How I learned to handle my chronic pain issues

Building protective walls around the core pain doesn’t help (Image courtesy of worldofmiri.com)

What the pain was trying to tell me

I used to suffer from chronic pain, especially in my left shoulder, neck, arm, and wrist.

I worked on the external factors by changing my diet, exercising, doing yoga, getting lots of sleep, and resting.

Yet, the pain did not budge. I grew frustrated.

I wanted the pain to go away.

I did my best to ignore it. I constructed a whole fort of ignorance around it so I wouldn’t feel it.

It didn’t work.

The pain was like a constant alarm screaming for attention.

I had to do something about it

I gave in.

I already knew emotions could cause toxicity in the body. As an empath, I picked up on other people’s energies.  Did this play a role in my chronic pain? If it wasn’t this, what else could be behind it?

The only one way to find out was to sit down, be still, and feel into the pain.

I had to talk to it.

I had to allow it to be felt. I had to take down the massive walls I had been constructing around it and get to the core. I did not like this idea one little bit. It felt scary.

In “You Can Heal Your Life”, Louise Hay says:

“I believe we create every so-called illness in our body. The body, like everything else in life, is a mirror of our inner thoughts and beliefs. The body is always talking to us, if we will only take the time to listen. Every cell within your body responds to every single thought you think and every word you speak… Continuous modes of thinking and speaking produce body behaviors and postures and “eases” or dis-eases … Not every mental equivalent is 100 percent true for everyone. However, it does give us a point of reference to begin our search for the cause of the dis-ease.”

(Louise Hay, “You Can Heal Your Life”, published by Hay House)

Did this mean I created my own pains by thinking certain thoughts? I found this hard to believe. Still, I kept on reading. After all, I was looking for answers.

According to Louise Hay, the mental pattern to body links are universal for humans. She published a list which relates each body issue to the respective mental thought pattern.

I looked up “Shoulders”:

Cause - “Represent our ability to carry out experiences in life joyously. We make life a burden by our attitude.”

New thought pattern – “I choose to allow all my experiences to be joyous and loving.”

I gulped.

Joy.

When had I felt joy for the last time? I could not even remember. Had I been depriving myself of joy? Was this the issue behind my pain? Was this all my fault?

Almost instantly, the pain shifted into my middle back.

Middle back, cause - “Guilt. Stuck in all that stuff back there….”

New thought pattern – “I release the past. I am free to move forward with love in my heart.”

I was taking responsibility for my pain, by blaming myself for it and thus creating new pain.

Apparently, this was not the way forward.

But how else should I approach this?

If my thought patterns were the behind my pains, I’d have to look at those. Where did they come from? How did they get to be there?

I learnt issues can stem from childhood trauma. When a trauma occurs, it inflicts pain on us. The traumatic situation can be anything from being yelled at, an accident, abuse, or even the simple notion of not getting what you want.

Go back to your own childhood, pick an uncomfortable situation, and think of the uncomfortable emotion that went with it, e.g. you lost your favorite soft toy, you wanted an ice-cream and didn’t get it, your parents were fighting, or you were bullied. It doesn’t feel pleasant, does it? What happened then? Were you supported in your anger/fear/sadness or were you taught to suppress these emotions?

When I look back at my own story, I believe I was not allowed to let my emotions flow. Instead, I swallowed whatever the emotion was, locking and sealing it in my body. I also learnt it was not okay to have emotions like grief or anger or fear.

To be clear, I am not blaming anyone from my childhood. Everyone reacted this way because my unchecked behavior triggered a trauma response in them. It triggered their unresolved pain. They, also, had not been taught how to process trauma or emotions, and it’s hard to teach what you have not learnt yourself.

Because my emotions were not allowed to flow freely, they got stuck in my energetic field. When a similar situation arose, this trauma part got triggered. Because I didn’t want to feel the pain (it was uncomfortable and not okay to feel this way), I created a protective layer around it, again and again, every time the issue came up. A thought pattern evolved and with the layers around it growing, it got recycled over and over, until I had my own belief around this. One example might be built upon my first experience of bullying (insert link) resulting in thoughts like: ‘I am not worthy to have a friend because I am not likeable’.

But how could I move forward?

Our emotions act as messengers

Each emotion points to something that needs to be observed or addressed; this could be a past trauma, a violation of boundaries, or an old thought pattern that does not serve us. Our soul uses emotions to communicate to us a discrepancy between the perfect state of who we essentially are and who we think we should be.

I had to open the pathways again and allow my emotions to flow freely and without judgement.

This proved challenging.

I had bottled up so much that a simple: ‘What’s going on there, shoulders?’ easily turned into a two-hour sobbing session.  It also took a lot of courage to allow myself to relax into the pain. I still struggle with it today. I also still find it difficult not to judge myself for all the tears I’ve been crying. Often, I wonder where all this grief is coming from. Sometimes it does not seem to want to end at all. Still, I know this is the only way forward. If I want to feel healthy and joyful in my body again, I need to learn to let go.

“Self-approval and self-acceptance in the now are the main keys to positive changes in every area of our lives. Loving the self, to me, begins with never ever criticizing ourselves for anything. Criticism locks us into the very pattern we are trying to change. Understanding and being gentle with ourselves helps us to move out of it. Remember, you have been criticizing yourself for years, and it hasn’t worked. Try approving of yourself and see what happens.” (Louise Hay, “You Can Heal Your Life”)