My journey with chronic pain began when I was 20 years old. It would be fair to say that before my illness, I felt like I was on top of the world. I had just gotten into a competitive undergraduate program and it felt like I was on the right track. As I tried to navigate the challenge of thriving in an unfriendly world toward chronic pain, I found myself at constant war with my pain. I needed my pre-chronic pain body. The body that could pull an all-nighter to finish an assignment. The body that could wake up refreshed and ready to focus after 8 hours of sleep. I needed a body that could function at an optimal state for 10 hours straight. Instead, I got an achy body that was getting in the way of my dreams. I couldn’t understand why my body had betrayed me.
This was the beginning of a long and tiresome war with my pain. My body would scream for a break and I would just ignore it. After all, society had always told me to push past the pain. We are all familiar with the saying “no pain, no gain” or “pain lets you know that you are pushing past your boundaries”.
The war with my chronic pain was never won but the constant battles with my body did leave a scar. I found myself constantly angry with my body. I wanted to step out of my own skin.
I was angry that my body was giving me the wrong signals. There were no broken bones. I was not walking on fire. so why was I in so much agony?
This anger would slowly zap away at my energy. If I was reading my textbook and felt pain, I would automatically curse my body. I’d spend time and energy wishing that I’d never gotten ill. I would daydream about my pre-chronic pain life.
It wasn’t until a few years had gone by that I recognized that I could no longer get in touch with my internal experience. In my rage and anger toward my body, I had shut down all access to any signals. I had numbed my body because I couldn’t trust it anymore. It had gotten to a point that everything felt a little bland. I may have thought that numbing myself would have lowered the intensity of the pain but in reality, it had made me more miserable. The pain signals were too loud to fully numb anyway but now I felt constantly confused. Do I actually need a day off to recover? Can I push past this fatigue? I couldn’t communicate with my body anymore. It made my life feel so unpredictable. Although, I think the worst thing was that I no longer could notice the parts of my body that were not in pain. It was as if I was drowning in the loud pain signals.
In the past 3 years, I have been working to rebuild my relationship with my body. I have been engaging in mindfulness to reconnect with my body. I have begun to show appreciation for parts of my body that are not in pain. I now recognize how often I’ve bullied my body to behave in a certain way. While, I am not going to pretend like this was easy, I can say that it was worth it.
In the beginning, I was terrified. I didn’t want to amplify my pain. I also noticed that I had a hard time tuning into my body. I just couldn’t feel a thing. It was as if I had been completely removed from myself. It wasn’t until I learned about the progressive muscle relaxation technique that I was able to finally begin to connect with my body. Progressive muscle relaxation is a stress and anxiety management tool. It follows a two-step process of intentionally tensing a muscle and then relaxing it. The process aims to teach you what relaxation feels like so that you are better able to recognize when you are starting to tense up during the day. While the original aim of this exercise is to support client’s with anxiety, I have found that it is extremely helpful for chronic pain patients. I used this exercise to slowly re-connect with my body.
Once I felt comfortable with the progressive muscle relaxation, I decided that I would just tune into my body and listen. If I am honest, the first few times that I tried that, I felt an overwhelming sense of irritation. The best way to explain the sensation would be as if there was a leaky faucet that had been dripping for hours. I realized that whenever I tried to tune into my body, I focus solely on the painful parts and automatically got frustrated. That is when I tried the compassionate body scan meditation. The body scan involved paying attention to the bodily sensation in a general sequence from feet to head. This meditation not only allowed me to pay attention to the parts of my body that are not painful but also provided me with an opportunity to show gratitude and kindness to my body.
I will not pretend that I engage in mindfulness activities every day or that because of these I never have off days. Chronic pain is chronic. It is something that I have to deal with all day. While there is no cure, my hope is that by sharing my experience, I have encouraged you to try these exercises and find out for yourself.
Links to exercises:
Progressive Muscle Relaxation Script: https://www.therapistaid.com/worksheets/coping-skills-anxiety.pdf
Compassionate Body Scan Guided Meditation: https://mindfulnessexercises.com/downloads/compassionate-body-scan/
