Episode 26 – Fear of Pain

I asked my private Facebook Group (Mindbody Masters)  a question: “If you are “stuck” in healing – what do YOU think is the #1 reason for this?” I received so many wonderful answers, but the main answer that I got had the underlying theme of …

I asked my private Facebook Group (Mindbody Masters)  a question: “If you are “stuck” in healing – what do YOU think is the #1 reason for this?”

I received so many wonderful answers, but the main answer that I got had the underlying theme of FEAR.  Specifically: fear of pain or fear of symptoms.

The fact that they all intuitively KNEW that fear was at the root shows me that they are WELL on their way toward healing, so this is actually a wonderful sign.

Many of us are afraid of the pain itself.

First, we must notice and understand that fear of the pain is normal and natural. But it’s also helpful to remember that PAIN is a basic human response that is evolutionary and quite HELPFUL to us.

Pain helps us self-preserve, by alerting us to danger within us or around us, but nowadays, this FEAR of the pain has become a cultural paradigm that is no longer helping us.

Almost all of us have been raised with this belief that says that pain is the enemy of pleasure. We see pain as the opposite of good, the opposite of happiness, or as a signal that there is something terribly wrong with our bodies or our karmic lot in life.

And yes, of course sometimes pain can indicate a physical problem that needs attention, but if you’re chronic, and you’ve been checked for emergent or malignant processes, then it’s likely that the fear of the pain is now your new pain.

It did me a lot of good along my own journey to remember that pain is my body’s way of trying to protect me.

And when we react to pain with disproportionate fear and interpret it as “wrong” or “dangerous” we set off an emotional pain-fear cycle that feeds upon itself delivering more pain because fear is just another emotion that our brain deems unsafe.  It was the unconsciously-perceived “unsafe” emotions in the first place that got our bodies to try to protect us to such a degree that pain arose.

So what we are really truly trying to find – more than pain relief – more than symptom relief – more than emotional turmoil relief is…. SAFETY.

When we feel safe, pain dissolves. Not the other way around. We don’t suddenly feel safe when pain leaves us. When we can truly feel safe WITHIN the pain, then our pain can leave us.

When we try to get RID of pain, when we try to heal, when we try to push for a different experience than the one we are having in this present moment, that means we DON’T FEEL SAFE YET.

When we try to GET RID of the pain, we are trying to get rid of it because we FEAR that we’ll be with it forever. We fear the future we are foreseeing within the pain. We fear disability and further loss of control.

So the true, Jedi way to transmute the pain we are in is to cultivate a feeling of safety within ourselves while we are still in the depths of intense pain.

You can “accept the diagnosis” and “lean in” and excavate your emotional wounds as much as the next person (and these are all wonderful practices and please do them if you haven’t yet), but if you’re at a crossroads wondering why you don’t feel any relief yet, it’s likely because you don’t quite yet feel safe inside your own body or environment … or both.

Sarno’s 12 reminders – I believe he created those to continually remind our consciousness of the fact that we are safe. – Do not be intimidated by the pain, TMS is HARMLESS, TMS is an Emotional response to repression. These 12 reminders are designed to keep your FEAR of the Pain down.

So if you’re fearful of your pain experience, it is highly likely you still do not feel SAFE within the pain experience. This could be because of one of two things: 1) a lack of BELIEF in the diagnosis of TMS, which I talk about in episode 17, so if you haven’t listened to that one, and your belief in TMS is not quite there yet. That is something you need to work on cultivating. The second reason is that 2) the pain is at such an intensity that makes you doubt in the diagnosis, therefore doubting your safety to move about your life experience freely.

When I first listened to the Healing Back Pain audiobook, I felt an undeniable wave of safety wash over me hearing Sarno’s words of reassurance.

I felt like for the first time in 8 years, the condition of my spinal structures was not even close to as dangerous as I had envisioned them to be.

Right away, I trusted in my body, and felt SAFE enough to test out this theory that went against everything I’ve ever heard from any physician, Physical Therapist, Chiropractor or acupuncturist by immediately resuming all slouching, stopping all PT exercises, removing all bolsters, props, pillows, and guarding postures, sitting on previously unapproved furniture, and moving my body in ways that I had deemed too dangerous before.

The thing about safety is: Only YOU can decide to give yourself the green light of safety. Only you can decide that even though it hurts, that you ARE SAFE inside of your body, Safe within the pain. Pain does not equate to tissue damage, and that notion must be reinforced and remembered on the daily if you find yourself slipping back into fear about the safety of your body.

One way we can help ourselves reinforce our safety is to FIRST: uncover all the ways in our lives in which we currently feel unsafe.

So then one way to confront our Fears is to Write them all down and LOOK at them. Call your DIMs or fears by name, then see if you can replace EACH one with a counterbalancing SIM or rationalization. Then we can begin to rebuild our neural network by taking action that defies these danger signals.

Writing Down Your Fears:

– A visit to the doctor, who showed you your MRI that revealed a shocking image of “bone on bone” arthritis.

– You roll your ankle which swells up to the size of a softball.

– You get a diagnosis of Fibromyalgia

– You get fired from your job

Keep going with a list like this – write down anything that creates a feeling of danger or fear, and just look at it first. And then with those examples, write next to each one, something that makes you feel safer about it.

Turning Fears into Safety:

With the bone on bone diagnosis, write next to it something like: I actually just learned that bone on bone doesn’t necessitate pain and that makes me feel safe. Jimbo Jones across the street has bone on bone and he’s not in pain, so maybe that can be my case as well.

With the ankle getting rolled and swelling up, write next to that: “Wow, cool, I know that swelling means that my body is a miraculous self-healing machine and that warmth of inflammation is working hard to heal my tissues.”

If you had a fibromyalgia diagnosis, you could write next to that: “Oh hey, I just learned that fibro does not involve tissue damage, so I can rest assured that the pain is only an indication of your heightened nervous system and that if I can cultivate peace and a feeling of safety within the pain, that my nervous system will dial down soon enough.”

And if you get fired from your job, you could come to the realization that you were largely undervalued and underpaid and now you can discover the next greatest step on your career path.

Then, once you remind yourself long and hard enough of the inherent safety within you – then you can begin to become more mobile, with an attitude of outcome independence while increasing activity. Begin to move your body in ways that you previously felt unsafe doing. If bending over was a trigger, begin to bend over while affirming to yourself that you are safe to do so. If it hurts, so what? You’ve been hurting for so long, what’s a little more pain at this point, right? You’re reprogramming your neural network by doing these things you previously associated with danger, keep going. Trust that this pain is not dangerous. Treat each part of your body that hurts as if it were a phantom limb, just over sensitized and under a false impression of danger.

And… if you have a diagnosis that you are feeling like is out of the realm of TMS, maybe go look for and find spontaneous remission cases of that particular diagnosis and see what comes up.

And if you simply cannot bring yourself to discover safety feelings with these techniques, then ask yourself: “can I decide to discover peace within this situation regardless of the conditions that I’m observing?”

A Note About Repression:

We repress when we need to in a specific moment, right? We repress when it’s inconvenient to look at a certain emotion or when our brain deems it as too scary to look at just yet. So then, that would indicate that when feelings and pain come into our experience that it is arising within us because it’s finally safe to process and integrate now, we just have to remember that that’s the work we’re doing. Too often, we judge ourselves for having pain or emotion because it seems that it indicates that we’re off track, but in fact, it is coming up because we are on exactly the right path and is for our greatest evolution

SO THEN:

Every single thing that comes up within our experience is coming up BECAUSE it is actually SAFE to feel that right now.

So if you’re feeling anger arise, it’s because you’re SAFE to feel anger right now.

If you’re feeling sadness or grief arise, it’s because you’re actually safe to feel that sad right now.

If you’re feeling anxiousness arise, it’s because you’re actually safe to feel anxious right now.

If youre feeling pain, it’s because you are safe to be feeling pain right now.

Yes it’s uncomfortable, yes, it’s not what we’ve been told is “the right path” – but it is the right path. Your increase in pain is not a regression, it’s expansion. Your fear about the pain is an illusion and a trigger to keep the fires of pain stoked.

Are you an empath?

I know some of you tuning in are empathic souls here on this planet, and so it’s helpful, if you identify as an empath to remember that the emotions that you might be feeling right now might not even be yours, and you are only feeling them so that you can assist in integrating them for the collective. You’re doing deep work in this life if you are an empath, and you are safe to be empathic if you acknowledge the depth of that work and remember not to take it all on as your individual burden of pain, but instead remember to see it as an opportunity to heal the heart of those who aren’t quite as strong as you.

“The Way out of the pain is IN THE PAIN”
-Rumi

Become friends with your pain. Love that pain up so intensely that you ask for more and more and more of it. This isn’t just a “fake it till you make it” technique, this is an act of total surrender, an acknowledgement that my pain or my sorrow or my fear or my grief is exactly where I need to be right now and if I can help process this for my evolution as a human being on this planet, or if I can as an empath help someone around me or something within the collective process some of this discomfort so that it may become the lightness that we are all seeking just a little bit faster, then I wish for no mercy – I want more of it!

Now that I know my pain doesn’t symbolize something in me that I’ve done wrong or some kind of karmic punishment – now that I know that it’s only because I’m a badass that can handle this because I’ve been handling it for this long already and I’m still here – now… I can be with it without falling into a hole of self-judgement. Now that I know that I am a spiritual warrior on the front lines for the collective, I can finally be at peace within this pain. And the longer I can cultivate peace within the pain, the faster my brain catches the message that I am no longer in DANGER, and it rewires into SAFETY.

You are safe.

You are safe to feel emotions.

You are safe to feel fear.

You are safe to feel pain.

Feel it all the way through to the end and know that it only has so much steam.

Feel it as the SAFEST part of you and trust that you are not hurting yourself AT ALL.

It’s natural to slip back into fear every once in a while, but so long as you’ve had all emergent conditions ruled out – your pain is harmless.

Your pain is only still there because you thought it was wrong, bad, and not supposed to be there. Your pain is still there because it feels dangerous to you. It isn’t’ wrong. It isn’t dangerous. It won’t be here forever.

And it definitely won’t be here long at all once you feel the pain ITSELF as a SAFETY signal.

Each time you feel a twinge. Hand on heart – deep breath into the lower abdomen and repeat: “I AM SAFE. I AM SAFE. I AM SAFE.”

Thanks for tuning in, guys!

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Find me on **DISCLAIMER:  I am not a doctor and this or any other podcast hosted by Katelyn Michals, L.Ac. is not intended to replace traditional medical care.  It is important that you are evaluated by a physician before embarking on this or any other self-help program**