Resignation & Surrender“...Surrender is not the act of quitting and it is not the act of defeat. If you think of resignation as the act of swimming upstream, surrender can be thought of as going with the flow. Resignation is fighting the tide, surrender is letting the tide wash over you and then standing up, all wet, and living to fight another day. Resignation is final, surrender a beginning. Think of surrender as laying down your weapons and saying “ I need help with this...”
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Resignation comes from the word resign. People think of surrendering as quitting or giving up but, in reality, resignation is an act of quitting. As in “quitting your job”, it usually comes from a buildup of negative experiences and emotions. You leave, having been defeated, and go away with some bitter angry feelings, resigned to having to accept this defeat. We associate surrender with this. As in war, we know it to mean losing, we've lost, we are defeated. However, in pain also, we've already lost. Lost our lives, our identity and our spirit, not to mention all the things that go with this. With resignation we're already defeated and we've already lost. This apparently isn't working
Some of the signs of our resignation are outright such as, saying to ourselves “yes I'm gloomy, yes I'm confused, yes I'm angry. No one believes me anyway.” These are apparent signs of resignation, but there are subtle ones also, and they can be so subliminal that we don't even know we're doing it. We don't realize we are hypnotizing ourselves to believing in negativity.
Analyze these statements that all of us have said to ourselves, or out loud to others.
“My doctor's office called. I told you he wouldn't have an answer. How do you expect me to do this? You know how much pain I'm in. I've been to therapy, they're not much help either. I can't work, who's gonna hire a cripple? I'm just too tired now, I don't feel like trying anymore.”
And it can still become more subtle. You won't even recognize these as negative or resigning.
“I will never quit, you watch me, I'll work and work and when this pain gets worse, I'll work even harder.” Or how about this one? “It requires toughness, yeah my back hurts but you know, you just got to keep going. I don't let it stop me. No, I don't believe in all those stupid things like stretching or ice packs or pills. You just wake up and do another day, the best that you can. My doctor said not to, but what does he know? He's not living my life!”
He see how some of this hide behind inspirational “no quit” phrases. It can have you believing that these are noble statements, but they are actually stagnating statements. They are subtle excuses of why you don't have to learn or try new things.
This is the best one. “I'm just too old, I was raised to be this way. If I was younger, I would... ”
See it? This is resignation. This is putting the nail in the negative coffin, for we have just allowed ourselves to be this way and believe me, every time pain knowledge comes up, or even pain treatment, these phrases will kill it. We will essentially end our battle on the negative side of the cycle, angry and bitter. As long as we don't head down the “road to despair” we will at best end up jaded, cynical, and unhappy. Resignation goes nowhere. No winning, no growth, just a slow deterioration. This is unavoidable and is the reason why we must learn about surrender. It's not what we think, and is the only thing at this point that will allow us the chance to grow. Don't let anybody fool you. These statements of resignation sound smart enough that people use them on you. Sometimes they will try to shame you into believing this or to using guilt against you. Try rephrasing some of these statements as though they're coming at you from someone else. “You're just getting old, why can't you just accept that?” You can't believe doctors, what do they know? I'm telling you, you can't win, you just don't have the power to win. You just lay around all day. It can't hurt that bad. Maybe a little housework will be good for you. Yes, I should walk and stretch with you but I'm just too (old, tired, out of shape.)”
Enabling. That's what this is. It's all designed to let you go down with no fight. With all of this, the bottom line is “how's that working for you?” Seriously. If you say anything to yourself as you try to take your walk through pain, say that to yourself. Try writing the topics one by one, each category of your pain. “How's that working for you?” Let's see, “I'm too old.” Is this working yet? Is it helping me move forward? How about “I don't believe in that stuff.” Does this get you going? “What does my doctor know?” Does this saying make your pain better? Try this;
when other people give you subtle sayings, say to yourself, “Will that work to make my pain better, put it in the background?” Or say out loud, “that's an interesting concept, but how will that make me better? Will that make me happy or get a job?” See what I mean, there's got to be a better way, a way to answer the question “how's that working for me?” At least in surrender, you could always answer “It's not the final answer, but I'm moving forward.”
I've lived this so I can honestly say, I've seen both sides of this fence. I fought surrender. It was something I just didn't believe in. I wasn't raised to quit. I didn't understand it.
Surrender is not the act of quitting and it is not the act of defeat. If you think of resignation as the act of swimming upstream, surrender can be thought of as going with the flow. Resignation is fighting the tide, surrender is letting the tide wash over you and then standing up, all wet, and you live to fight another day. Resignation is final, Surrender a beginning. Think of surrender as laying down your weapons and saying “I need help with this. This is a fight I don't understand. I need a new strategy, mine is not working.” You will say, “I accept my pain, my diseases and my misfortune. I am disabled, my pain is not going away. I need to learn to live with it, happy and productive. I need help to keep my mind open to new things, to a new way of thinking. I need someone who's on my side, someone who can help me look at the decisions I have to make. I admit that this whole pain thing and all of its subjects are over my head. If I don't change I will be forever angry, bitter and unhappy. I'm ready to change. I'm ready to learn. I'm ready to find myself again because, I admit, I'm lost.
This is what surrender sounds like. This is why after you surrender, you feel an immediate relief and a surge of energy, because you are no longer swimming up the river and getting nowhere. Just the burden and anxiety of doing this, and the idea of facing a bleak future can make you fatigued Stop! Turn around and go with the flow. You'll immediately feel better.
Surrender, however is something you can only feel in your heart. It is something that happens to you, that takes you over, and in such a subtle way that you may not realize it until you look back on it. You'll say to yourself “you know I feel peaceful lately, calm. I'm beginning to understand how I need to relax more, to understand my situation, to approach things clinically. I don't feel the need to prove anything to anyone anymore. I know that I don't trust my doctors but I also know this is wrong and I need to change. I wasn't raised this way but I can and will change. I can learn new things. My family, friends, even my doctors and insurance companies don't believe me. I don't like that, but I will learn how it's not their fault. They just know very little about pain. They only want the best for me and they are afraid to see me lose my personality and instead of being strong like a rock, I will learn to be strong like a tree. A rock is unyielding, unmovable and heavy. A tree however, is strong enough to withstand hurricane force, to grow through snow and wind. It adapts to its conditions, yet grows to be very big. Its strength is in its tenacity, its root system and its ability to bend with the wind. A rock cannot grow.
I hope with all this blabber that you understand, I had to start thinking differently than how I was raised to think. I had to accept that the way I was doing things just wasn't working. With my own plan, I had lost everything. Fighting the adversity of a medical system that was not on my side was futile. I had to learn a new way, a way of self-preservation. The system seemed to like the idea that I was going down the tubes. I pleaded with them, sent letters to my doctors, to the insurance companies and to my work. All to no avail. I knew that I was on my own in this fight and that the system was not going to help me. Thank God for the few that were there for me. Without their “kick butt” attitude and straightforward approach in treating me, I would still be on the negative side, crying in my own self pity, a wasted, beaten, human being.
If you are to this point in your own journey, then you must understand that you're fighting this battle on your own. Only you have the power and ability to “swing the curve”, but you must get your butt kicked! The medical system as it is right now, keeps you on the negative side, they keep you going in circles. On the one hand they tell you how bad things are, they commiserate with you. They use big medical words designed to keep you back, to secure you into thinking they are the only ones with the answer, and yet, they offer no answers. Sometimes, even their answers are just enough to keep you addicted to their system. This is why my first goal had to be to understand my diseases and my afflictions. The more I understood and accepted my situation, the less I needed to go to the doctors. The more I learned about physical therapy and its concepts, the more I could do at home to stretch and strengthen the muscle groups. This allowed me to be empowered and allowed me to start controlling my own destiny and to break away from the system. The more empowered I became, the less I needed any of them.
Even to this day, having been refused Social Security for the 10th time, an ongoing battle since 1995, I am now empowered over them. I just received notice that my insurance as a long-term, unemployed, disabled person has been canceled. I now have two choices. Fight them, appeal the decision, get a lawyer involved, get better medical records, get my doctors involved...or... except my situation, grab my power, and move on. I already know my decision. I will not fall for this one again. I will take my power over this pain and move on. I will not enter the craziness again. I will find work that I can do and I will do it. Pain will not make decisions for me. I have the power. Will it be tough? Yes. Will there be obstacles to face? Many. Can I deal with these obstacles? Absolutely!
If I've learned anything from the “walks”, and from the events leading up to them, I've learned this, my life is mine alone. I have learned to surrender, to except my situation on all fronts, and to gear up for the next battle. I've learned that no matter what, I can make it. I can take the next steps and once I start, I head towards my goal, but will concentrate only on the ground, on my next steps. I go at my own pace, my new pace, slow but methodical. Step by step, one foot in front of the other. I think of good things, beautiful things. I listen to my music, uplifting, inspiring music, and move onto the next attainable goal.
Surrender, forgiveness, and belief. All in one day, and tomorrow, the same thing. I surrended to the situation and accepted it. I forgave them for they “knew not what they did” and I believe in my abilities, my strength, and the power of God and his angels to help me get there. I get out my “to do” list and start knocking off things I can do today, at this moment, this hour. Slow but steady. One thing at a time. I leave things on the list that I can do on my bad days, trying to even out the curves.
This may be mistaken for resignation but remember, resignation is an ending. In resignation you decide to stop we you're at and stagnate there. Surrender is a beginning, the start of something. I could choose to fight the system but I feel in my gut, that this would keep me tied to my fate, tied to the negatives, tied to a fight that does not move forward. And I just don't want to play anymore. I want to rejoin the other system, the system of the “American dream”. The one that allows me to move on, to plant the seed, to nurture and raise that tiny tree, which will allow me the freedom to grow it into the security I need to keep flourishing. Getting a job or two jobs a whatever it takes to realize this dream seems to be the choice of possibilities. It is the choice that has positivity. It is the choice that gives me the power over my destiny. Someday, we will change the system.
Someday, Social Security will be for working people, no matter what their disability, and it will allow for the people with the mindset that won't allow their disability to get in their way. It will cover us so we can get back to work. It will supplement us during these times we can't work. It will be designed around the worker, and that just happens to be 90% of us. Right now it caters to the 10% of the people who don't want to work. It teaches people not to work. It teaches resignation. It is an extremely negative system and if it doesn't change you shouldn't fall for it. The people who thought the system up are not disabled. They thought that it should only cover people who cannot work. I've been refused each time for different reasons, but all of the reasons are based on the fact that I have a “working” attitude and I refuse to give that attitude up. It makes it easy for them to keep refusing me. They set out a criteria for refusal, I meet that criteria and they come with more prerequisites to refuse me. Yes, it's not fair, but it's how that system works. I'll tell you the truth, if I lost both legs tomorrow I'd still rehabilitate and head back to work, and I would do this in under a year, so I will never qualify for Social Security, and that's okay to me, because I am honest and I work. That's me. That's most of us. Another subtle negative designed to make us think that this system is for our benefit.
How many of us, in chronic pain for whatever reason, immediately think we need the system. We need the medical system to cure us and heal us. We need Social Security for disability. We need insurance to protect us when things go wrong or when we can't work, but these systems are not designed to help us. They are designed to make is crippled and dependent. They are designed to keep us down. They're designed to subtly convince us that we can't get over our afflictions. This is wrong, but it is what it is. Another system designed to protect itself from the small minority of abusers. Another system that has evolved to make money from the majority, yet cater to the very small minority of bad people. Look around you and think about. There are many institutions that have become self-involved, that have grown using our money to pay themselves, while convincing us that we need them. I don't mean to go off on this, but it must be pointed out. We need to learn to spot the negative influences around us, the subtle ways we become convinced that we are not empowered.
Remember this, it's our money that keeps the system going. They need us. Why would they want you to become independent of them? Why would they want to change? Their mission, their purpose is supposed to be helping us, but eventually, they will face lack of monies and start playing games to secure their paychecks and this becomes their focus.
At this point we must think of self-preservation. We must understand that the professional knowledge necessary to help us through pain is just not there yet. We must take this power back, but guess what, we've never lost it. We gave it away. We were raised to see doctors as healing gods and insurance companies as rescuers. Even worker's compensation, and the doctors associated with it, are actually against us. They are out to prove that nothing is wrong with us, to hold on to our money as long as they can. I know, I've been there, and to a very bad degree.
This was not the intention of the Founding Fathers of this country, but has become the accepted way, the “policy” to see all of us as perpetrators... of our own system. Like them, however, most of us would never lie, cheat, or steal. We are the kind of people to find a wallet and return it.
I tell my daughters that I hope their generation will change the system, but for now, we must accept that we are the sacrificial lambs, at least at this point in our evolution. We must move on with our lives. We must empower ourselves to regain our power, and become happy and productive again, because we just might be the only ones left who actually care about that goal.
As usual, I will end this chapter by citing the “Walks”. I hope they proved that, accomplished in the right way, this system does work. The system of self preservation, of self education, is the way we can count on, because it begins and ends with you. “The answer lies within.” I purposely walked the 3000 miles without training or becoming “professional” to show that it is our attitude that makes things work, not the equipment. I wore Goodwill, clothes and Wal-Mart shoes. I ate anywhere that I could get food, and I ate anything I could eat. No special diet, no special clothes or shoes or training, except for physical therapy. I trained only for my spine and my attitude. I am unable to carry weight on my back so I adapted to different things with wheels, and fashioned a harness to pull these carts.
Surrender is a beginning. I surrendered to those things I needed to, I did not surrender my life. That's resignation. If I had said “There's just no way I can walk or backpack with these diseases, so I guess I'll just sit on the couch, watch TV all day and moan a lot” that would be resignation. An ending. A sad bitter ending. I didn't. I decided to make physical and emotional therapy my lifestyle. I surrendered by accepting my limits and adapting to them, then setting off to reach my dream, always cognizant of the limits, always careful not to hurt myself. I did “what I could, when I could.” I lived that way, and walked that way. Small attainable goals every day. Sometimes walking 40 miles, sometimes only 2. I was always adapting the harness, as my spine would tell me immediately if something was not hooked up right. I believed that I could accomplish the small goals, forget about them, and go to the next one, step by step, literally. I did such a good job of this that, when riding the bus from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, New Mexico, I cried and was afraid to look out the window. I said to myself “Oh my God! I walked that? Oh my God!” I'm actually tearing up now, just writing about it. I guess I always will.
There were times when things out there were very tough to handle, physically and mentally, and looking at the whole picture, yeah, it was amazing. It was unbelievable, but by taking it one step at a time, one small goal at a time, I was able to beat the physical and the mental game. I would walk and pretend in my mind that it was only three miles to the train station where I lived in Massachusetts. After three miles, I would pretend I was walking to my friend's house in Colorado, 10 miles, and in my mind, I practiced picturing these walks, detail by detail. At one point I got a little too good at this. I actually tested the positive side of the Pain Cycle theory and found the boundary of it. Although it is amazing what the human body can do, especially when the mind and the Spirit are in sync with it, there are still limits. Understand this though, these limits are far beyond what I thought was possible.
Living for many, many years in resignation, I was by no means disappointed with my accomplishments during those years. Added together and looking back, I have done quite a bit. But resignation is an ending. Although, I kept moving forward and growing, I was heading down a path where there was no way I could win. No wonder I kept hitting negative walls. Fighting upstream is a losing battle. It is a battle that you keep fighting until you are literally exhausted, turning the Pain Amplifier up, higher and higher. It is a battle that creates slow and subtle negativity. I couldn't have seen that back then. I was doing all the right things, but getting nowhere. I was making decisions and, as the diseases got worse the decisions became more and more desperate, until I reached a point where I was making the wrong decisions.
Like being stuck in a revolving door that was going faster and faster, I fought my way through the negative side of the Pain Cycle, reached the resignation stage, and stayed there for four years. I couldn't have spotted it, though. I wouldn't have known then what I was doing. Once I had surrendered and stopped fighting so hard, once I had forgiven, and moved on from the negatives, once I believed there was a way out, things changed. Who would believe that in February of 2005 I was a pitiful victim of this Cycle. I had lost everything while fighting a losing battle. I could barely walk around my basement apartment and yet, once I had surrendered and put the past in the past, I was challenging myself in ways I couldn't have imagined. Four years of suffering and resignation, two months to change things, to change the course of my life.
Once I had surrendered, my mind was now open to learning things, but these were lessons I had already heard and studied. I took pain classes for eight weeks and it did nothing for me, because I was still in resignation. I had unknowingly reached an end and was unknowingly receiving information that was critical, but my mind and my heart were not into it. This knowledge was wasted on a human being who was stuck in a revolving door. This is why I understand how resignation must become surrender to learn to “swing the curve”. One leads to the other, if you truly want out of the negative side of the Cycle. Surrender leads to forgiveness which leads to belief, which leads to a life-changing, peaceful takeover of your Spirit. In surrender, forgiveness and belief, there is a feeling of being taken over. For me at least, it was something I had to look back on, to realize it had happened. I had been consciously studying these things, reading about them, trying to understand them, but to no avail.
Once I felt the surrender and forgiveness in my heart, once I sensed the spirit become involved and I felt at peace with all that had happened, I pulled out the medical notes I had gotten from the pain classes six months before and reread them. It was so amazing to me that I had heard this, studied this, read this and yet only now did they make sense. Why was this information not entering when I first studied it? Why was I, only now, understanding it? Why was it, just now, making sense? Because resignation becomes such an uphill battle, that you end up fighting everything, your mind is only open to fighting and this opens the door to your becoming a victim, and once you taste the fruit of victimization, you fight and fight, fulfilling the need to be oppressed, to be negative.
Unfortunately, at this stage of society's evolution, the system is designed to play into these battles. They have the answer, they have the remedy, they have treatments and therapies and education, all the “weapons of healing”. But these are being presented to you while you're in resignation, and they are wasted. Most of the people involved in the medical system, the doctors and legislators, insurance adjusters and employers, don't understand you or your situation. In some cases it is simply not their fault, just as becoming a victim to this system is not your fault. All humans will naturally had down the path of resignation. The system needs to first believe us, understand us, and refocus themselves on the original reason for these people joining the system. Healing!
We, as patients need to do this too, refocus on healing! As a society, as a community and individually, all of us need to surrender, forgive, and believe in this refocusing.
If all of us would focus on the patient's healing it would change everything, but this will be discussed in a different chapter. For now, we must focus on self-preservation and from my experiences I can only say, it starts and ends with you. I meet many people who are in constant pain. All of them will state that they want out of this pain, but very few are actually willing to learn new ways, to accept their power over pain, and to move on. In this book I am appealing to those of you who seriously want and are willing to accept the challenge of taking his journey toward self empowerment. Talk is easy. Action is a lot harder. If you begin with small actions that are doable and you accomplish these small actions, you will begin to sense what belief is all about. This starts with surrendering yourself. It starts with the acceptance of your situation. It is a new beginning. Like the phoenix, you must rise up from your ashes and reinvent yourself. Because of your afflictions you will never be the same person you were before pain. You must learn about and accept your diseases or your injuries. Don't wait for others to accept them, they may never reach that point. One thing my “Walks” did that surprised me, was to solidify other people's idea that the diseases that I have, either don't exist, or are just not that bad. They now think, if I can walk 3000 miles then I can't be in that much pain. They believe that I am lying, or embellishing the pain. I alone know that this is not the truth. Luckily I did those “Walks” to show to me, and others in pain, that we can accomplish a lot if we just change our attitudes and grab our old spirit, and put one foot in front of the other, and just go.
I think now you may have an understanding of the difference between Resignation and Surrender. Understand, that the majority of us are in Resignation. It is very common and natural as humans that we resign ourselves to acceptance rather than give ourselves over to it. Surrender is just that. It is laying down arms and accepting our fate. We need to do this in order to learn to adapt. Adapting is the key to survival. Historically however, humans adapt with a lot of resignation. In the study of human development, it will be found, that the humans who did not adapt died off. As pain patients we faced the same dilemma. How can we adapt with this kind of pain? Well, it can be done! It needs to be done. But you must learn to Surrender and leave Resignation behind, so the next step, Forgiveness, can be achieved. Once you have forgiven then you may take the next step, which is Believing in yourself and in the positive side of the Pain Cycle. Again, this is felt in your heart not in your mind. So go back and listen to your doctors and therapists, to your family and friends, and to your own mind, and understand that you must give in, in order to move to the next step. And keep taking your steps, and wait to feel it in your heart. You will feel a sense of peace, a sense of understanding, a sense of calmness, and a sense of readiness, to be able to move on from the negative side of the Pain Cycle!
Some of the signs of our resignation are outright such as, saying to ourselves “yes I'm gloomy, yes I'm confused, yes I'm angry. No one believes me anyway.” These are apparent signs of resignation, but there are subtle ones also, and they can be so subliminal that we don't even know we're doing it. We don't realize we are hypnotizing ourselves to believing in negativity.
Analyze these statements that all of us have said to ourselves, or out loud to others.
“My doctor's office called. I told you he wouldn't have an answer. How do you expect me to do this? You know how much pain I'm in. I've been to therapy, they're not much help either. I can't work, who's gonna hire a cripple? I'm just too tired now, I don't feel like trying anymore.”
And it can still become more subtle. You won't even recognize these as negative or resigning.
“I will never quit, you watch me, I'll work and work and when this pain gets worse, I'll work even harder.” Or how about this one? “It requires toughness, yeah my back hurts but you know, you just got to keep going. I don't let it stop me. No, I don't believe in all those stupid things like stretching or ice packs or pills. You just wake up and do another day, the best that you can. My doctor said not to, but what does he know? He's not living my life!”
He see how some of this hide behind inspirational “no quit” phrases. It can have you believing that these are noble statements, but they are actually stagnating statements. They are subtle excuses of why you don't have to learn or try new things.
This is the best one. “I'm just too old, I was raised to be this way. If I was younger, I would... ”
See it? This is resignation. This is putting the nail in the negative coffin, for we have just allowed ourselves to be this way and believe me, every time pain knowledge comes up, or even pain treatment, these phrases will kill it. We will essentially end our battle on the negative side of the cycle, angry and bitter. As long as we don't head down the “road to despair” we will at best end up jaded, cynical, and unhappy. Resignation goes nowhere. No winning, no growth, just a slow deterioration. This is unavoidable and is the reason why we must learn about surrender. It's not what we think, and is the only thing at this point that will allow us the chance to grow. Don't let anybody fool you. These statements of resignation sound smart enough that people use them on you. Sometimes they will try to shame you into believing this or to using guilt against you. Try rephrasing some of these statements as though they're coming at you from someone else. “You're just getting old, why can't you just accept that?” You can't believe doctors, what do they know? I'm telling you, you can't win, you just don't have the power to win. You just lay around all day. It can't hurt that bad. Maybe a little housework will be good for you. Yes, I should walk and stretch with you but I'm just too (old, tired, out of shape.)”
Enabling. That's what this is. It's all designed to let you go down with no fight. With all of this, the bottom line is “how's that working for you?” Seriously. If you say anything to yourself as you try to take your walk through pain, say that to yourself. Try writing the topics one by one, each category of your pain. “How's that working for you?” Let's see, “I'm too old.” Is this working yet? Is it helping me move forward? How about “I don't believe in that stuff.” Does this get you going? “What does my doctor know?” Does this saying make your pain better? Try this;
when other people give you subtle sayings, say to yourself, “Will that work to make my pain better, put it in the background?” Or say out loud, “that's an interesting concept, but how will that make me better? Will that make me happy or get a job?” See what I mean, there's got to be a better way, a way to answer the question “how's that working for me?” At least in surrender, you could always answer “It's not the final answer, but I'm moving forward.”
I've lived this so I can honestly say, I've seen both sides of this fence. I fought surrender. It was something I just didn't believe in. I wasn't raised to quit. I didn't understand it.
Surrender is not the act of quitting and it is not the act of defeat. If you think of resignation as the act of swimming upstream, surrender can be thought of as going with the flow. Resignation is fighting the tide, surrender is letting the tide wash over you and then standing up, all wet, and you live to fight another day. Resignation is final, Surrender a beginning. Think of surrender as laying down your weapons and saying “I need help with this. This is a fight I don't understand. I need a new strategy, mine is not working.” You will say, “I accept my pain, my diseases and my misfortune. I am disabled, my pain is not going away. I need to learn to live with it, happy and productive. I need help to keep my mind open to new things, to a new way of thinking. I need someone who's on my side, someone who can help me look at the decisions I have to make. I admit that this whole pain thing and all of its subjects are over my head. If I don't change I will be forever angry, bitter and unhappy. I'm ready to change. I'm ready to learn. I'm ready to find myself again because, I admit, I'm lost.
This is what surrender sounds like. This is why after you surrender, you feel an immediate relief and a surge of energy, because you are no longer swimming up the river and getting nowhere. Just the burden and anxiety of doing this, and the idea of facing a bleak future can make you fatigued Stop! Turn around and go with the flow. You'll immediately feel better.
Surrender, however is something you can only feel in your heart. It is something that happens to you, that takes you over, and in such a subtle way that you may not realize it until you look back on it. You'll say to yourself “you know I feel peaceful lately, calm. I'm beginning to understand how I need to relax more, to understand my situation, to approach things clinically. I don't feel the need to prove anything to anyone anymore. I know that I don't trust my doctors but I also know this is wrong and I need to change. I wasn't raised this way but I can and will change. I can learn new things. My family, friends, even my doctors and insurance companies don't believe me. I don't like that, but I will learn how it's not their fault. They just know very little about pain. They only want the best for me and they are afraid to see me lose my personality and instead of being strong like a rock, I will learn to be strong like a tree. A rock is unyielding, unmovable and heavy. A tree however, is strong enough to withstand hurricane force, to grow through snow and wind. It adapts to its conditions, yet grows to be very big. Its strength is in its tenacity, its root system and its ability to bend with the wind. A rock cannot grow.
I hope with all this blabber that you understand, I had to start thinking differently than how I was raised to think. I had to accept that the way I was doing things just wasn't working. With my own plan, I had lost everything. Fighting the adversity of a medical system that was not on my side was futile. I had to learn a new way, a way of self-preservation. The system seemed to like the idea that I was going down the tubes. I pleaded with them, sent letters to my doctors, to the insurance companies and to my work. All to no avail. I knew that I was on my own in this fight and that the system was not going to help me. Thank God for the few that were there for me. Without their “kick butt” attitude and straightforward approach in treating me, I would still be on the negative side, crying in my own self pity, a wasted, beaten, human being.
If you are to this point in your own journey, then you must understand that you're fighting this battle on your own. Only you have the power and ability to “swing the curve”, but you must get your butt kicked! The medical system as it is right now, keeps you on the negative side, they keep you going in circles. On the one hand they tell you how bad things are, they commiserate with you. They use big medical words designed to keep you back, to secure you into thinking they are the only ones with the answer, and yet, they offer no answers. Sometimes, even their answers are just enough to keep you addicted to their system. This is why my first goal had to be to understand my diseases and my afflictions. The more I understood and accepted my situation, the less I needed to go to the doctors. The more I learned about physical therapy and its concepts, the more I could do at home to stretch and strengthen the muscle groups. This allowed me to be empowered and allowed me to start controlling my own destiny and to break away from the system. The more empowered I became, the less I needed any of them.
Even to this day, having been refused Social Security for the 10th time, an ongoing battle since 1995, I am now empowered over them. I just received notice that my insurance as a long-term, unemployed, disabled person has been canceled. I now have two choices. Fight them, appeal the decision, get a lawyer involved, get better medical records, get my doctors involved...or... except my situation, grab my power, and move on. I already know my decision. I will not fall for this one again. I will take my power over this pain and move on. I will not enter the craziness again. I will find work that I can do and I will do it. Pain will not make decisions for me. I have the power. Will it be tough? Yes. Will there be obstacles to face? Many. Can I deal with these obstacles? Absolutely!
If I've learned anything from the “walks”, and from the events leading up to them, I've learned this, my life is mine alone. I have learned to surrender, to except my situation on all fronts, and to gear up for the next battle. I've learned that no matter what, I can make it. I can take the next steps and once I start, I head towards my goal, but will concentrate only on the ground, on my next steps. I go at my own pace, my new pace, slow but methodical. Step by step, one foot in front of the other. I think of good things, beautiful things. I listen to my music, uplifting, inspiring music, and move onto the next attainable goal.
Surrender, forgiveness, and belief. All in one day, and tomorrow, the same thing. I surrended to the situation and accepted it. I forgave them for they “knew not what they did” and I believe in my abilities, my strength, and the power of God and his angels to help me get there. I get out my “to do” list and start knocking off things I can do today, at this moment, this hour. Slow but steady. One thing at a time. I leave things on the list that I can do on my bad days, trying to even out the curves.
This may be mistaken for resignation but remember, resignation is an ending. In resignation you decide to stop we you're at and stagnate there. Surrender is a beginning, the start of something. I could choose to fight the system but I feel in my gut, that this would keep me tied to my fate, tied to the negatives, tied to a fight that does not move forward. And I just don't want to play anymore. I want to rejoin the other system, the system of the “American dream”. The one that allows me to move on, to plant the seed, to nurture and raise that tiny tree, which will allow me the freedom to grow it into the security I need to keep flourishing. Getting a job or two jobs a whatever it takes to realize this dream seems to be the choice of possibilities. It is the choice that has positivity. It is the choice that gives me the power over my destiny. Someday, we will change the system.
Someday, Social Security will be for working people, no matter what their disability, and it will allow for the people with the mindset that won't allow their disability to get in their way. It will cover us so we can get back to work. It will supplement us during these times we can't work. It will be designed around the worker, and that just happens to be 90% of us. Right now it caters to the 10% of the people who don't want to work. It teaches people not to work. It teaches resignation. It is an extremely negative system and if it doesn't change you shouldn't fall for it. The people who thought the system up are not disabled. They thought that it should only cover people who cannot work. I've been refused each time for different reasons, but all of the reasons are based on the fact that I have a “working” attitude and I refuse to give that attitude up. It makes it easy for them to keep refusing me. They set out a criteria for refusal, I meet that criteria and they come with more prerequisites to refuse me. Yes, it's not fair, but it's how that system works. I'll tell you the truth, if I lost both legs tomorrow I'd still rehabilitate and head back to work, and I would do this in under a year, so I will never qualify for Social Security, and that's okay to me, because I am honest and I work. That's me. That's most of us. Another subtle negative designed to make us think that this system is for our benefit.
How many of us, in chronic pain for whatever reason, immediately think we need the system. We need the medical system to cure us and heal us. We need Social Security for disability. We need insurance to protect us when things go wrong or when we can't work, but these systems are not designed to help us. They are designed to make is crippled and dependent. They are designed to keep us down. They're designed to subtly convince us that we can't get over our afflictions. This is wrong, but it is what it is. Another system designed to protect itself from the small minority of abusers. Another system that has evolved to make money from the majority, yet cater to the very small minority of bad people. Look around you and think about. There are many institutions that have become self-involved, that have grown using our money to pay themselves, while convincing us that we need them. I don't mean to go off on this, but it must be pointed out. We need to learn to spot the negative influences around us, the subtle ways we become convinced that we are not empowered.
Remember this, it's our money that keeps the system going. They need us. Why would they want you to become independent of them? Why would they want to change? Their mission, their purpose is supposed to be helping us, but eventually, they will face lack of monies and start playing games to secure their paychecks and this becomes their focus.
At this point we must think of self-preservation. We must understand that the professional knowledge necessary to help us through pain is just not there yet. We must take this power back, but guess what, we've never lost it. We gave it away. We were raised to see doctors as healing gods and insurance companies as rescuers. Even worker's compensation, and the doctors associated with it, are actually against us. They are out to prove that nothing is wrong with us, to hold on to our money as long as they can. I know, I've been there, and to a very bad degree.
This was not the intention of the Founding Fathers of this country, but has become the accepted way, the “policy” to see all of us as perpetrators... of our own system. Like them, however, most of us would never lie, cheat, or steal. We are the kind of people to find a wallet and return it.
I tell my daughters that I hope their generation will change the system, but for now, we must accept that we are the sacrificial lambs, at least at this point in our evolution. We must move on with our lives. We must empower ourselves to regain our power, and become happy and productive again, because we just might be the only ones left who actually care about that goal.
As usual, I will end this chapter by citing the “Walks”. I hope they proved that, accomplished in the right way, this system does work. The system of self preservation, of self education, is the way we can count on, because it begins and ends with you. “The answer lies within.” I purposely walked the 3000 miles without training or becoming “professional” to show that it is our attitude that makes things work, not the equipment. I wore Goodwill, clothes and Wal-Mart shoes. I ate anywhere that I could get food, and I ate anything I could eat. No special diet, no special clothes or shoes or training, except for physical therapy. I trained only for my spine and my attitude. I am unable to carry weight on my back so I adapted to different things with wheels, and fashioned a harness to pull these carts.
Surrender is a beginning. I surrendered to those things I needed to, I did not surrender my life. That's resignation. If I had said “There's just no way I can walk or backpack with these diseases, so I guess I'll just sit on the couch, watch TV all day and moan a lot” that would be resignation. An ending. A sad bitter ending. I didn't. I decided to make physical and emotional therapy my lifestyle. I surrendered by accepting my limits and adapting to them, then setting off to reach my dream, always cognizant of the limits, always careful not to hurt myself. I did “what I could, when I could.” I lived that way, and walked that way. Small attainable goals every day. Sometimes walking 40 miles, sometimes only 2. I was always adapting the harness, as my spine would tell me immediately if something was not hooked up right. I believed that I could accomplish the small goals, forget about them, and go to the next one, step by step, literally. I did such a good job of this that, when riding the bus from Los Angeles to Albuquerque, New Mexico, I cried and was afraid to look out the window. I said to myself “Oh my God! I walked that? Oh my God!” I'm actually tearing up now, just writing about it. I guess I always will.
There were times when things out there were very tough to handle, physically and mentally, and looking at the whole picture, yeah, it was amazing. It was unbelievable, but by taking it one step at a time, one small goal at a time, I was able to beat the physical and the mental game. I would walk and pretend in my mind that it was only three miles to the train station where I lived in Massachusetts. After three miles, I would pretend I was walking to my friend's house in Colorado, 10 miles, and in my mind, I practiced picturing these walks, detail by detail. At one point I got a little too good at this. I actually tested the positive side of the Pain Cycle theory and found the boundary of it. Although it is amazing what the human body can do, especially when the mind and the Spirit are in sync with it, there are still limits. Understand this though, these limits are far beyond what I thought was possible.
Living for many, many years in resignation, I was by no means disappointed with my accomplishments during those years. Added together and looking back, I have done quite a bit. But resignation is an ending. Although, I kept moving forward and growing, I was heading down a path where there was no way I could win. No wonder I kept hitting negative walls. Fighting upstream is a losing battle. It is a battle that you keep fighting until you are literally exhausted, turning the Pain Amplifier up, higher and higher. It is a battle that creates slow and subtle negativity. I couldn't have seen that back then. I was doing all the right things, but getting nowhere. I was making decisions and, as the diseases got worse the decisions became more and more desperate, until I reached a point where I was making the wrong decisions.
Like being stuck in a revolving door that was going faster and faster, I fought my way through the negative side of the Pain Cycle, reached the resignation stage, and stayed there for four years. I couldn't have spotted it, though. I wouldn't have known then what I was doing. Once I had surrendered and stopped fighting so hard, once I had forgiven, and moved on from the negatives, once I believed there was a way out, things changed. Who would believe that in February of 2005 I was a pitiful victim of this Cycle. I had lost everything while fighting a losing battle. I could barely walk around my basement apartment and yet, once I had surrendered and put the past in the past, I was challenging myself in ways I couldn't have imagined. Four years of suffering and resignation, two months to change things, to change the course of my life.
Once I had surrendered, my mind was now open to learning things, but these were lessons I had already heard and studied. I took pain classes for eight weeks and it did nothing for me, because I was still in resignation. I had unknowingly reached an end and was unknowingly receiving information that was critical, but my mind and my heart were not into it. This knowledge was wasted on a human being who was stuck in a revolving door. This is why I understand how resignation must become surrender to learn to “swing the curve”. One leads to the other, if you truly want out of the negative side of the Cycle. Surrender leads to forgiveness which leads to belief, which leads to a life-changing, peaceful takeover of your Spirit. In surrender, forgiveness and belief, there is a feeling of being taken over. For me at least, it was something I had to look back on, to realize it had happened. I had been consciously studying these things, reading about them, trying to understand them, but to no avail.
Once I felt the surrender and forgiveness in my heart, once I sensed the spirit become involved and I felt at peace with all that had happened, I pulled out the medical notes I had gotten from the pain classes six months before and reread them. It was so amazing to me that I had heard this, studied this, read this and yet only now did they make sense. Why was this information not entering when I first studied it? Why was I, only now, understanding it? Why was it, just now, making sense? Because resignation becomes such an uphill battle, that you end up fighting everything, your mind is only open to fighting and this opens the door to your becoming a victim, and once you taste the fruit of victimization, you fight and fight, fulfilling the need to be oppressed, to be negative.
Unfortunately, at this stage of society's evolution, the system is designed to play into these battles. They have the answer, they have the remedy, they have treatments and therapies and education, all the “weapons of healing”. But these are being presented to you while you're in resignation, and they are wasted. Most of the people involved in the medical system, the doctors and legislators, insurance adjusters and employers, don't understand you or your situation. In some cases it is simply not their fault, just as becoming a victim to this system is not your fault. All humans will naturally had down the path of resignation. The system needs to first believe us, understand us, and refocus themselves on the original reason for these people joining the system. Healing!
We, as patients need to do this too, refocus on healing! As a society, as a community and individually, all of us need to surrender, forgive, and believe in this refocusing.
If all of us would focus on the patient's healing it would change everything, but this will be discussed in a different chapter. For now, we must focus on self-preservation and from my experiences I can only say, it starts and ends with you. I meet many people who are in constant pain. All of them will state that they want out of this pain, but very few are actually willing to learn new ways, to accept their power over pain, and to move on. In this book I am appealing to those of you who seriously want and are willing to accept the challenge of taking his journey toward self empowerment. Talk is easy. Action is a lot harder. If you begin with small actions that are doable and you accomplish these small actions, you will begin to sense what belief is all about. This starts with surrendering yourself. It starts with the acceptance of your situation. It is a new beginning. Like the phoenix, you must rise up from your ashes and reinvent yourself. Because of your afflictions you will never be the same person you were before pain. You must learn about and accept your diseases or your injuries. Don't wait for others to accept them, they may never reach that point. One thing my “Walks” did that surprised me, was to solidify other people's idea that the diseases that I have, either don't exist, or are just not that bad. They now think, if I can walk 3000 miles then I can't be in that much pain. They believe that I am lying, or embellishing the pain. I alone know that this is not the truth. Luckily I did those “Walks” to show to me, and others in pain, that we can accomplish a lot if we just change our attitudes and grab our old spirit, and put one foot in front of the other, and just go.
I think now you may have an understanding of the difference between Resignation and Surrender. Understand, that the majority of us are in Resignation. It is very common and natural as humans that we resign ourselves to acceptance rather than give ourselves over to it. Surrender is just that. It is laying down arms and accepting our fate. We need to do this in order to learn to adapt. Adapting is the key to survival. Historically however, humans adapt with a lot of resignation. In the study of human development, it will be found, that the humans who did not adapt died off. As pain patients we faced the same dilemma. How can we adapt with this kind of pain? Well, it can be done! It needs to be done. But you must learn to Surrender and leave Resignation behind, so the next step, Forgiveness, can be achieved. Once you have forgiven then you may take the next step, which is Believing in yourself and in the positive side of the Pain Cycle. Again, this is felt in your heart not in your mind. So go back and listen to your doctors and therapists, to your family and friends, and to your own mind, and understand that you must give in, in order to move to the next step. And keep taking your steps, and wait to feel it in your heart. You will feel a sense of peace, a sense of understanding, a sense of calmness, and a sense of readiness, to be able to move on from the negative side of the Pain Cycle!