By Adam Bradshaw
Co-Founder, Chronic Pain Guide & Coach, MS Psychology
Chronic pain is known to take everything from those that live with it. It takes your time, energy, patience, and most of your resources to simply manage the day to day and be with life itself. To cope. To simply be with the basics of life as that often is all that is left. Sitting or lying in bed for hours staring at the wall or, if you’re lucky, out a window with some beautiful trees or perhaps some hummingbirds to help brighten and bring magic to the day!
Chronic pain leaves us asking – why? What is the point of all of this pain? Why can’t I just get over it? It is all in my head isn’t it – they were right weren’t they? I am not strong enough like other people, am I? On and on and on and on.
But these questions miss the point. They miss the language of pain itself that is there if only we listen. The language of our bodies asking us to pay attention. What are we not seeing or getting that we need? What are we forcing because we think it is what we should do or who we should be. Are we giving too much at work (if we can still even work)? Are we putting others before ourselves all of the time because we think that is what it takes to be a good parent, spouse or friend? Are we allowing ourselves to set boundaries and be who we truly are?
At the core of pain likely sits a deep life lesson that we can’t ignore. Something we are required to learn during our time here on this planet Earth. A lesson that we simply keep ignoring. And so it hits us in the head (or whatever body part is screaming with the most pain) over and over and over trying to get us to listen.
It is a message we likely don’t want to see or hear. We keep getting the email and deleting it. We keep seeing the flare go up and turning away from it. We cover it with painkillers or alcohol or wellness quick fixes, this and that, but we don’t truly lean into it and LISTEN. We don’t just sit with it and befriend it. We don’t identify that it doesn’t speak the same way we do so it takes time to get it. It doesn’t know English, Spanish, French, Russian, or Zulu. It knows pain. It knows never-ending, undeniable pain – and it speaks to you in this way for as long as you need to hear it. Until you listen.
You fight it. You wrestle it. You hate it. You deny it. You ignore it. You pretend, but you never truly take the time to listen until you’re laid out flat in bed again and are forced to do so. Then you still don’t really listen though do you? You watch a show or read a book or manage your emails or scroll through social media, but you don’t just sit with the pain and get to know it.
Become friends with it.
What? – Why on Earth would anyone do this? – Become friends with pain?– How can this make any sense at all? – Essentially, it comes down to finding the tools to stop fighting ourselves. To stop fighting the pain and instead go with it to where it might be taking us. Don’t swim against the river any longer. Flow with the current. Trust in the process. There are many many different ways to say it, but we must learn to be with it and be open to it. If we are constantly ignoring or fighting the pain and, therefore, ourselves how can we ever heal and move on with life? There is always conflict within ourselves.
Even if there is an underlying obvious physical injury associated with our pain, the pain is still likely there as a messenger in your life. This is not necessarily good or bad and we are not being punished. We need to listen. To learn. The pain is telling you that which you likely don’t want to, but absolutely need to hear about yourself. From there you can find greater peace and joy in life. You can learn to live with and be who you truly are. Not who others want you to be or who you think you should be, but who you truly are.
So sit back, have a cup of hot tea or coffee or whatever suits you and listen.
What is your chronic pain trying to tell you?
Don’t hide from it or mask it. Lean into it.
Hang out with it and find a way to befriend it. – If it isn’t going anywhere. Why not?
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