Leaning Into The Pain

There is a famous saying about difficult and painful emotions; that you can’t go over it or round it, the only way is through it. I understand the saying but have never really had the strength to put it into practice. I thought I was going through it, but have more often than not done anything to avoid truly feeling it. I have always been the same with physical pain too – hoping to render it invisible with pain killers, or putting ice on it, or putting a hot water bottle on it and doing everything in my power to resist. I have more recently been reading up on mindfulness and chronic pain where the exercises suggest not taking action immediately, but rather waiting a moment to experience the pain. Based on the Buddhist belief system some experts quote the idea of resistance actually creating more pain; it is a two arrow theory, where the first arrow is the pain and the second arrow comes from the individual’s resistance. Resistance suggests that by action or thought the individual can eliminate the pain, and then when the pain persists there is the mental pain of feeling powerless and becoming angry. This creates self-loathing feelings and sometimes depression making the struggle with the pain even harder. Put more simply, imagine you are typing at your desk and your shoulders become cramped. Now think about what you do naturally to relieve that cramping and stiffness; you stretch the other way, leaning into the pain to relieve it.

I only learned this in the last couple of years, after 15 years of chronic pain, and it revolutionised the way I cope with my pain. I still take painkillers and try everything sensible that I can to make my life bearable and easier, but I don’t resist the pain. I stop and feel it. I think about it. I feel the ebb and flow of the pain and stretch out my body to change the feelings. I follow the idea that the pain does change and flow; it is rarely intense for long periods of time. I think to myself ‘get through this moment, get through this moment’ and it becomes surprising how many moments I can get through and carry on. This thinking has helped me cope more and do more over the last 12 months. Of course there are going to be moments where my pain and illness require more serious medical attention and times when I cannot accept what is happening to my body. I am human after all, but it has been a technique worth trying.

While walking the dog this morning through my village I wondered at how comfortable I now feel here and how my feelings have settled down after a long period of pain and upheaval. My illness has worsened with new aspects uncovered such as a type 1 Chiari Malformation, a benign vascular tumour and an underactive thyroid to add insult to injury as my GP said. I am still also dealing with the pain following the breakdown of my marriage, the loss of my friend Kathryn, the loss of my cat Moo, and moving house. There has been a lot to process in a short space of time and I am not kidding myself that the grieving is over. Yet I have come to the realisation that I am coping in a different way to how I managed grief previously. After three miscarriages during my first marriage I hated talking about it and clammed up completely. Lost in my own world of pain I desperately tried not to show the extent of how much I was hurting. I hate crying in front of others and don’t like asking for help. Later, when my second husband died, I kept busy to avoid sitting and thinking. I was determined to cope – alone – without letting people who love me in. Now, 6 years later, I sit with another failed marriage behind me and the knowledge that I went about the pain in my life the wrong way – I resisted it. I should have leaned into the pain.

I can honestly say I didn’t know I was coping differently until a few weeks ago. I had realised  that I was enjoying time alone and didn’t seem daunted by the prospect of more time spent this way. I am almost ashamed to say that I think this is the longest period of time I’ve had without a ‘significant other’ since I was 16. Even when longer term relationships broke up it wasn’t long before someone else came along – even if it was only a stop gap, there was someone there. Now I stand alone. No love interest. Nothing romantic on the horizon, but my own dreams and plans are interesting and exciting. I felt a sudden clarity in my thinking just after the New Year and it was probably a combination of the time of year, my new medication settling in without me feeling too many side effects and my pain being manageable, but I did feel like I’d woken from a long coma. I’m not even sure it was the cloud that descended after my recent marriage ended, it could have been a cloud that had been there for many years. I was surprised by just how awake I felt. I had spent a week going to work, seeing friends, studying and writing and making holiday plans. I suddenly realised on one of my long range dog walks that for a significant period of time I had not even thought about the fact that I was on my own. I had accepted the past and acknowledged that the pain from my life experiences will hit me every now and again, but I can deal with it by not resisting. I can lean into the pain and know it won’t engulf me.