Stop yelling at your pain

If you’ve been told to ignore your pain, or to tell it that it’s not real because it’s only happening in your brain, or to yell at your pain and tell it to leave you alone, or to treat it like a bully and say that you’re not going to take its abuse anymore (all of these are real examples from the pain management world)—there’s a good chance you’re setting yourself up for more discomfort down the road. These ways of interacting with pain might work for some (and in fact do) –hey, everything works for someone–but by and large I find it to produce ill effects. And if you’re reading this, and you’ve tried that, then it probably didn’t work for you.

I don’t mean to concern you, but ultimately what I see in my clients is that being in chronic pain is akin to being at war with yourself. And by raising the heat on that war—by exiling parts of yourself or shaming your pain in hopes that it will go away—you’re creating more internal conflict. 

At best, you’re drawing clear boundaries with yourself.

At worst, you’re gaslighting yourself. 

Effective pain management is really about finding the right relationship with your pain, finding the right conversation inside yourself. That relationship–that conversation–is different for everyone. 

For some, that can be a firm tone: a strong and authoritative No to the parts of you that keep you hurting. And for others, it can be about finding compassion for your pain, befriending it, welcoming it in. Both of these approaches look like integration. Both can result in a lot more peace and ease (and often lead to pain free days pretty quickly).