I was surprised when my client started our call saying she was too upset to talk about what she’d planned. She’s typically matter of fact about most things but that day she sounded like a puddle. She was overwhelmed since she woke to the news of the mass shooting of Muslims at a Mosque in New Zealand. “I can’t believe the world is such a painful place”. She lives with chronic and debilitating pain but she found this mass expression of raw pain devastating.
Is there anyone who can say they’ve never experienced pain? It’s the thread that binds us as human beings. It’s also a highly relative and subjective feeling – and that is what makes it such a tricky issue. I’ve lived with significant pain in my feet and my back for decades. I can pinpoint and describe the sensations so it seems like the other person gets it. But when I have to describe how bad it is, such as by using the pain scale, the pain becomes a moving target. When I explain what it’s preventing me from doing, there’s some part of me that’s thinking, but I could try harder. I want to be triumphant with my illnesses, not a slacker. But there are days that my pain almost takes charge.
In a recent New York Times opinion piece, Is Pain a Sensation or an Emotion? Dr. Haider Warraich wrote, “. . . the mind does play a pivotal role in the experience of pain. After a pain signal reaches the brain, it undergoes significant reprocessing. How much something hurts can vary depending on factors like your expectations, your mood and how distracted you are. Just seeing someone else in pain can make you feel worse, too. … pain is contagious and transmittable.”
There are moments when the pain in my feet is so raw, it feels like they’re burning and I want to jump out of my skin. I’ve learned it’s worse when I’m lying in bed and it becomes all I can focus on. I’ve also learned distraction helps me from losing my mind but it doesn’t get rid of the pain.
It’s safe to say that anyone who survived the attack at the Mosque will experience emotional and physical pain but the degree of pain each experiences and the degree to which it impacts their lives will vary.
“… While the expression that suffering is “all in your head” is too often used to diminish others’ agony, the mind does play a pivotal role in the experience of pain. After a pain signal reaches the brain, it undergoes significant reprocessing. Objectively, there is no doubt that illnesses and injuries can cause immense suffering. The question is how severe that suffering is, and how long it lasts. …. There is so much that we still don’t understand about the fundamental biology of pain, and that needs to change.”
So what can we, those who live in chronic pain, do about this conundrum? I’m not a medical doctor, a researcher or any healthcare practitioner. But I believe it’s possible to develop the capacity to identify where change is possible and to develop the skills to engage so it doesn’t destroy you.
In his seminal book on pain, Full Catastrophe Living, Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn wrote, “You change your relationship to the pain by opening up to it and paying attention to it. You “put out the welcome mat.” If you distinguish between pain and suffering, change is possible. As the saying goes, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.”
When physical or emotional pain are acute, there is typically a healing process to wellness. But when that pain slides into the chronic, the healing process gets messy. The mind and the body are in a dance with each other and we’re trying to figure out how to cut in. I’m not saying it’s easy to change your response to pain, physical or mental. It’s a journey, a process of playing with different techniques , see what works and what sticks for you.
Leave a Reply