What Pain Is Trying To Teach You
No, no, NOOOO! Deep from within the bottom of my right foot each muscle prepared for battle, as the enemy, night cramps at 3:15am, approached. The defending foot soldiers enlisted the help of the big guns and brought in my calf, hamstring and glute muscles for heavy backup in case the uprising got out of control. Quickly the first line of defense fell and the pain was on the offensive, tearing up my leg conquering each muscle one by one, until it was victorious, and I was writhing in physical pain- every muscle from my big toe to my hip, tightly knotted and bound.
Hmm… kinky, but not in a good way.
I’m no stranger to physical pain. As someone who has torn her ACL three times (2x on the right, 1x on the left), broken her collar bone, dislocated her elbow, had 4 concussions, lost count of broken wrists and ankles, and had 24 staples put into my head after Mohs surgery to remove skin cancer, I am familiar with boo-boos and oww-ies. One year, I developed blood clots from a surgery and had to inject myself with Warfarin needles twice a day for six months, leaving my stomach black, yellow, maroon, and indigo from from the bruising. It was a look.
Here’s what pain has taught me:
You’re always stronger than you think you are.
Fighting the pain doesn’t make it go away.
Relief waits on the other side of your surrender.
You’re always stronger than you think you are
ACL surgery number three was a doozy! Not only had my ACL decided it was “over it”, my MCL, PCL, LCL, and patellar tendon, were like, “Samsies”. Basically my whole knee was like, “This party sucks, we’re leaving,” and it made its exit stage left.
Not only was I recovering from total knee reconstruction, it was post this surgery that I developed blood clots and had to begin sticking myself with needles twice a day. Needles are so not my jam. I really REALLY don’t like them, and yet they were necessary at that time for me.
How many times do we tell ourselves, “Oh my gosh, I just can’t. I can’t get through this, I can’t do that…etc”? A lot.
The first time I tried to poke myself, I shook back and forth, my eyes were so filled with water bubbles I couldn’t see, and slimy liquid dripped out of my nose darkening the parts of my shirt where it landed. “I can’t do this, I hate needles, why me?” was the soundtrack that was playing like an earworm over and over in my head. From the kitchen, I heard my dad say, “Stop overreacting and just do it. Get it over with.”
Shrill screams escaped my mouth as a sharp pain erupted from my right abdomen. F*&%!
By the second day my theatrics had calmed and confidence grew. Rather than repeating, “I can’t do this” the new message became, “This sucks, but I can do it.” Interestingly, when I changed my thoughts, the physical pain reduced significantly. After six months of injecting myself, I didn’t even have a thought about it, and it stopped hurting.
The faster you make peace with pain, the faster it goes away.
Pain is an incredible teacher, and I have learned quite a bit from her. Mainly that I can do it, and I do get through it.
Fighting pain doesn’t make it go away
When we fight against pain, it is formulated as a thought registered as something we don’t want to experience; this leads to our own suffering. When we create the thought, “I don’t want to experience this,” it creates separation and tension. When we push against it, rather than embracing it, we just redistribute the pain elsewhere. The only way to transmute the physical, emotional, mental or spiritual pain we feel is to embrace it as part of us, rather than separate. To embrace the pain is to accept its presence.
How?
To accept pain we must raise our consciousness, and to do that we must understand that every painful moment has the opportunity of a gift embedded within it. When it came to my third ACL surgery it brought with it more than just physical pain, it came with it an emotional pain as well. While I didn’t know it at the time, I found out later that my boyfriend had been cheating on me. The night I found out I had blood clots, he had told me he needed to drive back to Denver for work, but instead of heading back to work, he headed into the arms of another woman. Double OUCH! Not only was I stabbing myself in the stomach with needles twice daily, but when I found out about my boyfriend it felt like I was stabbed in the heart and in the back.
I didn’t know it at the time, but this was laying a foundation of inner-strength. Fighting against the physical pain only made it worse; fighting against the emotional pain, kept me stuck. In order to move on, I needed to stop fighting and start healing. Fighting pain is like fighting against the flow of life, you can do it, but it’s exhausting.
Relief waits on the other side of surrender
When I was going through my coach training program with Institute for Professional Excellence in Coaching (iPEC), a foundation principle that caused a, well duh reaction was, “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional".
Our minds create the suffering of whatever pain we are enduring, however, that pain can be chronic or acute depending on how we mentally frame it. Something I have learned during this journey through coaching, therapy, life etc… is that our thoughts create our emotions which drive our actions.
When I refuse to change my mind about the experience, I am in fact creating my own suffering. My ACL surgeries caused physical pain of course, however, it was an acute pain that dissipated as each day passed. I had a mindset going through that experience that each day I was getting stronger and stronger, and in fact my recovery showed that. I went from not being able to walk to being able to return to skiing, golf, playing hockey, and running stairs for the hell of it (ok I’m lying-I never did this last one).
The pain of being cheated on was chronic, and it was a haul for me let down the surrender wall to accept the experience. It took a while for me to see that the Universe was redirecting me here, and in fact this pain was a gift waiting for me to receive. Surrender to me is a receiving of the Universal Love waiting to rush in and wrap you in a momma bear hug, but when we are deep in the feelz it can be really hard to see that.
I spent almost 2 years in “poor me”, or “men are dicks” mode. No wonder the Universe didn’t want to send me the beauties she had in store, when I was acting like that. My ego was tied to the fact that I had been “wronged” by someone else and their cavilier nature to my caring heart.
The gift here was a lesson in self-love and owning my own worth. Being cheated on and the pain that arose from that was an initiation into the next level of my soul ascension.
Surrender requires us to put down our egos aka the thoughts that keep us getting the attention from others. Being in a lower level of consciousness it makes sense that many of us want to remain in our pain because it is how we get attention from others. However, when we are busy chasing attention from external sources it becomes a hole that will never make us whole. We must fill the hole from the inside out, and that requires us to detach from judgement that it needs to be a different way for us to be happy or feel joy.
It takes strength and courage to embrace the pain of your life, and you are stronger than you think you are. I promise you that.
From one tough cookie to another,
Kaleigh