One in five people in the world are in pain at any given time. That is a staggering number! Here in the United States, according to the National Institute of Health and the American Academy of Pain Medicine, there are between 50 million and possibly 100 million people experiencing chronic pain daily. This estimated stastic does not include children. It is the great equalizer across continents, race, religion, and gender. Most of us look at pain as something to avoid; something to ignore, shove down, and deny. Strangely, we tend to think of pain as something that is only physical and yet we all know that a broken heart can often be more difficult to heal than a broken leg. We don’t want to feel our pain and yet it is often our most important teacher and greatest gift. For many people, thinking of pain as a gift is confusing. Most Americans want to cut out, throw away, or drug their pain. The last thing that most of us want to do is actually be present with it. Most everything in our society is designed to help us avoid our pain. We are constantly fed advertisements focused on masking our pain and yet it persists. In fact, the number of people using pharamaceutical drugs to mask their pain is increasing yearly to the point of creating an epidemic amongst us. It is estimated that 80% of the global opioid use is actually consumed here in the United States. It is time to try something different! It is painfully obvious that pharamaceuticals are not the only answer to dealing with issues of pain. Instead of masking and running away from pain, what if you started to turn towards your pain? What if you stopped avoiding it and actually embraced it and what it has to share with you? Yes, your pain has something to share with you. It is time to step out of the fear of the pain and to start working with it. You can either be consumed by the pain or stand up to it, work with it, and learn the lesson that it has to teach you. Pain, if respected, will call you into your greatness. It will transform the abused woman into a crusader for human rights. It will force you to stand in your truth and speak loving kindness to bigotry. It will forge you into your greatest self!

Here are three simple tips for managing and even releasing your chronic pain whether it be a broken heart, an obsessive mind, or a nagging stab in your back. It is time to grow and heal. 

First take a moment to remember and experience the feeling of love. Know love with all the senses that are available to you. Ask yourself what is the color, temperature, texture, shape, sound, smell, and even taste of your specific understanding of love. For me, love is like a golden, shimmering light. It moves, flows, and swirls inside of me. I feel its warmth in my heart and it is expansive, kind, and it has a lightness to it like a puffy cloud in the sky. Now, as you are feeling this experience of love, think about, visualize, or simply imagine filling that part of you that was experiencing pain with this knowing of love. Feel free to borrow my golden, shimmering light if that works for you. Start with the part that was in pain and then saturate your entire body with that understanding of what love actually feels like for you.

Name Your Pain

Stop resisting! You’re in pain. It is what it is. Take a moment to actually stop running from it and pause. Face your pain, give it a name even and embrace it. No more shoving it down and avoiding it. When you resist, you only allow the pain to linger. The pain will wait patiently for you to deal with it for as long as you keep shoving it down. This is what most of us do and in our avoidance we increase the length and duration of our pain. You may medicate it today but it will be back tomorrow and quite often, because we shove it down and refuse to deal with the cause of the pain, it will be even stronger the next day. When we do this the pain persists and we will need more powerful drugs to shove it down next time. Build a new relationship with your pain that is of acceptance, respect, and healthy boundaries. When you give a name to your pain, you begin looking at it differently. Say, your pain is named “Bob”. It is quite possible that if Bob is having a bad day you do not have to as well. Pain can be so overwhelming to the brain/body that we think we are the pain. When you name the pain, you create a sense of separation between you and Bob and this helps calm the spirit and create a healthy psychological boundary between you and the pain.

Love Your Pain

We all know that healing is something that happens much more easily, sometimes even effortlessly, when we feel loved. So, as crazy as it sounds, love your pain. I know that when I feel loved I can do anything. For the time being, the pain is part of you and this part of you that is suffering needs to be loved now more than anything. Take a moment right now to send love to that part of you that is hurting. Most likely, you’ve been sending anger and frustration to it. Stop. Breathe. Be present with it as if they it has come to you needing comfort and attention. This alone can often create tremendous healing.

Ask The Pain What It Needs To Heal

We spend so much time telling the part of us that is hurting that it needs to feel better. We beg it to feel better and then, quite often, when it does not, we beat it up, berate it, and even belittle it. If we spoke the way we do to the parts of us that are hurting to someone else we would have a restraining order against us. Yet, we somehow feel that it is okay to speak so meanly to ourselves. It is time to have a different conversation with the parts of us that are hurting. What if you actually asked the pain directly what it needs in order to heal? Seriously! What if your pain was a seventeen year old girl who was acting out because she is in pain? She is hurting herself and others. Everyone tends to be angry with her. Her parents are frustrated, her friends stopped speaking to her, and everyone is pointing their fingers at her telling her what to do and how to fix the problem that she caused. Strangely, no one asks her what she needs to fix the problem. Everyone is too busy trying to fix things and blaming her instead of stopping and listening. No one asks her what she would like to do to feel better. Our bodies are always communicating with us so why not learn to lean in and actually listen to the message it is trying to communicate to us?

As you learn to listen, you will notice the pain being affected by your loving kindness. There are many ways to begin to listen. In the beginning it might be helpful to visit someone that is specifically trained to do this but in the long run this is something you need to do. Follow your intuition, it is actually easier than you think.

It is time to stop telling the part of us that is suffering to “feel better” and to start listening to what this part needs so that it can be assisted through the healing process. What if you simply stopped for a moment and actually asked the pain itself what it needs in order to heal? Healing must take place on all levels of who we are. Every wound exists on all levels of us. My professional athlete who broke her leg has an obvious physical wound but the wound of panic in her thoughts about how she is going to pay her mortgage or they wound in her heart of possibly never being able to play her sport again is always more painful than the broken leg. Wounds of the heart and mind are often more damaging than physical wounds.

Ask the part of you that is in pain what it needs from you to heal on all levels, body, mind, spirit.

- Dear (Name of your pain), what can I do on the physical level in order to help you to heal?

- Dear (Name of your pain), what can I do on the mental level, with my thoughts, in order to help you heal?

- Dear (Name of your pain), what can I do on the spirit level, with my heart in order to help you heal?

Listen for the answers. Sometimes the questions need to bounce around inside of us because we are in too much fear and unable to listen. Sometimes, the part of us in pain is in shock and needs time to process the experience. Be patient. An answer might come right away or an  answer might come as you are driving down the road. You may have an “ah-ha” moment and simply know what the answer is. When the answer comes, and it will come, listen with an open heart and act upon them immediately.

This new way of communicating with your pain is an ongoing dialogue of love, respect, and action. This is not a single conversation but an ongoing dialogue of respect and loving kindness.  Through these conversations you will begin to develop your own individual recipe for healing. This is an ongoing dialogue that can continue throughout your life. Just as pain comes and goes, so does this conversation grow and evolve over time. Through these simple processes you will move from being a victim to your pain to a larger more expanded and well lived life! The answers will call you into being an even more amazing human being and as you heed the call of the pain and heal you will learn to step into your greatness.

On a personal level, this is how I healed myself of so many things that my allopathic doctors could not help with. I created a convergence of wellness in my body by working with practitioners and making changes in my life based up on the answers the pain provided me. This coming together of therapies all at the same time on each of the levels of being (body, mind, spirit) helped me heal arthritis, asthma, bronchitis,sciatica, chronic pain, brain damage,fibromyalgia, anxiety, depression, and finding my purpose in life once again.