Embracing Pain

When you are ready to stop the war against pain, your life will change. Find out how.

Transcript

Embracing Pain

There’s a beauty in pain that even happiness cannot touch. Lauren Cucinotta

Hello everyone, and welcome to a new episode of Healing Your Own Pain. Today’s podcast is called:  Embracing Pain. My name is Greg, I’m an expert level MFR therapist and owner of Glen Ellyn Myofascial Release, an in-person and on-line treatment center for pain relief, injury rehabilitation and physical and emotional healing.

How does that title, Embracing Pain, hit you? Do you have an emotional, gut reaction. “That’s the last thing I want to do.” Or, “Embrace pain. I’ve been trying for years to get rid of it.”

When I look at client medical intake forms I’m amazed at the epidemic of  chronic, physical suffering is going on with many, if not most people you see every day. The walking wounded. The litany of surgeries, pain and anxiety meds, and multiple therapies is staggering. And what’s common to all of them, what they are all asking is: “Make the pain go away!”

And they don’t always like my answer. “If that’s your goal, it won’t work, not with me or any other therapist or healing modality you seek.” And when I ask how well their pain and anxiety meds worked, they usually say, “OK at first, but now they just dull it a bit so I can still go to work.”

We are a culture so racked with physical and emotional pain that it has become part of our identity. The problem with that is what we acclimate ourselves to becomes who we are. Asking to make the pain stop is still focusing on the problem. It’s sporting a t-shirt or bumper sticker that says “Anti-pain.”

That’s why I have added the question: Please list the activities you’d like to be able to do as result of therapy. In other words, what are your positive goals? Imagine what you would be doing if you weren’t limited by pain. That gives your imagination something to grab onto. Even get excited about. “I could swim again. Play with my grandkids, Play golf, “ are a few I’ve heard and I see their faces light up. That is a key, often overlooked ingredient to restoring health. Your imagination, and belief account for nearly 60% of your outcome. I’m sure you’ve all seen or heard an ad for Delta airlines. They never mention the ordeal of the flight: the overcrowded, ever shrinking leg space, the delays, airport security, the lack of amenities. No, what they are selling is the destination. The palm tree lined beach resort you’ve dreamt of all winter. So, what’s your destination. It must be more than freeing yourself of a negative, the pain. We can’t achieve a negative.

When you say “pain-free,” your subconscious doesn’t even register the “free”, all it hears is the “pain.” As Tony Robbins has said, “Where your focus goes, energy flows”. Trying to make anything go away by focusing on it only makes it grow. 

So, what do I mean, then, by embracing pain. Isn’t that a contradiction. No, it’s just the opposite. By embracing I’m acknowledging it. I’m not fighting it. And have stopped making it my enemy. I invite it in as a guest. As Eckhart Tolle said, “Whatever the present moment contains, accept it as if you had chosen it. Because a part of you has.”

If you look back over all the changes you’ve made over a lifetime; jobs, a career you left, a partner, friendship or unhealthy habit you’ve left behind. What was the constant in all those changes. At some point you embraced the truth of it. “This is what it is. I chose this. And I can change it.” Until we own the truth that something is ours, we have no power to change it. And there is no drug to relieve you of denial. Fighting pain won’t free you of it. But feeling it can.

In recovery circles, trying to overcome your problem by fighting it is called “white knuckling.” And that strategy is never a permanent solution. Sooner or later, you lose. You can’t keep it up. When you treat pain like the problem child you don’t want to hear, what happens? He just gets louder. Because he’s frustrated. He’s got the answer you’re looking for, but you won’t listen. I know this, because I did it for many years myself, without even thinking about it. Imagine you injured your leg but thought you didn’t have time to be off your feet so you had an anesthetic injected into your leg and then tried to go about your business. You’d probably fall and make the problem worse because you couldn’t feel what you were doing. Well, millions of people are doing just that, walking around numb, injuring themselves because they can’t feel what the body wants to tell them.

When we are injured physically or emotionally, we often dissociate, or, as we say in MFR, we leave the body. It’s an automatic strategy that might have been the right choice at one time, when we knew no other options. But it becomes a habit of quarantining pain until later. Only the later never comes. When we are not present in the painful parts of our body, the body does what it can to help you. That is, it thickens the fascia around and injury which just solidifies it in place. This layering of fascia blocks the body’s natural inflammatory response to injury. When not allowed to be completed the pain becomes chronic. So, we take pain or anxiety meds to “manage” it.

When we give up resisting, pull our fingers out of our ears, and finally admit: “Ok, I’m here. What is it you want to tell me? I’m ready to feel this.” 

Here’s the surprising thing about surrendering to feelings. They’re not what we thought they were. We’ve kept them locked in the basement so long we imagine by now they’re giant orcs with blood-dripping fangs. But what we find instead are wounded children who were scared because no-one wanted them, or would listen to them. The difference with this pain, is: it may flare up for a day or two, but then it begins to ease or points you into the direction of the body you didn’t know is the real origin of your issue. That’s when your child becomes your teacher.

And that’s what a good therapist does, encourages you back to your body where all healing takes place. They don’t fix you, but they help make it safe for you to feel again. Which is how all healing takes place. 

If you are ready to feel, you are ready to heal. 

If you are that person, I would love to talk to you. When you decide to feel, the road to emotional and physical well-being opens up to you.

If you want to explore further, or just want to know more, you can contact me at my website, www.glenellynmfr.com. And as always my friends, I wish you well on your healing journey.