When Pain Gets in the Way
If pain limits your ability to enjoy this season, I know how frustrating it can be! Know that you can eliminate pain as a barrier by rewiring how you respond to support the healing process. In this article, I show you how.
Physical pain is a message from the body to the brain that there is a problem that needs your attention. The brain sends an automatic response to the body to keep you safe. When you touch a hot stove and you don't have to think about it, your hand automatically pulls away from the pain source.
When you were an infant, this message and response network was 100% based on what was happening in your body in the present moment. Pain was a guide to take action to survive.
Over the years, your brain learns other responses to pain based on past experiences with pain, the responses from caregivers when you were in pain, watching others respond to pain, and media messages about that pain. Â
Your immediate reaction to pain is no longer a direct present-moment response mechanism. Your thoughts quickly go to the knowledge base about pain, how to respond and how much of a risk this pain will be to your future.
When that happens pain becomes a complex barrier rather than a simple guide.
It's easy to forget the most effective way to respond to pain is to stay present and do what you can now to support healing.
This takes a great deal of trust in your body. From previous posts in this series, you know that trusting what is here now is the state of being well. In that state, your cells put energy into healing. When pain is a threat or a barrier you are trying to overcome, it keeps you in a stress state and thus limits healing.
Responding to pain with presence, curiosity, and kindness won't be your first response. You will automatically fight, flee, or freeze in response to pain. You have to, or you will not survive. Pain and healing are a flow. When you have pain that limits your life, your brain will go to past and future thinking, but at any moment you can shift back to trusting the present. When you do, you are spending more time in healing.
Use the Be Well Now steps to keep this flow going:
Be: Pause and shift your body to a position of support. Feel your breath and let your body tell your brain you are supported and safe right now.
Well: Knowing you are safe starts the shift back to the well state. This state restores access to the wisdom in your body about how to help it heal. Practice trusting your body and what it is telling you in the present moment. (that may take rewiring your brain's learned response to pain)
Now: Use mindful kind movement to promote healing in the well state. For example, if you feel arthritis pain from sitting for too long, you might do some gentle movement or a light massage to reduce inflammation that builds up from stillness. If that lowers pain, you know it is reducing inflammation, if not, try something different. Either way stay present, curious, and respond with kindness to use pain as a guide to support healing now.
Doing this does not mean pain won't limit your life, it means you are getting back to what your whole person knows about how to respond to pain in the present, without adding the stress state from your brain's worries or judgment about the pain.
In this video, I explain how I used the Be Well Now Method to start healing after fracturing my ankle while on a hike
Stay tuned for more tips on Celebrating December Well tomorrow.
Share this with someone you know who wants to celebrate December in the Well State.
All this month we are Celebrating Well. I am sharing daily tips for Celebrating the holidays well rather than stressed. This week I am focusing on how to eliminate barriers like physical and emotional pain, fatigue, overwhelm, and procrastination. Rather than getting in the way of enjoying the holidays, these become guides to Be Well Now. Check out past posts on the resources page.
Why wait until January to be well?
Are you stuck in the trying-to-be-healthy state? Learn the internal skills to Be Well Now and end the struggle to eat healthily, exercise regularly, and manage stress.
Exercising Well is so much more than an exercise program. It's a pathway to rewiring mindsets that keep you stuck.
You learn what to do and how to be self-motivated even if you are limited by pain, medical issues, stress or lack of time.
