When Pain Flares

When pain flares resisting it only adds more suffering - acceptance and allowing changes everything. This deeply compassionate chronic pain talk guides you through what actually helps in a flare - releasing the instinctive resistance and tension in the body, allowing the painful sensations space to be there and move through rather than getting stuck.

Drawing on lived experience of severe daily pain, this is ideal for those in the middle of a pain spike and for anyone ready to transform their relationship with chronic pain. A calm, honest and practical talk. Leave with a real understanding of acceptance and allowing as your most powerful tools in a flare.

Transcript

I know what it's like to live in constant pain. How pain impacts your whole life, Your emotional life, Your relationships, Your work, Your quality of life. And because pain is constantly changing. Anywhere on the scale, Dependent on your own situation. From 1 to 10, To 10 out of 10 pain. It actually makes it much harder to deal with. I often think of scenes that you see in films, Where people are being tortured. There's always a relaxed period followed by a torture period. Like really loud aggressive music, Intermittent with quiet phases. This constant up and down makes it emotionally harder to deal with. Because every time there's a space of quiet and calm, We get attached to that. And when it's pulled away from us again, We're rarely disturbed. I guess torturers realized that having a consistent frequency of painful experience meant that the person gets used to it and it's not quite as effective. Bringing this back into our own experience of pain, It's very similar. If our pain was always the same, We would get used to that amount of pain, And our brains would almost switch off to it. But that's not the nature of pain. Pain either comes and goes. Or moves between being less intense pain to ultimate intensity pain. This is part of why flare-ups are so hard. What normally happens when there's a flare-up of pain. Is that there's a resistance to it. It's uncomfortable, We don't want it to be there, So we resist it. We want to get rid of it, So that we can go back to how we felt before. What this means in the mind and in the body is that there's an added inner conflict. There will be tension in the body. There will be tension and holding in our energy. And there'll be a conflict going on within the mind. And everything we resist persists, Letting ourselves get drawn into the instinctive reaction to pain, Constriction, Tension. Never actually makes it better or takes it away. Ever. And it also means that there's the added inner conflict. So our entire inner environment becomes much less healthy. So what do we do when pain flares up? I'll give you what in my own personal experience really helps. Both in the moment and in totality with changing my experience of pain. In a very tiny nutshell, What is needed is some acceptance and allowing. To see if you can allow those uncomfortable sensations to be there in the body. Give them space. Remember resisting them never makes them go away. Then notice any tension or holding, Contraction, Constriction or tension in the body. Take a full breath in and let out a long, Slow breath. Letting the whole body relax as you breathe out, As much as you can anyway. And see if you can allow that pain to move through. In its basic essence, Pain is just energy in movement, Moving through the body. If we can allow that energy to move through, It doesn't get stuck. We don't get into conflict with it. And our whole inner environment can feel safer, More relaxed, And more at ease. If the flare-up lasts for some time, It can be helpful to just repeat this pattern of letting go. There is always an emotional reaction to pain. So notice any feelings and emotions that are there, Also giving them space and allowing them to be there, Allowing them to move through as well. So we're really allowing our whole system to release and relax, Even though there's pain there. Which means much less inner conflict, Much more acceptance and allowing, And a growing sense of ease with the pain. Now what I said here is the tiniest nutshell that you can imagine of a deeper journey of generally transforming your relationship with pain. So if you're interested, If you think it would support you, As it has with many others and myself, You're welcome to have a look at my course called Finding Peace with Chronic Pain. In this course, We can take the journey together, Step by step, Helping you to move towards transformation of how you respond to pain, Both in the body and in the mind. I hope this was helpful and look forward to seeing you there.