I’ve been a bit slow off the mark with writing recently and for that I am apologetic. I’ve been out and about on many an adventure and when the opportunity occurs, I’m afraid I just drop everything else. That’s probably something I’ve been doing a lot more since the start off this year and I’m not so sure it is such a bad thing. Importantly, it is about jumping headfirst into life for the right reasons; doing it not out of fear, but out of a wish to savour the present. I will admit that initially, it may have been fear-driven – I had just been diagnosed and I had done enough sitting around in waiting rooms only focusing on pain and the churning feeling that things may never be the same again. Actually, thinking about it, I was right about one thing and that was that things would never be the same again. Is that such a bad thing? Well, I won’t pretend there were no cycles of loss and mourning for what I had lost (which was mostly certainty to be honest) and what I was preparing myself to lose in the future. I mean, only God knows where I’ll be in years to come. But that is just the point. I don’t know. That doesn’t mean it is going to be good, but that equally does not guarantee me a lifetime of intense suffering. Most powerfully, that is the very thing that I have control over. The Suffering.
Now, The Suffering can come to you in a manner of ways. It can creep up on you when you are intense pain, crying and whinging in your ears, loud and vibrant, not letting you hear anything other than the physical disturbances that your body is causing you. It can sit as a lump in your throat as you watch people laugh and pass you by when things feel so wrong for you at a particularly hard time. It might be the sting of bruise that keeps throbbing even when you’re with your friends and should be having fun. It could be the heaviness in an entire limb as you experience intense prickling and feel like nothing could get worse as you lay in bed and should be sleeping. See, I can’t sit here and pretend that pain isn’t real. I think we all know that. But The Suffering is a monster we can tame. It is secondary to physical pain and actually makes the physical aspects of your pain scream louder. It is the volume dial on the pain stereo and I didn’t realise that I have the power to turn it down.
We have receptors in our brain that tell us "Ok, this hurts". What happens is, if we turn up The Suffering, our body prepares for the pain before it even happens. "This is really going to hurt”, “Oh God, what about work tomorrow?”, “What if it gets worse?”, “This might last forever”. I’ve had all these thoughts before. All I was ever doing was cranking up The Suffering. I was anticipating the consequences of pain well before they had happened, making myself more likely to create worse pain or greater relapse/illness, which in turn means it would take me longer to recover. How on earth is that in any way functional? Why put myself through that? The greater the anticipatory suffering, the more of your brain you dedicate to feeling pain. Literally. The physiology of your brain actually changes to accommodate more pain receptors.
Now I'm not a scientist, but I'm going to recommend a book here that has explained all this as clear as day to me. It’s another Danny Penman called ‘Mindfulness for Health'. Danny Penman is a professional and experienced qualified mediation teacher and has worked in association with Dr. Mark Williams of the University of Oxford. He wrote this book with Vidyamala Burch, who has herself experienced difficult circumstances that led to tackling her own pain with mindfulness techniques. Both their stories and the techniques they used are detailed in this book, alongside their research and guided meditations. Chapter by chapter, they teach you the theory behind mindfulness and meditation in a way that does not require any prior knowledge or expertise and with no technical jargon. This amazing book has taught me to look at pain in a totally different way. Truth be told, I can’t eliminate the physical aspects of pain, but I can lower the volume of The Suffering. With guided meditations, I've learnt to breathe through pain, sitting with it, rather than avoiding it and letting my mind make up its own stories about where it will end up. This is a programme of 8 weeks and I haven’t worked through all of it yet, but what I will say is that already I feel more empowered and like I can do something to keep myself well, mentally and hopefully physically.
As hard as it may be, worrying in advance and reading into every slight sniffle and twitch needs to be a habit that I eliminate. I need to learn to sit in that moment and accept pain, in whichever form it comes for what it is. Not for the greater state my mind is painting that it could-possibly-but-not-
definitely-maybe become. It is a waste of time and energy. Taking things as they come is less frequently fear driven for me now. It is more that I feel ok right now and I should go and savour it and once this moment has passed, it can’t be regained. It is about having a sense of purpose and not letting myself be consumed by all the “what ifs”; no one should be ruled by their mind and a lot of limitations we set on ourselves are mental. I’m going to try and be more mindful of these and keep my head up, even when it’s not so easy to do so. There’s a lot to smile about out there, so have heart and have hope.
Now, The Suffering can come to you in a manner of ways. It can creep up on you when you are intense pain, crying and whinging in your ears, loud and vibrant, not letting you hear anything other than the physical disturbances that your body is causing you. It can sit as a lump in your throat as you watch people laugh and pass you by when things feel so wrong for you at a particularly hard time. It might be the sting of bruise that keeps throbbing even when you’re with your friends and should be having fun. It could be the heaviness in an entire limb as you experience intense prickling and feel like nothing could get worse as you lay in bed and should be sleeping. See, I can’t sit here and pretend that pain isn’t real. I think we all know that. But The Suffering is a monster we can tame. It is secondary to physical pain and actually makes the physical aspects of your pain scream louder. It is the volume dial on the pain stereo and I didn’t realise that I have the power to turn it down.
We have receptors in our brain that tell us "Ok, this hurts". What happens is, if we turn up The Suffering, our body prepares for the pain before it even happens. "This is really going to hurt”, “Oh God, what about work tomorrow?”, “What if it gets worse?”, “This might last forever”. I’ve had all these thoughts before. All I was ever doing was cranking up The Suffering. I was anticipating the consequences of pain well before they had happened, making myself more likely to create worse pain or greater relapse/illness, which in turn means it would take me longer to recover. How on earth is that in any way functional? Why put myself through that? The greater the anticipatory suffering, the more of your brain you dedicate to feeling pain. Literally. The physiology of your brain actually changes to accommodate more pain receptors.
Now I'm not a scientist, but I'm going to recommend a book here that has explained all this as clear as day to me. It’s another Danny Penman called ‘Mindfulness for Health'. Danny Penman is a professional and experienced qualified mediation teacher and has worked in association with Dr. Mark Williams of the University of Oxford. He wrote this book with Vidyamala Burch, who has herself experienced difficult circumstances that led to tackling her own pain with mindfulness techniques. Both their stories and the techniques they used are detailed in this book, alongside their research and guided meditations. Chapter by chapter, they teach you the theory behind mindfulness and meditation in a way that does not require any prior knowledge or expertise and with no technical jargon. This amazing book has taught me to look at pain in a totally different way. Truth be told, I can’t eliminate the physical aspects of pain, but I can lower the volume of The Suffering. With guided meditations, I've learnt to breathe through pain, sitting with it, rather than avoiding it and letting my mind make up its own stories about where it will end up. This is a programme of 8 weeks and I haven’t worked through all of it yet, but what I will say is that already I feel more empowered and like I can do something to keep myself well, mentally and hopefully physically.
As hard as it may be, worrying in advance and reading into every slight sniffle and twitch needs to be a habit that I eliminate. I need to learn to sit in that moment and accept pain, in whichever form it comes for what it is. Not for the greater state my mind is painting that it could-possibly-but-not-
definitely-maybe become. It is a waste of time and energy. Taking things as they come is less frequently fear driven for me now. It is more that I feel ok right now and I should go and savour it and once this moment has passed, it can’t be regained. It is about having a sense of purpose and not letting myself be consumed by all the “what ifs”; no one should be ruled by their mind and a lot of limitations we set on ourselves are mental. I’m going to try and be more mindful of these and keep my head up, even when it’s not so easy to do so. There’s a lot to smile about out there, so have heart and have hope.
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