The Path to Mastering Chronic Pain
by Betty Louise
The original version of this article appeared in the April 2007 issue of Bay Area Business Women.
When did you last hear someone speak of mastering chronic pain? Words and thoughts have tremendous power, creating images in your mind that translate information to your body – your greatest source of wisdom. What would it feel like to master your chronic pain?
How is this possible? Here is the single greatest tip I’ve gained from my personal experience and from working with people in pain: Reaching mastery is a path. If you choose to follow this path, it will lead you to feeling more in control of your life and finding you have many of your own answers. It will require courage and belief that the journey is worthwhile because there are no shortcuts – you simply have to travel the path.
The path has four stages: cycling, managing, believing, and mastery. While the path may be the same for everyone, your journey on this path will not look like anyone else’s. How long your journey takes, your experiences and what you learn along the way, and even what mastery looks like on you will all be uniquely yours.
Let’s take a look at each stage.
Cycling
Many people enter the cycling stage soon after the onset of symptoms or a diagnosis. Their experience of pain can be like a roller coaster – often overdoing activities when they feel good and taking days or weeks to recover. They resist the need to do anything differently and want only to return to a pain-free life. Their life as they knew it gets put on hold. Their world feels out of control, muscles tense, depression sets in, and fear of the future are ever present. It is an exhausting cycle. If you can relate to this, know that this stage is normal. However, you need not – and should not – settle for this. To break this cycle, you must come to accept that pain is part of your life at this time. This does not mean accepting defeat. It means accepting what is so you can move forward. Acceptance allows you to stop resenting what you can no longer do and begin focusing instead on what you can do. This enables you to move into the more stable stage of managing.
Managing
In the managing stage, a sense of control returns and seeds of confidence are sown. A clinical study that led to the Stanford Arthritis Self-Management program found that arthritis symptoms improved, not because of behavior change, but due to one’s confidence in his or her ability to make changes. To gain greater confidence, you build on the successes of meeting small specific goals. Success breeds confidence and in turn more success. As your confidence and ability to make changes continue to grow, you open to the possibility that you don’t have to settle for the stage of managing. When you believe this is true – and it is – you are ready for the next stage of believing.
Believing
It is here that you will come to know that you have full control over your belief system. It is yours to change and live by. When your belief system begins to change, you begin to create the vision of the healthy life you deserve. You see with increased confidence that you are worthy of this. When you know self-worth, you are motivated to create more for yourself. You begin to live fearlessly, reaching deep within to discover and break the old conditioned patterns that led to your painful symptoms. You are ready for mastery when you believe you can live a richer and fuller life BECAUSE of pain.
Mastery
In mastery, you will transcend limitations and expand with new beliefs of how to take the ALL of your experiences, including pain, and make something even greater from it. Seeking guidance from outside experts continues to be valuable, though your focus will be on knowing answers lie within. Mastery does not mean you will never feel stress or pain again. However, because you no longer fear pain, you pay attention to and honor the subtle intuitive messages your body gives you. You no longer view yourself as having chronic pain and you live more fearlessly in all aspects of your life. Not only have you mastered your pain, but your life is richer and more expansive. In mastery, you have come to know self-love.
Why know about this path
Knowledge is power and points you to having choice – choice in how you think about your chronic pain, choice in how you feel about yourself, and choice in the actions you take. It allows you to embrace this path and move positively forward instead of being stuck in reacting to what life has given you. Remember, there are no shortcuts – no quick fixes. If you really believe in yourself and know you are on your path, you will make the most of what life has to offer you each step of the journey. So, wherever you are on your path…begin there.
In closing
I have traveled this path for more than twenty years. My journey began at age thirty when I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). Today, after two knee replacements and fifteen years of taking prescription medication, I live in what I know is a place of mastery. I am actually reversing the effects of RA and living more fearlessly than I ever have. I’m here because I refused to settle for a life defined by chronic pain. I continually reached for the bigger life I richly deserve saying “how can I?” rather than “I can’t.” I will not settle even now. Perhaps there is yet another stage – an even bigger life – for me to discover.
This is a journey of not settling. And when you learn you don’t have to settle for a smaller life because of chronic pain, you will know you need not settle in any part of your life. There in lies a true gift of having chronic pain.
