Speaker 1: Instead of fighting pain, I might say, all right, pain,
Speaker 1: you're here. I don't like you, But what are you
Speaker 1: here for? What are you bringing? What might be your
Speaker 1: positive purpose? Welcome to the one you feed Throughout time.
Speaker 1: Great tinkers have recognized the importance of the thoughts we have,
Speaker 1: quotes like garbage in, garbage out, or you are what
Speaker 1: you think? Ring true. And yet for many of us,
Speaker 1: our thoughts don't strengthen or empower us. We tend toward negativity,
Speaker 1: self pity, jealousy, or fear. We see what we don't
Speaker 1: have instead of what we do. We think things that
Speaker 1: hold us back and dampen our spirit. But it's not
Speaker 1: just about thinking our actions matter. It takes conscious, consistent,
Speaker 1: and creative effort to make a life worth living. This
Speaker 1: podcast is about how other people keep themselves moving in
Speaker 1: the right direction, how they feed their good wolf. Thanks
Speaker 1: for joining us. Our guest on this episode is Sarah Shockley,
Speaker 1: a multiple award winning producer and director of educational films,
Speaker 1: including Dancing from the Inside Out, a highly acclaimed documentary
Speaker 1: on disabled dance. Sarah is the author of a number
Speaker 1: of books on living with chronic pain, including the one
Speaker 1: we discussed today called The Pain Companion, Everyday Wisdom for
Speaker 1: Living with and moving beyond Chronic Pain. Hi, Sarah, Welcome
Speaker 1: to the show. Thanks Eric, it's great to be here.
Speaker 1: I'm excited to have you on. We are going to
Speaker 1: discuss your book called The Pain Companion, Everyday Wisdom for
Speaker 1: Living with and moving beyond Chronic pain. But before we
Speaker 1: start with that, let's start like we always do with
Speaker 1: the parable. There's a grandfather who's talking with his grandson.
Speaker 1: He says, in life, there are two wolves inside of
Speaker 1: us that are always at battle. One is a good wolf,
Speaker 1: which represents things like kindness and bravery and love, and
Speaker 1: the other is a bad wolf, which represents things like
Speaker 1: greed and hatred and fear. And the grandson stops and
Speaker 1: thinks about it for a second, and he looks up
Speaker 1: at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather, which one wins?
Speaker 1: And the grandfather says, the one you feed. So I'd
Speaker 1: like to start off by asking you what that parable
Speaker 1: means to you in your life and in the work
Speaker 1: that you do. I'd be happy to speak to that
Speaker 1: in terms of pain. You know that the first thing
Speaker 1: we might automatically think of is, oh, yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: The bad wolf is pain and the good wolf is
Speaker 1: not pain. So that makes sense. But in my work
Speaker 1: and the way I view it is to consider the
Speaker 1: wolves kind of the way we perceive pain, so we
Speaker 1: can look at pain and see it as the big
Speaker 1: bad wolf, as the enemy, as the thing to be destroyed,
Speaker 1: is the thing we have to fight. And that's often
Speaker 1: where we start with pain. We think it as totally negative,
Speaker 1: totally bad, and we feed into that. We we respond
Speaker 1: to it that way. We fight it. We we try
Speaker 1: to kill it, we want to end it. It's natural,
Speaker 1: it's kind of you know, it's not the thing that
Speaker 1: we like very much, and it's very uncomfortable and difficult.
Speaker 1: But when we only perceive pain in that way, we're
Speaker 1: actually locking it in place, and it's harder for us
Speaker 1: to heal where we're in that battle with pain. So
Speaker 1: I think of moving that perception over to the other
Speaker 1: side is one of the ways we can begin healing
Speaker 1: and perceiving pain, maybe not as something we want to
Speaker 1: invite into our life, but if we see the good
Speaker 1: wolf aspect of pain, we can begin to say, okay,
Speaker 1: let's ask different questions. Instead of fighting pain, I might say, alright, pain,
Speaker 1: you're here. I don't like you, but what are you
Speaker 1: here for? What are you bringing? What might be your
Speaker 1: positive purpose? How can I perceive you and work with
Speaker 1: you in such a way that we're we're working together
Speaker 1: rather than me just fighting with you and out why
Speaker 1: you're feeding into healing, rather than feeding more into the
Speaker 1: battle with pain, which can be exhausting and sometimes seemingly
Speaker 1: never ending. That's a great, great way to look at it.
Speaker 1: Will you tell us briefly about your journey with pain,
Speaker 1: kind of what brought you to the point where you
Speaker 1: were living with chronic pain the boy. For me, it
Speaker 1: happened fairly quickly. Um was a big surprise. I've been
Speaker 1: very athletic all my life and kind of a person
Speaker 1: who gets things done and had a background in business
Speaker 1: management and was considered myself very capable and somebody who
Speaker 1: just took care of things and responsible, and I'm sure
Speaker 1: many people can relate to that. And then almost overnight
Speaker 1: I contracted something called thoracic outlet syndrome. UM. I had
Speaker 1: a few warning signals. It was some strange pains in
Speaker 1: my left arm that didn't seem to relate to anything,
Speaker 1: and then some tingling in numbness, in some place else,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't sustained, and I couldn't relate it to
Speaker 1: anything I was doing. But it turns out that it
Speaker 1: it was related to computer use, which should be warning
Speaker 1: to people to be really careful about having an ergonomic setup.
Speaker 1: Mine was very nonergonomic, and I was using a quite
Speaker 1: a small keyboard, little tiny laptop, and I was working
Speaker 1: for somebody where I where I was in front of
Speaker 1: the computer quite a bit, and literally though when it
Speaker 1: came on, it was virtually one day I was active
Speaker 1: and the next day I wasn't. And it's quite a
Speaker 1: shock to the system to go from being somebody who's
Speaker 1: holding things together. I was a single mom. I had
Speaker 1: to work all the time. I didn't have a lot
Speaker 1: of benefits and things that would take care of me.
Speaker 1: So all of a sudden, whoa. One day I'm okay,
Speaker 1: and the next day I'm in terrible pain and can
Speaker 1: barely move. And thoracic outlet syndrome is a collapse between
Speaker 1: the clavicles the color bones in the first rib, so
Speaker 1: there's a squeezing of nerves and arteries and um muscles
Speaker 1: on both sides of the body. So it's very painful
Speaker 1: it's very debilitating. Um it's not that well known, but
Speaker 1: it is unfortunately getting more prevalent from computer use. So wow,
Speaker 1: everything just stopped. My life stopped overnight. And I'm sure
Speaker 1: there are listeners out there who have had a similar
Speaker 1: experience from different reasons perhaps, but it is a shock
Speaker 1: when you go from being active and capable to just
Speaker 1: full stop and you're in horrible pain. And I had
Speaker 1: a kid to take care of who was about eleven
Speaker 1: at the time, and so what do you do with that?
Speaker 1: And that started my journey of how do I work
Speaker 1: with this? And for me, I wasn't given a whole
Speaker 1: lot to work with. I'm not really big on using
Speaker 1: pharmaceuticals to begin with, so that wouldn't be the first
Speaker 1: place I'd go. But I was offered some to try,
Speaker 1: and they had horrible side effects and the exercises and
Speaker 1: treatments I was given made things worse. So I was
Speaker 1: kind of left to my own devices, and that started
Speaker 1: my journey on how do I work with this? One
Speaker 1: of the things that you describe is how you come
Speaker 1: down with this condition. You're in a terrible amount of pain.
Speaker 1: You start trying to do everything that you can to
Speaker 1: make it better. You're seeing doctors and you're following all
Speaker 1: that advice and it doesn't go away, and you say
Speaker 1: that we start to feel that our chronic condition is
Speaker 1: a negative reflection on us. There is something wrong with
Speaker 1: us for continuing to experience pain. Yeah, that's a very
Speaker 1: common response, and I've talked to many people, and particularly
Speaker 1: of course we're talking about chronic pain when it just
Speaker 1: won't go away, And chronic is the label we put
Speaker 1: on something that a lot of people say, three months whatever,
Speaker 1: it's just not getting better. And first you have the
Speaker 1: pain to deal with itself, and then you've got this
Speaker 1: horrible feeling of, oh no, it's not leaving. What do
Speaker 1: I do with that? And sometimes, as in my case,
Speaker 1: everything I was given to make it better made it worse,
Speaker 1: and it's terrifying. And one of the things we don't
Speaker 1: talk about a lot when we talk about living with
Speaker 1: pain is the other aspects of living with it. Besides
Speaker 1: the pain itself. We focus on that a lot, but
Speaker 1: there's also all this other stuff that comes in. And
Speaker 1: part of the other stuff that comes in that we
Speaker 1: have to deal with is the feelings of what have
Speaker 1: I done wrong? Did I screw up? You? Know, we've
Speaker 1: got all kinds of answers that come in from from
Speaker 1: New Age things to it's your karma and you must
Speaker 1: have had you know, you must have been terrible person
Speaker 1: in a in a past life too. Oh I must
Speaker 1: have made bad decisions in this life, or am I
Speaker 1: a bad person? So we have to contend with these
Speaker 1: questions that when you're not in pain, it might be
Speaker 1: easy to say, oh, no, no, you don't want to
Speaker 1: think like that, But when you're in pain and it
Speaker 1: won't move, you can't help but begin to wonder what's
Speaker 1: wrong with me? Right? And this book is really your
Speaker 1: path for how you primarily worked with these more emotional
Speaker 1: components of pain. You know, you describe things like victimization, powerlessness, isolation,
Speaker 1: silence of his ability. There's all these things that come
Speaker 1: along with the pain. You've got the physical sensation, which
Speaker 1: God knows is bad enough, and then there's everything else
Speaker 1: that comes with it. And this book is, you know,
Speaker 1: from my perspective, is really about you learning to deal
Speaker 1: with all those other components of pain beyond just the
Speaker 1: physical sensation. If you can't make the physical sensation change,
Speaker 1: can you work with all these other things that make
Speaker 1: the overall experience better and then sometimes ironically, the relaxation
Speaker 1: that comes from dealing with those emotions better it starts
Speaker 1: to lessen the pain. Yes, exactly, it's twofold. One aspect
Speaker 1: of looking at it this way is that a lot
Speaker 1: of times the emotional aspects of living with chronic pain
Speaker 1: aren't recognized, they aren't addressed, the doctors aren't equipped to
Speaker 1: really do that. But also if you're not, if you
Speaker 1: haven't lived with physical pain over time, it's hard to
Speaker 1: imagine what it's like. So we kind of feel very
Speaker 1: alone in our pain and very isolated. There are millions
Speaker 1: of people in pain right now, just in this country alone,
Speaker 1: in the United States and all over the world there
Speaker 1: are many many more, and yet we feel very alone,
Speaker 1: and we feel very much like I'm in my own
Speaker 1: world of pain here, and it tends to take over
Speaker 1: our whole sense of self. And one of the things
Speaker 1: that's not being addressed. And when we look at chronic pain,
Speaker 1: which is a big calling calling it an epidemic, really
Speaker 1: we look at the opioids, we look at the use
Speaker 1: of pharmaceuticals and what that's doing, but we all but
Speaker 1: we aren't really addressing how does this affect the person,
Speaker 1: how does it affect how they feel about themselves? And,
Speaker 1: as you were saying, when we can begin, as people
Speaker 1: who are working with pain to look at that, and
Speaker 1: hopefully the medical community can begin looking at those aspects
Speaker 1: as well, if we shift our focus onto ourselves sort
Speaker 1: of away from the pain, not not to push away
Speaker 1: from it, not to ignore it, but just kind of
Speaker 1: begin to say how am I doing in this? Who
Speaker 1: am I? Now? Where am I and begin to look
Speaker 1: at how it's affecting ourselves. At first, it can be
Speaker 1: kind of shocking. It took me a while to realize, Wow,
Speaker 1: I'm in a lot of emotional pain here too, because
Speaker 1: the physical pain takes up so much attention that you
Speaker 1: kind of lose sight of yourself. So I'm trying to
Speaker 1: help people see what what's going on for them and
Speaker 1: to begin to work with those aspects. And as you
Speaker 1: you said, what I found was that if I began
Speaker 1: to recognize what was going on for me emotionally and
Speaker 1: began to take care of that a little more and
Speaker 1: began to be more present with myself and and create
Speaker 1: a different attitude towards working with pain, which we can
Speaker 1: talk about, then the pain itself started to lessen everything.
Speaker 1: You can think the body relaxes, but I also kind
Speaker 1: of think that pain relaxes. It feels like all of
Speaker 1: you starts to feel a little bit better. And when
Speaker 1: you're in a lot of pain and you can feel
Speaker 1: a tiny bit better, that's progress. And for me, I've
Speaker 1: made significant progress over the last years in working on
Speaker 1: this kind of level where I begin to address how
Speaker 1: can I feel better about myself? First, and then paradoxically,
Speaker 1: the pain starts to feel better too. It starts to
Speaker 1: lift a little bit. And I think there's physiological reasons
Speaker 1: for that too. I think we do begin to relax.
Speaker 1: I think we breathe differently. I think the blood flow
Speaker 1: begins to release, we contract less. There's lots of things
Speaker 1: that go with that. And so where do we start.
Speaker 1: Let's get into some of the things that you found
Speaker 1: that we're helpful for you. There's a number of ways
Speaker 1: to start. One is to begin to see pain a
Speaker 1: little differently. As we started out talking about, to allow
Speaker 1: yourself to think, Okay, I'm in this, I'm already here
Speaker 1: in pain. Fighting hasn't helped, you know, fighting is helping,
Speaker 1: and you're moving out of pain by fighting it, keep
Speaker 1: doing it. You know, if that works, a lot of
Speaker 1: people find that they end up locked in a battle.
Speaker 1: But you know, pain is pretty strong and it's like
Speaker 1: it's not releasing. So if that's not working, then began
Speaker 1: to see pain different, to allow yourself to step back
Speaker 1: a little bit, just take a little bit of a
Speaker 1: breath and say, okay, what if, just what if instead
Speaker 1: of treating pain is the enemy? I asked it a
Speaker 1: different question. I said to a pain let's say he
Speaker 1: turned towards pain in a sense and say, well, what
Speaker 1: could possibly be your positive purpose here? There must be
Speaker 1: a reason you're here beyond just torturing me. So beginning
Speaker 1: to relax a little bit around that, just the whole
Speaker 1: concept of pain. And that sounds like a tiny thing,
Speaker 1: and it is sort of a subtle change, but it's
Speaker 1: also very profound. When we're when we're head on with pain,
Speaker 1: we're locked in this battle. We're kind of we've drawn
Speaker 1: our lines and pains on one side and we're on
Speaker 1: the other, and we're using our medications and we're using
Speaker 1: our treatments, and we're gritting our teeth and we're getting
Speaker 1: and we're going to get through it or and we're pushing, pushing, pushing,
Speaker 1: and you know that old saying what you resist persists,
Speaker 1: is it can be really true with pain too. So
Speaker 1: it's not about um giving into it, not at all.
Speaker 1: It's not about acquiescing. It's just about kind of stepping
Speaker 1: away from the battle line and thinking of pain rather
Speaker 1: than in front of you as something that you have
Speaker 1: to kill get rid of. Stop thinking of it as
Speaker 1: sort of moving to the side in the sense of, okay,
Speaker 1: we're going to become partners now, and beginning to imagine
Speaker 1: that pain is in fact the voice of something in
Speaker 1: you that wants to be healed. It's trying to heal
Speaker 1: you even though it feels really bad. But changing that perspective,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden begins to relax just a little bit,
Speaker 1: and I think of pain almost kind of weird. It's
Speaker 1: almost like its own entity, but it isn't. But it
Speaker 1: is part of you, but it's also feels like it isn't.
Speaker 1: So when you can imagine pain as a positive force,
Speaker 1: a positive being that's trying to get your attention, it's
Speaker 1: very unpleasant, but it must be saying something really important,
Speaker 1: because it's really using a lot of jews to get
Speaker 1: your attention, so you kind of turned toward it. So
Speaker 1: that's the f thing is to begin to try to
Speaker 1: create a different relationship with pain and on a more
Speaker 1: positive level. What we resist persists. I use this phrase
Speaker 1: all the time, you know, suffering equals pain times resistance, right,
Speaker 1: And I have I'm not going to call it chronic pain.
Speaker 1: I have back pain that is around a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, and sometimes it's more severe than other times.
Speaker 1: Sometimes it's pretty bad, and most of the time it's
Speaker 1: pretty manageable. And I've just really realized how when I actually,
Speaker 1: like you say, turned towards it a little bit, it
Speaker 1: gets much better. My brain seems to take these shortcuts
Speaker 1: where I get a twinge of pain and my brain
Speaker 1: then goes off into all the stories about that pain.
Speaker 1: I can't take it, how it's going to happen, I mean,
Speaker 1: all this stuff. And if I can stop that and
Speaker 1: for a second and go back to it for a second,
Speaker 1: I I often realized that, yeah, the sensation is there,
Speaker 1: and it's unpleasant, but it's not nearly as unpleasant as
Speaker 1: the whole mind state that I have gotten myself into
Speaker 1: as a result of feeling those physical sensations. And I
Speaker 1: feel that when we go there, when we go into
Speaker 1: the fear and we go into the resistance. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean it's easy to do it as a natural response,
Speaker 1: but if we can kind of let go of that,
Speaker 1: then we're helping pain move on. We're helping it move
Speaker 1: when we you know, we lock it in place when
Speaker 1: we get get into that resistant mode. And again, it's
Speaker 1: so easy to do because it's like there that is again, uh.
Speaker 1: And one of the first things we do. You may
Speaker 1: have noticed when we feel those twinges or much bigger
Speaker 1: than twinges for some of us of pain, and some
Speaker 1: of us are in pain all the time, there's there's
Speaker 1: just sort of levels that kind of go up and down,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't go away. The first thing we often
Speaker 1: do when we feel into the pain is we we
Speaker 1: pull our breath in, we hole we we try to
Speaker 1: stop it and and often one of the ways we
Speaker 1: try to stop it is by not breathing. And this
Speaker 1: is one of the things I discovered when I thought,
Speaker 1: what can I do with this pain? If I can't
Speaker 1: really do any of the treatments and I can't really
Speaker 1: you know, help it with pharmaceuticals, and I'm trying to
Speaker 1: eat right and nothing's working. What can I possibly do?
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, I don't know. I can try
Speaker 1: to meditate with it or something. But sitting still and
Speaker 1: trying to breathe deeply actually made me much more pain
Speaker 1: because my condition doesn't work well with sitting in the
Speaker 1: same position for too long, and deep breathing wasn't so great.
Speaker 1: So I thought, well, it doesn't work. But it did
Speaker 1: put my attention on breath and how I was breathing,
Speaker 1: and I started to notice that, and I thought, oh,
Speaker 1: I'm holding my breath a lot in fact, and I'm
Speaker 1: breathing very shallowly. And sometimes we feel like we have
Speaker 1: to almost, you know, because if we breathe deeply, will
Speaker 1: feel more pain. Sometimes that's true, but we also want
Speaker 1: to notice not to hold our breath too much because
Speaker 1: that restricts the blood flow, it restricts the oxygen. It's
Speaker 1: we're you know, We're we're tensing up. We're also contracting
Speaker 1: a lot. There's a lot of ways we respond to
Speaker 1: pain and we don't even realize it. We're responding physiologically
Speaker 1: by holding ourselves in. So if we can begin to say, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna be with pain, then I can I'm
Speaker 1: gonna begin to breathe just a little more easily. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be deep, just breathe a little bit.
Speaker 1: And one of the things I experimented with was asking myself,
Speaker 1: what if I let pain relax? What if I let
Speaker 1: pain breathe? What if I imagine pain was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of all contracted and weird, and I just kind
Speaker 1: of with it, just started to breathe differently and just
Speaker 1: relax a little bit around the pain, and the pain
Speaker 1: was still there. Didn't automatically fix everything, but just kind
Speaker 1: of relaxing around it. And then I moved into a
Speaker 1: space of Okay, what if I let pain have a
Speaker 1: little more space instead of contracting and trying to stop it,
Speaker 1: what if I let it kind of breathe outward and
Speaker 1: just take up more room. Which sounds like the worst
Speaker 1: thing you can do, And yet if you try it
Speaker 1: and you just kind of imagine, okay, pain take the
Speaker 1: room you need, it's strangely starts to relax a little bit.
Speaker 1: And and I have found dissipate and a lot of
Speaker 1: people that have tried this. It's not that pain is
Speaker 1: going to go away instantly, but if you can find
Speaker 1: these ways of being a little more relaxed around it,
Speaker 1: of breathing a little bit more freely, of letting it
Speaker 1: just be where it is. That's the path to healing
Speaker 1: you mentioned earlier, sort of seeing that pain is sending
Speaker 1: us a message or it's there to do something for you.
Speaker 1: What were some of the I don't like this word
Speaker 1: lessons that pain taught you, because it's not like, you know,
Speaker 1: I don't believe that, like we get these awful things
Speaker 1: in life to teach us lessons. I agree, However, there
Speaker 1: does seem to be truth that I guess. The phrase
Speaker 1: I like is, you know, it's not that things always
Speaker 1: happen for the best, but we can try and make
Speaker 1: the best out of what does happen. Um, you know.
Speaker 1: And so for you, what what are some of the
Speaker 1: things that you felt like pain brought to you? What
Speaker 1: were some of its messages. There's a couple levels of messages.
Speaker 1: One is, of course, the almost obvious physical level of Okay,
Speaker 1: you need to change something physically on what you're doing
Speaker 1: in life. UM, And that's often one of the first
Speaker 1: things we look at, is what do I do differently?
Speaker 1: And sometimes we don't even listen to that. It might
Speaker 1: be slowed down. It might be rest more. It might
Speaker 1: be I need you to just you know, be more relaxed,
Speaker 1: be differently with your breath, as we were talking earlier.
Speaker 1: So there's there's the levels of how we are with
Speaker 1: our body that it might be sending messages about absolutely
Speaker 1: what we're eating, what we're you know, imbibing, in whether
Speaker 1: we a lot of us don't rest enough, we stay
Speaker 1: up too late, we're on screens all the time. There's
Speaker 1: a lot of things that pain from a condition that
Speaker 1: might seem not related to those things might be benefited
Speaker 1: by if we really listen and we can even turn
Speaker 1: Sometimes I imagine pain is sitting in a chair and
Speaker 1: I say, okay, what do you need? Which is also
Speaker 1: a question we don't often ask pain what do you need?
Speaker 1: We we usually say how can I get rid of you?
Speaker 1: But you might surprise yourself and imagine pains that in
Speaker 1: there and it might say, wow, thank you for asking.
Speaker 1: You know, I'd love you to just take me to
Speaker 1: the beach, or you know, I need your toes to
Speaker 1: be in some sand and some earth, and these things
Speaker 1: that we kind of forget about in our rush rush
Speaker 1: life can be incredibly healing, and we overlook them because
Speaker 1: they're not giant, big things, but a lot of things
Speaker 1: that so so a lot of times pain might be
Speaker 1: telling us to do a lot of small things that
Speaker 1: add up in terms of changing how we are in
Speaker 1: life physically. But it also if it's chronic, if it
Speaker 1: stays around, it kind of for says you to look
Speaker 1: at yourself, to be with yourself, or you can maybe
Speaker 1: you don't have to go that direction, but for me,
Speaker 1: I had to start asking questions about well, who am
Speaker 1: I now? I can't do all the things I used
Speaker 1: to do. Is pain sort of part of me needing
Speaker 1: to change who I am in life? Is that part
Speaker 1: of what's going on here or whether it was meant
Speaker 1: to be that way or or you know, I agree
Speaker 1: with you, I don't really into the Oh, it must
Speaker 1: be here to teach you a lesson or it's some
Speaker 1: kind of punishment and I don't. I don't go that's
Speaker 1: not what I see at all. But it may be
Speaker 1: asking something, and it may be that on a soul level,
Speaker 1: perhaps something's been asking you to change for a while
Speaker 1: and the only way it could get your attention was
Speaker 1: to come through through pain. Again, it's not a punishment
Speaker 1: thing it's more of a if you can think of
Speaker 1: it as a a as a directive or a signpost
Speaker 1: or okay, look over here. Oh well, maybe I need
Speaker 1: to change how I am in life. Maybe I'm way
Speaker 1: too critical on myself. Maybe I um for me. It
Speaker 1: had a lot to do with learning how to be
Speaker 1: with myself, which sounds sort of like an oxymoron. How
Speaker 1: can you not be with yourself? You're always with yourself,
Speaker 1: But a lot of us go through life kind of
Speaker 1: being here for other people, especially for parents, or we
Speaker 1: don't really notice how we are. We run from ourselves.
Speaker 1: We're always on movies, or we're running to work, or
Speaker 1: we're out doing something. And I found that when I
Speaker 1: was with my condition, I couldn't go anywhere. I was
Speaker 1: stuck in my little house for a lot of the day.
Speaker 1: And then I was stuck with me, and I couldn't
Speaker 1: even you know, I couldn't read books, I couldn't watch movies.
Speaker 1: I was in so much pain. I was so limited
Speaker 1: that I could barely do anything. And there I was
Speaker 1: me and me, and and it's just you, you know,
Speaker 1: learning how to be with you. It may sound like
Speaker 1: a small thing, but it's really huge. I had to
Speaker 1: face loneliness. I had to face who I thought I was.
Speaker 1: I had to come to terms with how I was
Speaker 1: uncomfortable just being alone with myself. And I didn't really
Speaker 1: want to learn those things particularly, and I certainly wouldn't
Speaker 1: have want to learn them through pain. But they now
Speaker 1: feel like very rich gifts that I was offered ultimately.
Speaker 1: And again I don't know that we have to go
Speaker 1: through pain to get those, but I have them now.
Speaker 1: I have a different way of being with myself that
Speaker 1: is much more self accepting. It's much calmer. I feel
Speaker 1: at home with myself in a way I never did before.
Speaker 1: So there are very unexpected gifts if you look for them.
Speaker 1: And so what is your experience of pain? Like now,
Speaker 1: So how long ago was this that this happened? So
Speaker 1: this was eleven years ago, So I've been in it
Speaker 1: for a long time. And that I'd say about the
Speaker 1: first five years I was in very intense pain, which
Speaker 1: I mean it's a long time. And um, I found
Speaker 1: that things didn't help. So I stopped doing all the
Speaker 1: things we're making it worse, and I learned to live
Speaker 1: very restricted life. It was always really painful, but i'd
Speaker 1: keep it from spiking too much by just limiting what
Speaker 1: I did. I did that for a long time. Plus
Speaker 1: I had to be a mom, so I kind of
Speaker 1: had to be able to get up in the morning
Speaker 1: for someone and get him off to school and then
Speaker 1: collapse for the rest of the day and then go
Speaker 1: go get him at school. And you know, that was
Speaker 1: my life for a long time. And then I kind
Speaker 1: of went, wow, I can't. I can't live like this.
Speaker 1: You know, it's kind of a stoic just putting up
Speaker 1: with it thing. And so that's when I started looking
Speaker 1: at more closely at what pain is and how I
Speaker 1: could be with it. And so it took some number
Speaker 1: of years for me to kind of develop this process
Speaker 1: and figure out because I wasn't a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: so I wasn't sitting around every day wondering how I
Speaker 1: could do this differently. It was just every so often
Speaker 1: I go, Okay, well, what can I try now? And
Speaker 1: so it took me quite a while to get to
Speaker 1: the places where I realized that I needed to be
Speaker 1: with pain and with myself very differently. So now what's
Speaker 1: happened as I still have pain twenty four hours a day,
Speaker 1: but it's way more reduced. I couldn't be talking like
Speaker 1: this when I first started out. I mean, I would
Speaker 1: have been exhausted by now and the first five minutes,
Speaker 1: and my brain would have gone off to I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have known what I was talking about, or I couldn't
Speaker 1: remember what I just said five minutes ago, because you
Speaker 1: don't have much of a brain when you when you
Speaker 1: have a lot of pain. And so for me this
Speaker 1: the changes have been significant. I'm still limited in what
Speaker 1: I can do. I'm still working with the physical restrictions,
Speaker 1: but my energy levels are much better, and my ability
Speaker 1: to think is better. In my ability to of course,
Speaker 1: I wrote a book which took me a long time,
Speaker 1: but the process of writing it helped me kind of
Speaker 1: express which is another thing I talked about. I think
Speaker 1: it's important to express pain, find a way to express it,
Speaker 1: and that helped release more and more so so my
Speaker 1: process has been pretty slow. On the other hand, I
Speaker 1: was told I would never get better. I would nothing
Speaker 1: was ever going to be better by the doctors, and
Speaker 1: in fact, it was going to get worse. So you
Speaker 1: can even when you're in a pretty hopeless situation and
Speaker 1: the doctors say nothing's going to work for you, there
Speaker 1: are ways you can work from the inside out, I think,
Speaker 1: and make things improve. Do you think that had you
Speaker 1: had the skills that you now have earlier, that your
Speaker 1: journey through pain would have been less painful? Absolutely? I.
Speaker 1: In fact, I wrote the book I wished I had
Speaker 1: been given when I first got in pain, because I
Speaker 1: was looking around for like, what what do people do?
Speaker 1: What do you do? How do you deal with this?
Speaker 1: And how do you live? How do you get up
Speaker 1: in the morning? And you know, when you when you're
Speaker 1: waking up in terrible pain? And some days I felt
Speaker 1: worse when I woke up than I went to bed.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that could be so, but I
Speaker 1: would just I would toss into an all night. And
Speaker 1: I know people that have terrible pain recognized this. You
Speaker 1: wake up feeling like you've been hit by a freight
Speaker 1: train and you've been you know, boxing with a gorilla
Speaker 1: all night and you're like, oh man. And the only
Speaker 1: way I could get up was because I had a
Speaker 1: child to take care of, so you know, that kept
Speaker 1: me going. But I was slogging through my days, just
Speaker 1: barely able to you know, maintain And I'm not the
Speaker 1: only one who's gone through that. And I looked hopefully
Speaker 1: for something out there that would help me make sense
Speaker 1: of it, help me at least feel like somebody else
Speaker 1: knew what was going on. And that's when about five
Speaker 1: or six years in, I started, well, maybe I can
Speaker 1: write about what's going on. And writing was very painful.
Speaker 1: I could barely hold a pencil, but I thought, well,
Speaker 1: I'm going to write a sentence a day, and that
Speaker 1: began to release things. So yes, if I had I
Speaker 1: think something similar to the pain com pain and some
Speaker 1: some similar ideas when I started, I really think it
Speaker 1: would have helped a lot. And and people have written
Speaker 1: to me and called me and said, wow, just knowing
Speaker 1: that somebody gets it, that they read it and they go, ah,
Speaker 1: you get what I'm going through is a relief, and
Speaker 1: a relief is healing. So being seen in your pain
Speaker 1: and being recognized and being acknowledged can also be the
Speaker 1: beginning of healing too. It's really important. I A. That's
Speaker 1: the other part of the book we haven't really talked
Speaker 1: about is the first part of the book is very
Speaker 1: very practical. It talks very much about ways to organize
Speaker 1: your life and interact with others and and you know,
Speaker 1: some very practical ways of dealing with pain, and then
Speaker 1: the second half of the book tends to go more
Speaker 1: into deeper ideas of non resistance and allowing pain space.
Speaker 1: And then eventually you have a bunch of meditations in
Speaker 1: the book that are also intended for people who are
Speaker 1: in chronic pain. Yeah. I sort of developed these for myself.
Speaker 1: I think I have about eleven different, very easy, simple practices.
Speaker 1: One of the first things that I did too, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know I was developing these ideas and sort
Speaker 1: of meditations, but I when I was thinking, Okay, I'm
Speaker 1: really stuck in this and I can't go on like this.
Speaker 1: I cannot imagine my life going on for decades more
Speaker 1: in horrible pain and even getting worse. I just can't
Speaker 1: deal with it. So I thought, what what can I
Speaker 1: do in my little you know, in my little house
Speaker 1: with you know, I am so limited. I've got to
Speaker 1: go inside to find the answers. And that's when I
Speaker 1: started asking about, well, what if I looked at pain differently?
Speaker 1: And so one of the things I did was I
Speaker 1: said to myself, well, all right, let's say pain is
Speaker 1: that it feels like it you know, it feels like
Speaker 1: an invader when you're when you're in a lot of pain,
Speaker 1: it feels like something else has shown up, and like,
Speaker 1: you know, your roommate you never wanted. Only it's a
Speaker 1: bodymate you never wanted. You know, what are you doing here?
Speaker 1: And I can't go anywhere without you? It's it's everywhere,
Speaker 1: you know, Like, could you just leave me alone for
Speaker 1: a while? But it won't, you know, there's no vacation.
Speaker 1: So I thought, okay, well what if I started to
Speaker 1: use sort of an active imagination process um with it,
Speaker 1: And I thought, what what would pain look like if
Speaker 1: if if it kind of was outside of me and
Speaker 1: I met pain, you know, my pain specifically, what would
Speaker 1: it looked like? And I had a lot of nerve.
Speaker 1: Pain is a lot of what I have. It's very
Speaker 1: pins and needles and stabbing stuff and a lot of burning.
Speaker 1: And when it was the worst, it felt like my
Speaker 1: whole body was on fire in my brain. So I thought, well, okay,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna imagine that I'm gonna meet pain and we're
Speaker 1: gonna have a talk. So this is when I thought
Speaker 1: of pain is a horrible, you know, negative thing. But
Speaker 1: I imagined, okay, I'm gonna let pain come to the door.
Speaker 1: Which in itself is kind of scary if you're if
Speaker 1: you're in a lot of pain, you don't really want
Speaker 1: to look at it. But I'm going to open the door.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna take a glance at what pain looks like,
Speaker 1: and then closed the door again. You know that that's
Speaker 1: about all I could handle. So in my mind, I
Speaker 1: imagine going to my real front door of my little
Speaker 1: house that I was in, and I imagine opening it
Speaker 1: and not letting pain in, but just kind of taking
Speaker 1: a look. It's already here, but so you know it's
Speaker 1: I've already it's already in, but I wanted to metaphorically
Speaker 1: look at it. And I opened the door kind of cautiously,
Speaker 1: and I expected almost like a fiery demon out there
Speaker 1: or something really really awful, and then I could slam
Speaker 1: the door on it again, but it would have started
Speaker 1: some kind of process, I imagined. But I opened the
Speaker 1: door and there was this very nice looking young man
Speaker 1: out there wearing silver with silver shoes and the silver
Speaker 1: hat and wings on his head and wings, little little
Speaker 1: wings on his shoes, and he was just very friendly looking.
Speaker 1: I said, what And it had a little like a postcard.
Speaker 1: It was herm's or otherwise known as Mercury, the mess
Speaker 1: and Year of the Gods. And I was so shocked.
Speaker 1: I sort of jumped out of my meditation. I thought
Speaker 1: what And that's when I started thinking, Oh, pain isn't
Speaker 1: just the enemy or just a horrible thing. Pains a messenger.
Speaker 1: Oh pain has something to say. That's when I really
Speaker 1: shifted the way I was with with with it and
Speaker 1: looking at it. So a lot of these, like many
Speaker 1: meditations that I have at the end of the book,
Speaker 1: are about how we can create a different relationship with pain.
Speaker 1: Because that's when it really started to shift for me
Speaker 1: was I went, Oh, my gosh, pain is something you know,
Speaker 1: to offer me? What does that mean? Pain is a message? Pain?
Speaker 1: Is it? And then I really started thinking about it. Well,
Speaker 1: of course it's a signal from the body, so of
Speaker 1: course it's a messenger. And then I began to think
Speaker 1: of it as it a messenger on other levels of
Speaker 1: the being besides physical, which is always I've always been
Speaker 1: somebody who looks at the other side of things, kind
Speaker 1: of mystical sides of things, and and so I've always
Speaker 1: going to ask the question, Okay, what else is there?
Speaker 1: What else? What else do I need to see. So
Speaker 1: the meditations aren't particularly deeply mystical in nature, but they
Speaker 1: allow you to look at the other side of what's
Speaker 1: going on. They allow you to work with pain as
Speaker 1: something that you could actually have a conversation with. You
Speaker 1: could actually write a letter. That's one of the things
Speaker 1: I m talk about as writing letters to pain, and
Speaker 1: I have some of them in the book. But it's
Speaker 1: a way of Okay, I'm going to start a dialogue
Speaker 1: with pain. I'm going to start interacting in a more
Speaker 1: positive way, and then you begin to see, oh, something's
Speaker 1: coming back. I'm getting a few little instead of just
Speaker 1: pain sort of shouting at me in the sense of
Speaker 1: that that sensation of horrible pain is to me in
Speaker 1: my mind like pain shouting. You know. It's like pain
Speaker 1: can can calm down because you're finally listening. It doesn't
Speaker 1: have to shout so loudly. And it actually for me
Speaker 1: had physiological effects as well as as emotional and psychological
Speaker 1: to do these things excellent. Another analogy that you used
Speaker 1: in the book, a metaphor you used was to imagine
Speaker 1: pain as a wild animal injured and a own mm hmm.
Speaker 1: That was one of my imaginings that I thought wow,
Speaker 1: you know what if it's like because you kind of
Speaker 1: go into the space off, Okay, what what does pain
Speaker 1: feel like? I finally realized one day, well, pain is
Speaker 1: in pain, which is weird, but it's like your your
Speaker 1: body's in pain. It's not against you, it's not trying
Speaker 1: to fight you. It's trying to heal. So pain is
Speaker 1: the feeling of healing in a way. And that helped
Speaker 1: a lot, and I thought, well, what if I imagine,
Speaker 1: you know, what, what if pain is I don't know,
Speaker 1: scared or or you know, what if all of this
Speaker 1: horrible feeling is not something so big and powerful and
Speaker 1: scary trying to get me, But what if it's what
Speaker 1: if I think of it differently? So I just sort
Speaker 1: of spontaneously got this imaginary idea of there's a wild animal.
Speaker 1: It's say it's a tiger or a lion or something,
Speaker 1: and it's in your house, but it's wounded. So that's
Speaker 1: what pain felt to me one day, was like this
Speaker 1: thing with claws and it's literally scary and that and
Speaker 1: then I then but it itself is in pain, So
Speaker 1: I thought, well, what if it's a wounded animal? What
Speaker 1: if it's this big, scary thing but it's it's actually
Speaker 1: trying to heal. And so I I did this thing
Speaker 1: of imagining, well, what do you do Let's say you
Speaker 1: have a wounded animal in your house. I mean, do
Speaker 1: you run up and try to hit it, that's what
Speaker 1: we do with pain, or do you kind of slowly,
Speaker 1: kind of get a little bit closer and a little
Speaker 1: bit closer because it is kind of scary. I mean,
Speaker 1: pain is really scary and it can be um, it
Speaker 1: feels very dangerous to get close to pain. So using
Speaker 1: that kind of metaphor as a way to kind of
Speaker 1: move toward it when it's really scary, because some pain
Speaker 1: is really big. It's like people say, you're crazy, I'm
Speaker 1: not going to get close to that. So when you
Speaker 1: imagine it as the animal that's wounded, you can begin
Speaker 1: to just really gently get a little bit closer, a
Speaker 1: little bit closer, and you develop a trust relationship, which
Speaker 1: also again sounds sometimes strange. We don't talk about pain
Speaker 1: in these ways, and yet that's part of it. You're
Speaker 1: beginning to trust the part of you that is trying
Speaker 1: to heal, that's really what's going on, and then you
Speaker 1: can get a little closer and a little closer and
Speaker 1: then you can begin to breathe a little differently and
Speaker 1: maybe just sit down next to that painful thing, and
Speaker 1: then you begin to notice, Wow, it's not quite that scary.
Speaker 1: This thing is in pain too. How can we help
Speaker 1: each other move out of this wonderful well, Sarah, it's
Speaker 1: quite an extraordinary journey you've been on and a gift
Speaker 1: that you've given to people who are in chronic pain.
Speaker 1: So I want to thank you so much for taking
Speaker 1: the time to come on and talk with us. Oh,
Speaker 1: thank you, Eric, and thanks to all the listeners. Really
Speaker 1: appreciate it. And we'll have links in the show notes
Speaker 1: to your book and all of your other work. Great,
Speaker 1: thank you, all right, thank you bye. If what you
Speaker 1: just heard was helpful to you, please consider making a
Speaker 1: donation to the One You Feed podcast. Head over to
Speaker 1: one you Feed dot net slash support. The One You
Speaker 1: Feed podcast would like to sincerely thank our sponsors for
Speaker 1: supporting the show.