Tag: resistance

Why You Shouldn’t Avoid Your Pain

Today I’m giving you a choice.

  • Option A: you never have to feel pain again. No physical pain. No sadness. No anxiety. No guilt, fear, or anger. But… you can also never feel physical relaxation. No joy. No happiness. No love, pride, or serenity.
  • Option B: you still have to feel pain, both physical and emotion. But you also get to feel relaxation, joy, happiness, love, pride, serenity, etc.

What do you choose?

I know Option A is super tempting, but I’ve found that most people choose option B, because no one wants to permanently get rid of the things that make us feel “good.”

We don’t like to feel “blue” so we resist it.

When it comes to pain – and throughout this post when I refer to pain, I mean both physical and emotional – we tend to try to block it or avoid it at all costs. Literally, people will drink alcohol, take illicit drugs, take prescription drugs and over-the-counter drugs, mindlessly scroll on their phones for hours, and so on, just to avoid or get rid of the uncomfortable things we really don’t like to feel. Here’s the problem: when we do this it tends to make all the pain much, much worse. (And yes, there has been a TON of research done on this).

Image from: http://www.picturequotes.com/suffering-pain-x-resistance-quote-771963

PAIN X RESISTANCE = SUFFERING

This formula has been said by meditation teachers, such as Shinzen Young, psychologists, such as Tara Brach (who is also a meditation teacher), and researchers, such as Kristin Neff. And I’ve found both personally and through my work as a therapist, that it’s true. I’m literally in more pain when I resist it, avoid it, distract from it, push it away. And when I just let it be, I’m okay. This morning I woke up with so much anxiety. Anxiety about finances, anxiety about work, anxiety about my life and things I could have done. At first I did try to resist it. I instinctively grabbed my phone and scrolled. I decided I wasn’t going to have a workout and that I’d eat an extra waffle for breakfast while I watched YouTube videos about horror movies. But none of that made my anxiety go away…

We naturally want to hide from pain.

Here’s the thing about emotional pain specifically, it can actually lead to several additional problems (or increase the intensity of them if you already have them):

  • More anxiety
  • Lower mood
  • Increase risk of heart disease
  • Gastrointestinal issues
  • Headaches
  • Insomnia
  • Autoimmune Disease Flares

We experience all types of pain for a reason. If we didn’t need our emotions (both the ones we like and dislike) and if we didn’t need physical pain, then we would have evolved without them. Our ancient ancestors needed them to stay alive. To protect us from life and death danger. To keep us safe. Instinctually, our brain and bodies still try to keep us alive the same way, it’s just that we encounter a lot less life and death situations now. And yes, all this applies to chronic pain too. Our bodies are telling us something is wrong, it’s just often not what we think. We think it’s telling us to stay in bed and not move and give in or up on all that’s important to us. In reality, it’s often telling us that we might need to stretch and move our bodies. To do something meaningful with our day – not as distraction but as a way to bring meaning and value to our lives.

Doing something meaningful is much more effective than trying to get rid of something that is a natural part of being human.

…This morning when I decided that I was done resisting my emotional pain, I sat down to meditate. I did my full 20 minutes (meaningful activity) and then I went for an hour walk (moving my body, and a meaningful activity). Then I did my workout that I had put off from the morning. I didn’t do all of this with the intention of distracting myself from my pain (emotional or physical) but to make room for it. I used some practices that I help my clients use to: like observing my pain, breathing into it, expanding around it, and just allowing it to be there WHILE I did things that were important to me. Guess what happened? Not only did it no longer control me, but it actually lessened a lot – to the point where it’s barely noticeable. I also noticed that my drive and creativity and all these things that I’ve been lacking lately came back full force. My suggestion to all of you is to make room for your pain, just to help you make the most of it.

Try this mindfulness exercise out to learn how to make room for pain.

What has your pain taught you?

I don’t know if you’re familiar with quicksand, but probably most of us have seen it in the movies or on TV. Our hero is on an adventure in some kind of jungle and they (or someone in their party of merry men and women) falls into what turns out to be quicksand. And they struggle and struggle and sink faster and faster. Usually in the movies the hero saves the day. Struggling in quicksand is a lot like what we do with our pain – both physical and emotional. We fight against it, struggling more and more, sinking deeper and deeper. But do you know how to actually get out of quicksand in real life? Like if you fell in it? Struggling makes you sink, and doing nothing – literally putting yourself into the floating position (arms and legs out, with zero resistance) will help you float to the top. From there you can take very slow, gentle strokes and get yourself out.

Image from: https://www.britannica.com/story/how-deadly-is-quicksand

What the quicksand metaphor shows is that if you do the opposite of what you think you should do, you can often get to safety. In the case of pain, it means looking at it differently, changing your relationship with it. So that brings me to the question, what are your pain taught you? The answer can be many things. Maybe it’s taught you something about yourself. Or your relationships. Or your values/what’s important to you. Maybe it’s taught you something about the meaning of life. Or helped you set goals. Before straight off answering this question, really take a moment and ponder it. Because often the immediate answer is NOTHING! or THAT LIFE SUCKS! or something to that extent. But is that true? Is that all it’s taught you? Those answers often take us back to the struggle. You’ve fallen in quicksand by responding quickly with the first thing that comes to mind, rather than taking some time to really explore if there is something more you can get out of your experience.

Look, I get it, there is nothing fun about physical (or emotional pain) but that doesn’t mean it can’t do something good for us.

I’m going to use my experience as an example. And trust me, there was a time I was struggling in the quicksand and those would have been my answers. But here is what it has actually taught me, when I’ve taken the time to think about it:

  • I’m stronger – both physically and emotionally – then I thought I was, but it took a lot of work to get here.
  • Being treated with love and respect in romantic relationships and friendships is incredibly important to me.
  • I can do anything that I put my mind to, even if that means I have to adapt some things to what I can do.
  • Loving myself is the most important thing to me.
  • I want to have as many life adventures as possible despite chronic pain.
  • Everything I need is in the present moment, and sometimes the present moment isn’t great and sometimes it is, but that is how life is for everyone.
My first adventure after my diagnoses was to Vienna in 2017.

I’ve probably learned more lessons than that from my chronic illnesses and chronic pain, but should give you a picture of what it can teach you. Your answers will likely be different from mine. This is a key piece to acceptance, and if you can’t accept, you can’t really improve your well-being and quality of life. I want to make a few additional things clear with this post. First, I am not saying that your loss of health is a blessing or that you should be grateful for it. Sometimes as we move through illness grief, gratitude does appear, but that doesn’t mean you have to start looking for it. Also, meaning is not found in loss – it’s what you do after the loss. So the things I listed, are really about things I’ve done after I got sick. This is also not an exercise I’d recommend if you’ve just been diagnosed, because you won’t have had a chance to go through enough to be able to do it.

If you’re interested in contacting the present moment, check out my YouTube channel. This week’s podcast episode is on externalizing language, which can also be quite helpful – find it on Apple, Spotify, and everywhere else you get podcasts. Until next week, keep making the most of it!

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