Pain as Your Friend

While living in Europe in my early 20s, I was driving on a two-lane highway in Switzerland when a car coming from the other direction veered over into my lane and hit me head on. Needless to say, my car was totaled, and I ended up in the hospital.

Since then, the greatest challenge I’ve had from that accident is with my lower back. Most people, when they hear about somebody who lives in chronic pain, feel sorry for them. But I am here to say that this pain has truly been a blessing.

How can I possibly say that?

Let’s first look at our standard relationship with pain. We don’t like it. We try everything to get as far away from it as we can, doing our best to make it go away. We do this with physical pain, mental pain and emotional pain. This resistance to pain keeps us caught in a chronic, low-grade struggle with life, which can flareup into heartbreaking discomfort, and also keeps us cut off from the joy of being fully alive.

I was blessed with pain that wouldn’t stay away no matter how many things I did to try to manage it. I eventually ended up in spine surgery and my mind was so happy to have relief from the pain – only to have it come back a few years later.

After years of halfhearted attempts to move beyond resisting pain, I finally got the message that resistance only amplifies it. How does it amplify? By tightening.  When any type of pain is here, we have been trained to tighten around it.  You can see this most clearly with a Charlie horse. The muscles in your calf go into spasm and you tighten your whole body, trying to resist the pain, which only makes the spasm last longer. Try something different the next time you have a Charlie horse. Bring your attention directly into the spasm and soften around. I assure you, it will move through much more quickly.

It isn’t just physical pain we can learn how to soften around. It is also the stories in our head and the feelings that move through us all day long. The stories and feelings are just like you and me. They respond to welcoming, to listening and most especially to the healing balm of our hearts. This is not what we usually do with our pain. We hate it, fear it, resist it. We tell our pain how it should be and how it shouldn’t be and just like with a Charlie horse, the pain gets stronger.

I am now preparing for another spine surgery and my doctor told me there was enough degeneration in my spine that for the rest of my life I would only have a limited ability to bend, twist and lift. After being told this, my mind went into full blown resistance, as my pain amplified, and my feelings bordered on deep despair.

Quickly, I remembered that any resistance only amplifies suffering. I was then able to be with my upset mind with understanding and compassion. And of course, it calmed down. I could then be with the feeling of despair and my heart flooded with care for this feeling that was so much a part of my childhood. As my mind calmed down and my heart opened, I could then be with the physical pain, flooding it with care and compassion. And of course, it calmed down too.

This is why I can say that this back pain has truly been a blessing. It taught me some of the deepest wisdom human beings can know – resistance equals suffering.

Let in the possibility that when you see how much you have been trained to resist pain (which keeps you in a chronic low-grade struggle), you too can become interested in your pain, giving it the healing balm of your attention. Or as Stephen Levine has said many times, “Treat your pain as if it were your only child.”

Accepting, welcoming and listening attention heals!