If there’s one thing you can say about pain, it’s that it is hard to ignore.
Actually, no, that’s not really true, though, is it?
We ignore all sorts of pain.
Mosquito bites, pinching pants, blossoming blisters, tweezing eyebrows, steam heat while cooking, pulling a muscle, stubbing a toe. In fact, I could fill pages with the list of physical pains we ignore each day.
We feel the throb or poke or jab or scald. The bite or sting or pinch or pluck. But we keep going about our life.
If we can ignore all those many pains, surely we can ignore bigger ones, right?
Those other pains that are too scary to face that have crept on us unawares. Strange aches and pains in joints and muscles, in our hearts and minds.
Is it a muscle strain or a heart attack? Asthma or lung cancer? Tennis elbow or the return of a hemangioma the doctors admitted they’d not been able to completely remove?
If it’s the worst of either option, you shove it to the back of the closet, stuff it under the more manageable but still scary worries.
Like that the hurricane will make a direct hit, the car will break down in the middle of a cell coverage hole.
I ignored lung pain in the months after my mom died just after my marriage ended. A tiny whisper in my head reminded me the cancer had eventually spread to Mom’s lungs. Why else would lungs hurt?
I had no clue you could sit with your body, feel it relaxing. Or not relaxing. Once I began listening to my body, feeling its sensations, opening to the pain and the anvil weight of tension, I realized how much pain I was ignoring.
I used to believe I had a low tolerance for pain. It was seen as a weakness in the circles of my young adult life. I confessed it in a whisper to a select few.
Little did I know.
Who has time for pain? You tell yourself to just keep going. It works for a while.
Until it doesn’t.
The lung pain turned into breathlessness. I thought I was having asthma attacks because I couldn’t take a breath. One day at work I got myself so breathless while just sitting and typing, that I nearly convinced myself I’d never be able to take a deep breath again.
Turned out I was holding my breath. A lot. Out of grief, anxiety, and fear. The countless, scary, too-painful-to-face things I’d stuffed into the back bedroom closet were pressing against the folding door.
When I did breathe, I panted as if I was being chased.
Know what happens when you breathe fast or hold your breath? You feel anxious. It’s an excellent way to create an anxiety attack. Just in case you wanted to know.
What’s a coping mechanism for managing an anxiety attack? Breathing.
One technique I like is “square breathing.” Breathe in to a count of 4, hold it for a count of 4, breathe out for a count of 4, hold it for a count of 4. Repeat until calmer, then breathe normally.
Another technique when trauma is triggered is to breathe in to a count of 4 and breathe out to a count of 8, repeating a few times. I really like that one.
We were talking at work about computer mice. I have a roller ball mouse which I switched to a couple years ago to ease shoulder pain.
My coworker commented about the rotator pain she’d been forced to deal with when her shoulder would barely move. Besides the physical therapy she went to for months, she had to learn a new way to use her mouse.
As she raised her arms to show how much better her shoulders were, she commented that she’d been unable to do that before. It had been too painful.
“Now I can … it’s … .” She trailed off, waving her arm slowly. “I’m aware of it now.”
“That’s what it will do.” I said. “Pain will make you aware.”
Pain will tell you something if you take time to listen.
Maybe that’s the thing you can say about pain.
Closet door by Steve Johnson from Pixabay/filtered from original
Steaming pot by Republica from Pixabay/filtered from original