Loss
As a person enters the Pain Cycle and falls into negativity, it is common for them to experience a series of losses. Usually, these losses start with functional or recreational activities, for example, sports, exercise, hiking, pretty much anything physical. You become limited physically, right away, and as the negativity and depression that loss causes takes over your life, you do much less, first physically, then emotionally. Essentially, you cut yourself off from the social life you identify with. This actually sets up a series of losses because, in most cases, you have no choice but to give up these things due to injury or disease. At this point you receive the first of a line of dreaded news. “This is permanent, or long term, and there is nothing we can do about it. We don't know what's causing it or where it came from. We know it is most likely permanent.”
Think about it. You just heard that you have a permanent condition that will cause you to give up an important part of your life and your identity. The first step in losing your very unique and personal spirit. Of course it's depressing. Of course it's negative. Of course there's no way to avoid thinking negative thoughts about this news. You'll find that as you get through this book and swing to the positive side, there's actually a way to prepare for and handle this kind of news. To arm yourself against the barrage of negativity that follows your entrance into the Pain Cycle. But at this point there's no way to know this, and so it begins. The first negative thinking, the first news that leads to, victimization, to self pity, to a new weakness in your spirit. Most likely one that you have never felt before.
This is totally understandable. How could you know better? Most likely your doctors and even your therapists have not prepared you for this tumble. Pain treatment is not, at this point, a preventative method. It is not practiced beforehand, but mostly after it's all said and done. By then, you are so deep into negativity, loss, grief and depression, that is pretty amazing you're still functioning at all. This is something that hopefully we can change. Education about chronic pain needs to be prevalent in all phases of treatment and undertaken by all those involved in pain care, including the patient!
So let me say it again, it is not your fault. You see, in the end, you can't even blame yourself for the wrong decisions you're about to make, or for cutting loose the things you actually need to survive this. It's like asking a person falling down the stairs to reach out and grab the railing! How could they? They are much too busy falling. Things are happening so quickly even self preservation is impossible. Then, when they finally land, they're confused, hurt, angry, embarrassed, lost. Emotions well up and at the point of landing, they either laugh, cry, or yell at something. Again, a typical reaction. Falling into pain is no different.
The Losses
As you tumble into pain there is a subtle negativity that washes over you and this leads to depression. The series of losses that takes place further adds to, and fosters this mild, subliminal depression.
As we've mentioned, the first loss is usually social. It is the first sign that we are isolating ourselves from people and from activity. It makes perfect sense that this would happen considering the fact that pain usually sets immediate physical limits. For me, and millions of others, it started with lower back pain. At the time I was playing four different sports, recreationally, with all my friends from work. This allowed us to all get together three to four times a week, go play softball or basketball, then go out after the game and socialize. I was a player-coach for two teams, and just a player on others. Back then my pain started as disk disease, and I could no longer play sports. I was devastated. I kept trying to continue playing; kept hurting myself. This led to the first depression and the first sign of resignation.
The next loss that I, and most people I talk to, experience is the loss of employment. This can be more than just losing the job, it can be all the things leading up to losing the job. For me it started with pain, leading to being out of work a lot, taking a lot of sick days, then running out of sick days and being threatened with termination, which forced me to go on disability.
Sometimes this process can take years and the number of people who don't return to work, after being out for six months to a year, is staggering. This tells you that, like anything in life, when you establish a routine, you become the routine.
You can also see how the systems of employment and insurance are not on your side, here, yet they foster in you the idea that you need to become a nonworking, dependent in the system that will only lead to more losses. If there's any way to avoid this, do so. If there is no way to avoid it, go into it thinking always , “I will work again, even if I have to adjust my work to my condition.”
This is more than loss of employment, it is loss of lifestyle. It is the beginning of the rest of the losses. It leads to loss of self worth. It is the loss of the security and protection of the system which you've been a part of most of your life.
The next set of losses is family and friends and is a twofold experience. Your family is stuck with you and you with them. You hate being dependent on people, especially those close to you, so you try to hide within yourself and you become aloof and resigned, which leads to self-pity, depression and withdrawal. You start staying home, hoping your family members will leave you alone, but also hopefully, they'll be back to get you dinner. This happens with your friends, too. You start saying no to meeting them at the usual watering hole and slowly stop them from visiting you. Think about this from their point of view.
Your family is trying very hard to support you, emotionally, but they haven't fathomed the fact that the injury or illness you have is permanent. As they begin to understand this they can't imagine that they will have to take care of you that long. Everyone goes into care taking for the right reasons, and with more than enough love necessary to help the afflicted family member, but this involves much more than people realize. Your family, and even your friends, will eventually become depressed themselves. Your friends will stop showing up to visit, and won't expect you to show up at events either. Eventually, you'll be down to just a few close friends who would do anything to help you, but have no idea what that is. The exact same position your family members start out in.
Understand that not only doesn't anyone know what to do or how to help you, but they are as afraid of seeing you like this as you are yourself. This ends you up in total isolation and deeper depression. It also reinforces the idea that no one believes you or understands you. Since most of us are in this permanently, or for many, many years, this is a terribly deteriorating situation and I will say it one more time, if you love your family members and care about their well-being, you'll all attend counseling or classes, or read books on grief, on care taking, and understand as a unit, as a community of family and friends, that this is necessary, in an emergency kind of way! This is not a game or a soap opera episode! It is the relationship between you and your loved ones and the futures of your children!
I've personally talked to many, many people about this and you can see the strain and the pressure on everyone's face. Believe me this is worth fighting for. For their sake and your own, give up the fight that you know. Give up your old attitude and way of thinking. Without knowledge, this one can't be saved. I have had to talk to 18 year old kids who grew up care taking a parent, but un-knowingly, the wrong way.
It is heartbreaking to see someone on the starting line of their adult life, in their prime, the greatest time to go out and make beautiful memories, but rather are ready to rest, fatigued and old beyond their years. This is directly due to their parent's pain and the family's non-education disallowing the child to be a child. This is sadly, complete and utter ignorance. Another situation that could be saved with knowledge and education. I will call on the system to do its job to save these families. To address pain issues through classes and group sessions. In the meantime I will call on you, the person in pain, to do what you can to save your family and friends. This is something that can be done now, today, right away. Asking the system to change will take years of undaunting effort and pressure to bear on them, but you can change this for your inner circle, Now. Read. Study. Become aware of what your pain and the way you deal with it affects those around you. Understand that they don't know what to do to be helpful. Should they wait on you hand and foot and further cause you to be an invalid? Should they ignore you and force you into movement? Should they cry in their rooms when no one is around to hear them, or do they yell and scream at you directly? Did they become as resigned as you are to live this life of despair?
You, as the pain patient, have this power right now. The power over what's right. The power to learn what to say to take action to save those you love. Learn about loss and learn about grief. Learn to do what you can when you can. Learn the difference between damaging pain and non-damaging thing and especially learn to do things for yourself and allow those around you to love you and not smother you or ignore you. Firm on concern, this is a learning journey.
The next set of losses are understandable. Loss of esteem. You don't feel like you have any worth. You're now a dependent instead of independent. You become dependent on a system that doesn't seem to be there to help you, and they definitely don't believe you. This leads to self doubt, and to the feeling that nobody understands you, that everyone is out to get you and eventually, you become this. Of course loss of job, or even entering the disability system, short-term disability, workers comp Social Security, long term disability, all of these involve a loss of income.
You will lose one third to one half of your money to pay bills, and believe me, it gets a lot worse. If you have a “hidden” or undiagnosed illness, you will most likely lose even these financial sources. You will try to stay buoyant but with a dwindling income, you'll start losing your assets, belongings and enter into debt, serious debt, that you will eventually lose. Bankruptcy is pretty inevitable. Your physical self worth is next to nil, you can easily imagine what this does to your emotional self esteem.
The loss of self identity is the real big one. It is the culmination of all the losses, the big payoff. It is also the end result of the negative side of the pain cycle. It seems that you have lost a lot of things. These are more than “things”. They are you. They are your expression of your life. They are your work, your friends, your family and your social activities, they are your building memories, your living scrapbook. As you enter this new phase you have filled in these losses with things that represent your pain.
In my example, I filled in the loss of my job with my new job, a professional pain patient. I now attended my medical appointments with the zeal of a short order cook. I looked forward to this job, although it was only part time. I could fill out every form from memory. I only wish the clinic in the doctor's offices were as professional and ready for our meetings as I was. The other part of my job was as a pain disease researcher. I searched and searched, for over 10 years I searched.
Thinking I was helping the doctors and their staff, who apparently had no time to do this, I read everything and anything I could read about my pain. I went online, I went to the library, I ordered and bought books on any subject close to my ailments. I also kept a diary and a graph so I could see if there was any rhyme or reason to the pain episodes. I was a good employee. I was replacing my friends with the people who worked at the clinics and hospitals. For a while, they were the only people I talked to except my children. I replaced my income with disability checks. I can honestly say, though, being a professional patient doesn't pay very well. Trying to meet my budget and pay my creditors was a losing battle, but I fought hard for three years.
Eventually, you identify only with pain. My days were filled with medications, appointments, researcher, pain and broken sleep. In between this was crying time, time to wonder if anyone would come in to save me from this ugly existence. But as time went by I knew, no one believed me and no one cared. A lot of losses right there, but again, it is the loss of your identity that's the big one. After a year or two you can't remember who you used to be so you no longer strive to be that person again.
It is usually around this time that a money payoff happens if that happens at all, and what a bad time for that to happen. You have become your pain and now have enough money to stay on this level for a long time, maybe the rest of your life. I'm not sure where I would be right now if I had gotten a bunch of money back in 2002. Would I be in a sort of “pain limbo”?
For me, it was the loss of everything including my home and my children that forced me back to Boston where I qualified for a pain clinic that listened to me. Am I better off now, living desperately poor, unemployed and still in pain? Yes. Would it be better to have my home and children still be in pain? No. Because I wouldn't have the knowledge, the belief, the power that I do now. I wouldn't have self-worth, self respect, or self identity. I wouldn't be happy. Yes, I would have what should make me happy, but without the power of belief and understanding, without the knowledge of proper pain management and of knowing who I am, the reclamation of my spirit of me, I would ruin my happy home and destroy my children's childhood and then the money would be gone and here I'd be again, without self-worth.
Do I think people should lose everything and receive no monies for their disabilities? Absolutely not! Just learn from this lesson.
Be careful of the things that sound like the answer, but will only keep you trapped in the negativity. If you're not happy, no one close to you can be either. We enter the pain cycle by no fault of our own, but we must go through it and that means acceptance of what has happened. It doesn't mean that all of it needs to happen, just that usually it does for an alarmingly large percentage of us. You can stop this madness through education and by understanding that when you're in pain, you are not in the best position to be making decisions.
You'll probably, like me and many, many others, make the wrong decisions. I'm not taking all the blame here, just my share of it and I am admitting my weaknesses and wrong actions to you so that you can hear the truth and possibly save yourself , and those you love. from a victim state.
After you experience that first loss, the physical, it is common to then make decisions based around pain, that cause the next series of losses.
These can include, but are not limited to, loss of job, loss of social contact, loss of finances, loss of energy, motivation, excitement and, many times, loss of family and friends.
Refer to the Pain Cycle chart. You will learn later how these are precisely the support systems you need to survive this, but again, who could blame anyone for choosing these paths of loss. Who would want to be around someone who's constantly in pain? It is in the nature of the human animal to want to run and hide in the corner with their wounds, or sometimes to feel bad for themselves, requiring constant attention and pity from others. This may sound harsh, but for most of us, it's the tough truth.
So, you see, again, it's common to choose this path and it's extremely rare not to. You may even hear from that small percentage of people “how crazy you're being.” “What's happened to you? , they will say. “Are you just gonna lay around all day? Do you even care anymore? When I got hurt, I was back to work the same day!” Or, “Come on, it ain't that bad”.
Yes it is. Period. It is. The negative side of the Pain Cycle is a knee-jerk reaction to our lives going into trauma, to losing everything, to watching things slowly fade out of our Self. Eventually, we're actually enjoying this feeling, in a masochistic way. Our Spirit is trying to remain unique and individual. Since pain has left us so limited, we attract negativity and negative people as a way of filling in the gap. This is how pain becomes us.
If you study grief, you'll see that when people experience loss, they grieve. It's automatic. But loss doesn't have to be the death of someone close to us. Loss is the act of losing something. With chronic pain comes a series of losses and we naturally grieve these losses. Unfortunately, we tend to fight that grief. We stay in the negative stages of grief much longer than we need to because we don't want to admit we're grieving the loss. Study grief, I recommend it to anyone in chronic pain. Talk to your doctor or therapist about it. Don't be afraid of dealing with it. It is one of the keys to your ticket out of the negative side of the Pain Cycle. It will teach you how to surrender, how to stop swimming upstream, how to go with the natural flow. It is natural to us as humans to not want to face this truth. It's the way we were raised, the way we've been taught. Never admit weakness.
It seems to me that if I've talked to thousands of pain sufferers, and all of them share the same stories of loss, then it stands to reason that loss is real and is a vital part of what causes us to keep falling into the negative. Believe me, you don't have to go as far down as I did. You can stop it now. You can face the loss and deal with the grief of those losses. Allow yourself to pass through it and get on the other side of pain. Tame the monster! Quit denying it. Stop the anger and bitterness. Accept the confusion in your life and learn to surrender, to lay down your arms and say “ I'm too tired to keep fighting this, I need help in dealing with this”. Then seek education and professional help with your grief.
If you really want pain in the background, if you really want your life and your personality back, then you must take this step, or be forever stuck in the doldrums of resignation, and believe me, this is a bitter, bitter end. You have to make this conscious decision and it must be loud and clear. “I will take this journey! I will fight this pain through education and determination! I will allow myself the time to grieve the losses, and I will move on. God, give me the strength to face myself!”
As a person enters the Pain Cycle and falls into negativity, it is common for them to experience a series of losses. Usually, these losses start with functional or recreational activities, for example, sports, exercise, hiking, pretty much anything physical. You become limited physically, right away, and as the negativity and depression that loss causes takes over your life, you do much less, first physically, then emotionally. Essentially, you cut yourself off from the social life you identify with. This actually sets up a series of losses because, in most cases, you have no choice but to give up these things due to injury or disease. At this point you receive the first of a line of dreaded news. “This is permanent, or long term, and there is nothing we can do about it. We don't know what's causing it or where it came from. We know it is most likely permanent.”
Think about it. You just heard that you have a permanent condition that will cause you to give up an important part of your life and your identity. The first step in losing your very unique and personal spirit. Of course it's depressing. Of course it's negative. Of course there's no way to avoid thinking negative thoughts about this news. You'll find that as you get through this book and swing to the positive side, there's actually a way to prepare for and handle this kind of news. To arm yourself against the barrage of negativity that follows your entrance into the Pain Cycle. But at this point there's no way to know this, and so it begins. The first negative thinking, the first news that leads to, victimization, to self pity, to a new weakness in your spirit. Most likely one that you have never felt before.
This is totally understandable. How could you know better? Most likely your doctors and even your therapists have not prepared you for this tumble. Pain treatment is not, at this point, a preventative method. It is not practiced beforehand, but mostly after it's all said and done. By then, you are so deep into negativity, loss, grief and depression, that is pretty amazing you're still functioning at all. This is something that hopefully we can change. Education about chronic pain needs to be prevalent in all phases of treatment and undertaken by all those involved in pain care, including the patient!
So let me say it again, it is not your fault. You see, in the end, you can't even blame yourself for the wrong decisions you're about to make, or for cutting loose the things you actually need to survive this. It's like asking a person falling down the stairs to reach out and grab the railing! How could they? They are much too busy falling. Things are happening so quickly even self preservation is impossible. Then, when they finally land, they're confused, hurt, angry, embarrassed, lost. Emotions well up and at the point of landing, they either laugh, cry, or yell at something. Again, a typical reaction. Falling into pain is no different.
The Losses
As you tumble into pain there is a subtle negativity that washes over you and this leads to depression. The series of losses that takes place further adds to, and fosters this mild, subliminal depression.
As we've mentioned, the first loss is usually social. It is the first sign that we are isolating ourselves from people and from activity. It makes perfect sense that this would happen considering the fact that pain usually sets immediate physical limits. For me, and millions of others, it started with lower back pain. At the time I was playing four different sports, recreationally, with all my friends from work. This allowed us to all get together three to four times a week, go play softball or basketball, then go out after the game and socialize. I was a player-coach for two teams, and just a player on others. Back then my pain started as disk disease, and I could no longer play sports. I was devastated. I kept trying to continue playing; kept hurting myself. This led to the first depression and the first sign of resignation.
The next loss that I, and most people I talk to, experience is the loss of employment. This can be more than just losing the job, it can be all the things leading up to losing the job. For me it started with pain, leading to being out of work a lot, taking a lot of sick days, then running out of sick days and being threatened with termination, which forced me to go on disability.
Sometimes this process can take years and the number of people who don't return to work, after being out for six months to a year, is staggering. This tells you that, like anything in life, when you establish a routine, you become the routine.
You can also see how the systems of employment and insurance are not on your side, here, yet they foster in you the idea that you need to become a nonworking, dependent in the system that will only lead to more losses. If there's any way to avoid this, do so. If there is no way to avoid it, go into it thinking always , “I will work again, even if I have to adjust my work to my condition.”
This is more than loss of employment, it is loss of lifestyle. It is the beginning of the rest of the losses. It leads to loss of self worth. It is the loss of the security and protection of the system which you've been a part of most of your life.
The next set of losses is family and friends and is a twofold experience. Your family is stuck with you and you with them. You hate being dependent on people, especially those close to you, so you try to hide within yourself and you become aloof and resigned, which leads to self-pity, depression and withdrawal. You start staying home, hoping your family members will leave you alone, but also hopefully, they'll be back to get you dinner. This happens with your friends, too. You start saying no to meeting them at the usual watering hole and slowly stop them from visiting you. Think about this from their point of view.
Your family is trying very hard to support you, emotionally, but they haven't fathomed the fact that the injury or illness you have is permanent. As they begin to understand this they can't imagine that they will have to take care of you that long. Everyone goes into care taking for the right reasons, and with more than enough love necessary to help the afflicted family member, but this involves much more than people realize. Your family, and even your friends, will eventually become depressed themselves. Your friends will stop showing up to visit, and won't expect you to show up at events either. Eventually, you'll be down to just a few close friends who would do anything to help you, but have no idea what that is. The exact same position your family members start out in.
Understand that not only doesn't anyone know what to do or how to help you, but they are as afraid of seeing you like this as you are yourself. This ends you up in total isolation and deeper depression. It also reinforces the idea that no one believes you or understands you. Since most of us are in this permanently, or for many, many years, this is a terribly deteriorating situation and I will say it one more time, if you love your family members and care about their well-being, you'll all attend counseling or classes, or read books on grief, on care taking, and understand as a unit, as a community of family and friends, that this is necessary, in an emergency kind of way! This is not a game or a soap opera episode! It is the relationship between you and your loved ones and the futures of your children!
I've personally talked to many, many people about this and you can see the strain and the pressure on everyone's face. Believe me this is worth fighting for. For their sake and your own, give up the fight that you know. Give up your old attitude and way of thinking. Without knowledge, this one can't be saved. I have had to talk to 18 year old kids who grew up care taking a parent, but un-knowingly, the wrong way.
It is heartbreaking to see someone on the starting line of their adult life, in their prime, the greatest time to go out and make beautiful memories, but rather are ready to rest, fatigued and old beyond their years. This is directly due to their parent's pain and the family's non-education disallowing the child to be a child. This is sadly, complete and utter ignorance. Another situation that could be saved with knowledge and education. I will call on the system to do its job to save these families. To address pain issues through classes and group sessions. In the meantime I will call on you, the person in pain, to do what you can to save your family and friends. This is something that can be done now, today, right away. Asking the system to change will take years of undaunting effort and pressure to bear on them, but you can change this for your inner circle, Now. Read. Study. Become aware of what your pain and the way you deal with it affects those around you. Understand that they don't know what to do to be helpful. Should they wait on you hand and foot and further cause you to be an invalid? Should they ignore you and force you into movement? Should they cry in their rooms when no one is around to hear them, or do they yell and scream at you directly? Did they become as resigned as you are to live this life of despair?
You, as the pain patient, have this power right now. The power over what's right. The power to learn what to say to take action to save those you love. Learn about loss and learn about grief. Learn to do what you can when you can. Learn the difference between damaging pain and non-damaging thing and especially learn to do things for yourself and allow those around you to love you and not smother you or ignore you. Firm on concern, this is a learning journey.
The next set of losses are understandable. Loss of esteem. You don't feel like you have any worth. You're now a dependent instead of independent. You become dependent on a system that doesn't seem to be there to help you, and they definitely don't believe you. This leads to self doubt, and to the feeling that nobody understands you, that everyone is out to get you and eventually, you become this. Of course loss of job, or even entering the disability system, short-term disability, workers comp Social Security, long term disability, all of these involve a loss of income.
You will lose one third to one half of your money to pay bills, and believe me, it gets a lot worse. If you have a “hidden” or undiagnosed illness, you will most likely lose even these financial sources. You will try to stay buoyant but with a dwindling income, you'll start losing your assets, belongings and enter into debt, serious debt, that you will eventually lose. Bankruptcy is pretty inevitable. Your physical self worth is next to nil, you can easily imagine what this does to your emotional self esteem.
The loss of self identity is the real big one. It is the culmination of all the losses, the big payoff. It is also the end result of the negative side of the pain cycle. It seems that you have lost a lot of things. These are more than “things”. They are you. They are your expression of your life. They are your work, your friends, your family and your social activities, they are your building memories, your living scrapbook. As you enter this new phase you have filled in these losses with things that represent your pain.
In my example, I filled in the loss of my job with my new job, a professional pain patient. I now attended my medical appointments with the zeal of a short order cook. I looked forward to this job, although it was only part time. I could fill out every form from memory. I only wish the clinic in the doctor's offices were as professional and ready for our meetings as I was. The other part of my job was as a pain disease researcher. I searched and searched, for over 10 years I searched.
Thinking I was helping the doctors and their staff, who apparently had no time to do this, I read everything and anything I could read about my pain. I went online, I went to the library, I ordered and bought books on any subject close to my ailments. I also kept a diary and a graph so I could see if there was any rhyme or reason to the pain episodes. I was a good employee. I was replacing my friends with the people who worked at the clinics and hospitals. For a while, they were the only people I talked to except my children. I replaced my income with disability checks. I can honestly say, though, being a professional patient doesn't pay very well. Trying to meet my budget and pay my creditors was a losing battle, but I fought hard for three years.
Eventually, you identify only with pain. My days were filled with medications, appointments, researcher, pain and broken sleep. In between this was crying time, time to wonder if anyone would come in to save me from this ugly existence. But as time went by I knew, no one believed me and no one cared. A lot of losses right there, but again, it is the loss of your identity that's the big one. After a year or two you can't remember who you used to be so you no longer strive to be that person again.
It is usually around this time that a money payoff happens if that happens at all, and what a bad time for that to happen. You have become your pain and now have enough money to stay on this level for a long time, maybe the rest of your life. I'm not sure where I would be right now if I had gotten a bunch of money back in 2002. Would I be in a sort of “pain limbo”?
For me, it was the loss of everything including my home and my children that forced me back to Boston where I qualified for a pain clinic that listened to me. Am I better off now, living desperately poor, unemployed and still in pain? Yes. Would it be better to have my home and children still be in pain? No. Because I wouldn't have the knowledge, the belief, the power that I do now. I wouldn't have self-worth, self respect, or self identity. I wouldn't be happy. Yes, I would have what should make me happy, but without the power of belief and understanding, without the knowledge of proper pain management and of knowing who I am, the reclamation of my spirit of me, I would ruin my happy home and destroy my children's childhood and then the money would be gone and here I'd be again, without self-worth.
Do I think people should lose everything and receive no monies for their disabilities? Absolutely not! Just learn from this lesson.
Be careful of the things that sound like the answer, but will only keep you trapped in the negativity. If you're not happy, no one close to you can be either. We enter the pain cycle by no fault of our own, but we must go through it and that means acceptance of what has happened. It doesn't mean that all of it needs to happen, just that usually it does for an alarmingly large percentage of us. You can stop this madness through education and by understanding that when you're in pain, you are not in the best position to be making decisions.
You'll probably, like me and many, many others, make the wrong decisions. I'm not taking all the blame here, just my share of it and I am admitting my weaknesses and wrong actions to you so that you can hear the truth and possibly save yourself , and those you love. from a victim state.
After you experience that first loss, the physical, it is common to then make decisions based around pain, that cause the next series of losses.
These can include, but are not limited to, loss of job, loss of social contact, loss of finances, loss of energy, motivation, excitement and, many times, loss of family and friends.
Refer to the Pain Cycle chart. You will learn later how these are precisely the support systems you need to survive this, but again, who could blame anyone for choosing these paths of loss. Who would want to be around someone who's constantly in pain? It is in the nature of the human animal to want to run and hide in the corner with their wounds, or sometimes to feel bad for themselves, requiring constant attention and pity from others. This may sound harsh, but for most of us, it's the tough truth.
So, you see, again, it's common to choose this path and it's extremely rare not to. You may even hear from that small percentage of people “how crazy you're being.” “What's happened to you? , they will say. “Are you just gonna lay around all day? Do you even care anymore? When I got hurt, I was back to work the same day!” Or, “Come on, it ain't that bad”.
Yes it is. Period. It is. The negative side of the Pain Cycle is a knee-jerk reaction to our lives going into trauma, to losing everything, to watching things slowly fade out of our Self. Eventually, we're actually enjoying this feeling, in a masochistic way. Our Spirit is trying to remain unique and individual. Since pain has left us so limited, we attract negativity and negative people as a way of filling in the gap. This is how pain becomes us.
If you study grief, you'll see that when people experience loss, they grieve. It's automatic. But loss doesn't have to be the death of someone close to us. Loss is the act of losing something. With chronic pain comes a series of losses and we naturally grieve these losses. Unfortunately, we tend to fight that grief. We stay in the negative stages of grief much longer than we need to because we don't want to admit we're grieving the loss. Study grief, I recommend it to anyone in chronic pain. Talk to your doctor or therapist about it. Don't be afraid of dealing with it. It is one of the keys to your ticket out of the negative side of the Pain Cycle. It will teach you how to surrender, how to stop swimming upstream, how to go with the natural flow. It is natural to us as humans to not want to face this truth. It's the way we were raised, the way we've been taught. Never admit weakness.
It seems to me that if I've talked to thousands of pain sufferers, and all of them share the same stories of loss, then it stands to reason that loss is real and is a vital part of what causes us to keep falling into the negative. Believe me, you don't have to go as far down as I did. You can stop it now. You can face the loss and deal with the grief of those losses. Allow yourself to pass through it and get on the other side of pain. Tame the monster! Quit denying it. Stop the anger and bitterness. Accept the confusion in your life and learn to surrender, to lay down your arms and say “ I'm too tired to keep fighting this, I need help in dealing with this”. Then seek education and professional help with your grief.
If you really want pain in the background, if you really want your life and your personality back, then you must take this step, or be forever stuck in the doldrums of resignation, and believe me, this is a bitter, bitter end. You have to make this conscious decision and it must be loud and clear. “I will take this journey! I will fight this pain through education and determination! I will allow myself the time to grieve the losses, and I will move on. God, give me the strength to face myself!”