Stronger Than Chronic Pain: Week 5

Contents

You’ve made it to week 5!

This is the final week of exercises!

Hopefully you’re feeling some relief from your symptoms and are feeling less limited by them, and are spending more time just living your life!

But if you’re still feeling your symptoms, that’s okay. Especially if you have been experiencing them for years or even decades, it may take continued work to to heal your pain.

Week 5 Meeting Recording

Final Meeting Recording

Week 5 Exercises:

Brain training

  1. Things I Would Like to Do, Continued.

This week we will be reflecting on how this exercise went last week, and continuing this work. 

Last week, did you engage in one of the things from your list? Did you use the Brain Training Exercise from week 2, to remind yourself that your body is safe while engaging in this activity? Did you have a reduction in your symptoms as you did this activity, or were you even able to do it pain-free?

If you did one of the things from your list and still experienced pain or symptoms, do not worry. It is likely that the painful neural pathway in your brain is very strong, and it will take more time to be able to engage in these activities without having any symptoms. 

Remember the metaphor of a path forged in a field of grass. If you have walked the pain pathway many many times, and the new pain free-pathway only a few times, it will take more time on the new, pain free pathway for it to form more strongly, and for the old painful pathway to grow over. 

This week, you can either continue engaging in the activity you chose last week, choose a new activity, or do both.

Do whatever research or preparation you need to do for these activities, then schedule the times to do them in your calendar.

2. The New You Responds

This one is pretty simple, yet can be so incredibly helpful in changing one’s own behaviors. 

In any stressful situation, it’s so easy to react automatically instead of responding thoughtfully. This exercise can help you “pre-script” common occurrences so that you can respond the way you would like to next time the same or a similar situation comes up. 

Pick a situation that has happened in your life recently. Write what happened and how you responded. Then, write how you would like to have responded, or how you will respond next time you’re in the same situation. 

You could go in depth with just one situation, or you could go less in-depth with a whole list of situations and responses. You could do this by drawing a vertical line down the middle of a piece of paper, writing “Old Me” on the top of the left side and “New Me” on the top of the right side, then filling out the columns with a whole list of situations.

OLD ME

  • Gets stressed out about long list of tasks on my to do list, and spends an hour scrolling on Instagram instead of doing anything productive, then feels guilty and even more stressed.

  • Judges myself for saying an awkward thing to someone I just met, says mean things to myself about it, and never lets myself live it down.

  • Holds myself to perfectionistic standards, and when I don’t meet them internally call myself stupid, weak, not good enough.

NEW ME

  • Chooses to prioritize just one or two things on my to do list each day, reminding myself that I don’t have to get everything done right now, then allows myself to feel accomplished.

  • Reminds myself that everyone says awkward things sometimes and that the other person probably didn’t even notice.

  • Catches it when I hold myself to unrealistic standards, reminds myself that no one is perfect, and that perfect is the enemy of good.

Writing Exercise

Rewrite Your Narrative

Personal narratives are the stories we tell ourselves about our pasts and who we are as people. We all have personal narratives, and though they may feel very true and objective for us, they are actually highly subjective versions of a truth.

Our very identities tend to be wrapped up in our narratives of what has happened in our pasts, making our personal narratives very powerful. Think of something bad that has happened in your past. Do you see yourself as a passive victim of that event, or do you see yourself as a strong person who has survived and overcome that hardship? Can you feel into how different it feels to think of that even in each of those ways?

Narratives also can have a huge effect on our futures - they can lead us to feel destined to futures either positive or negative, and they shape our sense of self-efficacy in creating a future that we would like to see. 

Holocaust concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl writes about post-traumatic growth, the idea that through our traumas and struggles, we can experience positive change, in his book Man’s Search for Meaning:

“Man does not simply exist but always decides what his existence will be, what he will become the next moment. By the same token, every human being has the freedom to change at any instant.”

In this exercise, you have the opportunity to ‘change in an instant’ by rewriting your story.

First, write a short synopsis of your current story. It may emphasize negative things that have happened in your life and how they have limited your view of your life and of yourself. For example, I used to often think of myself as a future professional athlete whose dreams were derailed when I started having pain at age 12, forcing me to quit my budding gymnastics career. 

Then, write a new narrative for yourself. You will still write about the hard things that have occurred in your past, but in this retelling, focus on how you have overcome barriers and what you learned or how you grew from those experiences. Emphasize your strengths and the positive things you have done in your life. Continuing on my example above, my new narrative is: I was always interested in movement, and my chronic pain led me to a life of helping others learn how to be in their bodies, move with confidence, and address their own chronic pain.

Meditations

Picturing the New You

This meditation is a bit of a mix of the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation practice, focusing on only one’s self instead of others, and a visualization of your best-self and how you want to be in the world.

Resources

Sources:

Feldman, C. (2017). Boundless heart: The Buddha’s path of kindness, compassion, joy, and equanimity. Shambhala.