. It takes the right tools. It takes patience. It takes settling into the process as it unfolds – one step at a time.
If you need help finding your next step please feel free to reach out. I am happy to help you find what is next on your healing journey.
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