Take your Power Back
Living with chronic pain is no walk in the park, and it can leave you feeling powerless. Chronic pain can be the result of being powerless, and it can leave you feeling even more powerless. So, what's the chicken and the egg here?
I'll talk more about the link between nervous system dysregulation and pain in coming emails, but feeling trapped, stuck, or anxious for extended periods of time can result in increased likelihood of developing a chronic pain condition. Trauma, chronic stress, and childhood adversity are ripe conditions for setting up a sensitive nervous system.
Deep Listening
First of all, I just want to support you to know that it's okay to be right where you are, as imperfect as you are, as hard as life can be. When something just continues to be hard, there's something to pay attention to. There's likely something that is deeper and more profound than your rational mind can understand.
I encourage you to keep listening. Keep showing up to whatever your process is, and just noticing what's here. So you feel so depressed that you don't want to get out of bed today? Okay, how can you meet yourself right where you are? In bed, needing rest.
What is trying to emerge?
Complacency vs. Empowered Indifference
Indifference is an empowered, conscious choice to not react to your chronic symptoms.
Complacency is a disempowered, mildly avoidant way of just managing symptoms without much hope of improvement.
When you understand why you are experiencing chronic pain and take the active steps to work with your nervous system, you can make an empowered choice to not obsess or react to your symptoms, and instead allow them to be there in a way that allows for more spaciousness.
When Self Care becomes Dysregulating
It's not about the practice.
It's about how you are relating to what you are practicing.
I have used many "self-care" practices as a crutch for when my nervous system is dysregulated...trying to urgently transform the way that I feel in those moments when I feel terrible.
Essentially, I weaponized the very tools that were supposed to help me because they were used impulsively to avoid feeling uncomfortable.
There is so much information in the world of mind/body healing from chronic pain about safety reappraisal, which is essentially exposing yourself to the uncomfortable sensations while simultaneously being resourced enough in safety to relate with your symptoms in a different way from your patterned, automatic reactions of fear, despair, anger or avoidance to your pain.
And in my experience, I have not been able to experience that safety without first really grasping that I am a human who deserves basic respect and dignity. That I too am a human who deserves to have her needs met just as much as anyone else.
Loving Presence
Loving presence has become an embodied anchor for my own healing and growth process. When I find myself feeling disconnected and wrapped up in rumination, judgement, or fear...I gently call on loving presence by bringing my attention to my heart, and I feel the underlying softness that's already there.
Deepening with the Mind/Body Connection
Deepening is part of the fluid method of Hakomi when you are in a session, and you are able to land on some kind of significant insight that wasn't available to you before with the assistance of a practitioner who can support you in this process of skillfully traversing the mind/body connection.
In Relation to the Many Realms
The word Hakomi is believed to be a transmission from the Hopi people, and it means this:
"Where do you stand in relation to these many realms?"
To let go of it, first grab hold of it…
Transformation occurs when our center of gravity shifts from unconsciously protecting the wound to consciously trusting new possibilities.
Sensitivity and Attunement
Learning how to attune to yourself can be a lifelong learning for those of us whose missing experience was co-regulation and attunement from a loving other early in life.
Infants completely rely on their caregivers to regulate their nervous system, so much so that a baby who is left alone untouched will literally die.
Being attuned to, and feeling welcomed and safe in this world is a very basic primal need, and our evolved nervous systems will figure out complex ways to cope with this unmet need.
If you were born sensitive, your need for attunement was greater than an average baby.
If you are inherently sensitive, and you were coupled with even slightly misattuned caregivers or an unwelcoming environment, your sensitivity likely exponentially increased, and as an adult you may walk around in this world with an increased sense of vulnerability compared to the average person.
Sensitivity, Anxiety, and Chronic Pain - What is the link? Do you identify as a sensitive person?
If you are a sensitive person, you may have at least one or more of these core beliefs:
· There is something wrong with me
· The world is unwelcoming and dangerous
· I am not safe
· I am not normal
· I do not belong anywhere. I am not welcome.
Core Beliefs, Chronic Pain, and Choices
Our beliefs are often not a deliberate choice we have consciously made, but instead are often rooted in our physiology, manifesting as a felt sense in the body that correlates with our perception of ourselves and the world.
