0:00

Instead of fighting pain, I might

0:02

say, all right, pain, you're here. I don't

0:04

like you, But what are you here for? What

0:07

are you bringing? What might be your

0:09

positive purpose? Welcome

0:18

to the one you feed Throughout

0:20

time. Great tinkers have recognized the

0:23

importance of the thoughts we have, quotes

0:25

like garbage in, garbage out,

0:27

or you are what you think? Ring

0:29

true. And yet for many of

0:31

us, our thoughts don't strengthen or empower

0:34

us. We tend toward negativity, self

0:37

pity, jealousy, or fear.

0:39

We see what we don't have instead of what we

0:41

do. We think things that hold us

0:43

back and dampen our spirit. But

0:46

it's not just about thinking our

0:48

actions matter. It takes conscious,

0:50

consistent, and creative effort to make

0:52

a life worth living. This podcast

0:55

is about how other people keep themselves moving

0:57

in the right direction, how they feed

0:59

their good wolf. Thanks

1:15

for joining us. Our guest on this episode

1:17

is Sarah Shockley, a multiple award

1:19

winning producer and director of educational

1:22

films, including Dancing from the Inside

1:24

Out, a highly acclaimed documentary

1:26

on disabled dance. Sarah is

1:28

the author of a number of books on living

1:30

with chronic pain, including the one

1:32

we discussed today called The Pain Companion,

1:35

Everyday Wisdom for Living with and moving

1:38

beyond Chronic Pain. Hi,

1:40

Sarah, Welcome to the show. Thanks

1:43

Eric, it's great to be here. I'm

1:45

excited to have you on. We are going to discuss

1:47

your book called The Pain Companion,

1:50

Everyday Wisdom for Living with and

1:52

moving beyond Chronic pain. But

1:55

before we start with that, let's start

1:57

like we always do with the parable. There's

1:59

a grandfather who's talking with

2:01

his grandson. He says, in life, there are two

2:03

wolves inside of us that are always at battle.

2:06

One is a good wolf, which represents things

2:08

like kindness and bravery and love, and

2:11

the other is a bad wolf, which represents things

2:13

like greed and hatred and fear. And

2:16

the grandson stops and thinks about it for a second,

2:19

and he looks up at his grandfather and he says, well, grandfather,

2:21

which one wins? And the grandfather

2:23

says, the one you feed. So

2:25

I'd like to start off by asking you what that

2:27

parable means to you in your life and

2:30

in the work that you do. I'd be happy to

2:32

speak to that in terms of pain. You know that

2:34

the first thing we might automatically think of is, oh,

2:36

yeah, I get that. The bad wolf is

2:38

pain and the good wolf is not pain. So

2:41

that makes sense. But in

2:43

my work and the way I view it is to consider

2:46

the wolves kind of the way we perceive

2:48

pain, so we can

2:50

look at pain and see it as the

2:52

big bad wolf, as the enemy, as

2:54

the thing to be destroyed, is the thing we have to fight.

2:56

And that's often where we start

2:59

with pain. We think it as totally

3:01

negative, totally bad, and we feed

3:03

into that. We we respond to it that way.

3:05

We fight it. We we try to kill

3:07

it, we want to end it. It's natural,

3:10

it's kind of you know, it's not the

3:12

thing that we like very much, and it's very uncomfortable

3:14

and difficult. But when we only perceive

3:17

pain in that way, we're actually locking

3:19

it in place, and it's harder for

3:21

us to heal where we're in that battle with

3:23

pain. So I think of moving

3:26

that perception over to the other side

3:28

is one of the ways we can begin healing and

3:30

perceiving pain, maybe not as something

3:33

we want to invite into our life, but if

3:35

we see the good wolf aspect of pain,

3:37

we can begin to say, okay, let's

3:39

ask different questions. Instead of fighting

3:42

pain, I might say, alright,

3:44

pain, you're here. I don't like you, but

3:46

what are you here for? What are you

3:48

bringing? What might be your positive

3:51

purpose? How can I perceive

3:53

you and work with you in such a way

3:55

that we're we're working together rather

3:57

than me just fighting with you and out

4:00

why you're feeding into healing, rather

4:02

than feeding more into the battle with pain, which

4:04

can be exhausting and sometimes

4:07

seemingly never ending. That's

4:10

a great, great way to look at it.

4:12

Will you tell us briefly

4:14

about your journey

4:17

with pain, kind of what brought you to the

4:19

point where you were living with chronic pain

4:21

the boy. For me, it happened fairly quickly.

4:24

Um was a big surprise. I've been very

4:26

athletic all my life and kind of a person

4:29

who gets things done and had

4:31

a background in business management

4:33

and was considered myself very

4:35

capable and somebody who just took

4:37

care of things and responsible, and I'm sure

4:39

many people can relate to that.

4:42

And then almost overnight

4:45

I contracted something called thoracic outlet

4:47

syndrome. UM. I had a few

4:49

warning signals. It was some strange

4:51

pains in my left arm that didn't seem

4:54

to relate to anything, and then some tingling

4:56

in numbness, in some place else, and it

4:58

wasn't sustained, and I couldn't relate

5:00

it to anything I was doing. But it turns

5:02

out that it it was related

5:04

to computer use, which should be warning

5:07

to people to be really careful about

5:09

having an ergonomic setup. Mine

5:11

was very nonergonomic, and I was using

5:14

a quite a small keyboard, little

5:16

tiny laptop, and I was working

5:18

for somebody where I where I was in front of the computer

5:20

quite a bit, and literally

5:23

though when it came on, it was virtually

5:26

one day I was active and the next day I wasn't.

5:29

And it's quite a shock to the system

5:31

to go from being somebody

5:33

who's holding things together. I was a single mom.

5:35

I had to work all the time. I didn't have a

5:37

lot of benefits and things that would take care of

5:39

me. So all of a sudden, whoa. One

5:41

day I'm okay, and the next day I'm

5:44

in terrible pain and can

5:46

barely move. And thoracic

5:48

outlet syndrome is a collapse between the

5:51

clavicles the color bones in the first rib,

5:53

so there's a squeezing of nerves

5:56

and arteries and um

5:59

muscles on both sides of the body. So it's

6:01

very painful it's very debilitating. Um

6:04

it's not that well known, but it is

6:06

unfortunately getting more prevalent from computer

6:08

use. So wow, everything just stopped.

6:11

My life stopped overnight. And I'm

6:13

sure there are listeners out there who have had a similar experience

6:15

from different reasons perhaps, but

6:17

it is a shock when you go from

6:19

being active and capable

6:22

to just full stop

6:24

and you're in horrible pain. And

6:26

I had a kid to take care of who was about eleven

6:28

at the time, and so what do you do with

6:31

that? And that started my journey of how

6:34

do I work with this? And for me,

6:36

I wasn't given a whole lot to work with.

6:38

I'm not really big on using pharmaceuticals

6:41

to begin with, so that wouldn't be the first place

6:43

I'd go. But I was offered some to try,

6:45

and they had horrible side effects

6:47

and the exercises and treatments

6:50

I was given made things worse. So I was kind of left

6:52

to my own devices, and that started my

6:54

journey on how do I work with this? One

6:57

of the things that you describe is how

7:00

you come down with this condition. You're

7:02

in a terrible amount of pain. You

7:04

start trying to do everything

7:07

that you can to make it better. You're seeing

7:09

doctors and you're following all that advice and

7:12

it doesn't go away, and

7:15

you say that we start to feel that our chronic

7:17

condition is a negative reflection on us.

7:19

There is something wrong with us for continuing

7:22

to experience pain. Yeah,

7:24

that's a very common response,

7:26

and I've talked to many people, and particularly of

7:28

course we're talking about chronic pain when it just won't

7:30

go away, And chronic is

7:33

the label we put on something that a lot of people

7:35

say, three months whatever, it's just not

7:37

getting better. And first

7:40

you have the pain to deal with itself, and

7:42

then you've got this horrible

7:44

feeling of, oh no, it's

7:46

not leaving. What do I do with

7:49

that? And sometimes, as in my case,

7:51

everything I was given to make it better made

7:53

it worse, and it's

7:55

terrifying. And one of the things

7:58

we don't talk about a lot when we talk about

8:00

living with pain is the

8:02

other aspects of living with it. Besides the

8:04

pain itself. We focus on that a lot, but there's

8:06

also all this other stuff

8:08

that comes in. And part of the other stuff

8:11

that comes in that we have to deal with is

8:13

the feelings of what have I done wrong?

8:16

Did I screw up? You? Know, we've got all

8:18

kinds of answers that come in from from

8:20

New Age things to it's your karma and you

8:22

must have had you know, you must have been terrible person

8:24

in a in a past life too. Oh

8:27

I must have made bad decisions in this life,

8:29

or am I a bad person? So

8:32

we have to contend with these questions

8:34

that when you're not in pain, it might be easy to say,

8:36

oh, no, no, you don't want to think like that, But when

8:39

you're in pain and it won't move, you

8:41

can't help but begin to wonder what's

8:43

wrong with me? Right? And this book is

8:45

really your path for

8:48

how you primarily worked

8:50

with these more

8:52

emotional components of pain. You

8:55

know, you describe things like victimization,

8:57

powerlessness, isolation, silence

8:59

of his ability. There's all these things

9:01

that come along with the pain.

9:04

You've got the physical sensation, which

9:06

God knows is bad enough, and

9:09

then there's everything else that comes with

9:11

it. And this book is, you know, from my

9:13

perspective, is really about you learning

9:16

to deal with all those other components

9:19

of pain beyond just the physical

9:21

sensation. If you can't make the physical sensation

9:23

change, can you work

9:26

with all these other things that make

9:28

the overall experience better and then

9:31

sometimes ironically, the relaxation

9:33

that comes from dealing with those emotions

9:36

better it starts to lessen the pain.

9:39

Yes, exactly, it's twofold.

9:42

One aspect of looking at it this way is

9:44

that a lot of times the

9:46

emotional aspects of living with chronic

9:48

pain aren't recognized, they aren't

9:50

addressed, the doctors aren't equipped to really

9:52

do that. But also if you're not, if

9:54

you haven't lived with physical pain over

9:57

time, it's hard to imagine

9:59

what it's like. So we kind

10:01

of feel very alone in our pain

10:03

and very isolated. There are millions

10:05

of people in pain right now, just

10:07

in this country alone, in the United States and all

10:10

over the world there are many many more, and

10:12

yet we feel very alone,

10:14

and we feel very much like I'm in

10:16

my own world of pain here, and it

10:18

tends to take over our whole sense

10:21

of self. And one of the things that's

10:23

not being addressed. And when we look at chronic

10:25

pain, which is a big calling calling it an

10:27

epidemic, really we look at the opioids,

10:30

we look at the use of pharmaceuticals and

10:32

what that's doing, but we all but we aren't really

10:34

addressing how does this affect the person,

10:36

how does it affect how they feel about themselves?

10:39

And, as you were saying, when we

10:42

can begin, as people who are working

10:44

with pain to look at that, and hopefully

10:46

the medical community can begin looking at those

10:48

aspects as well, if we shift

10:50

our focus onto ourselves sort of

10:52

away from the pain, not not to push

10:55

away from it, not to ignore it, but just kind of begin

10:57

to say how am I doing in this?

11:00

Who am I? Now? Where am I and

11:03

begin to look at how it's affecting ourselves.

11:05

At first, it can be kind of shocking.

11:08

It took me a while to realize, Wow, I'm

11:10

in a lot of emotional pain here too,

11:12

because the physical pain takes up

11:15

so much attention that you kind of lose

11:17

sight of yourself. So I'm trying to

11:19

help people see what what's going on

11:21

for them and to begin to work with those

11:23

aspects. And as you you said,

11:25

what I found was that if I began

11:28

to recognize what was going

11:30

on for me emotionally and began to take care

11:32

of that a little more and began to be more present

11:34

with myself and and create

11:36

a different attitude towards working with pain, which

11:38

we can talk about, then

11:40

the pain itself started to lessen

11:43

everything. You can think the body relaxes,

11:46

but I also kind of think that pain relaxes.

11:48

It feels like all of you starts

11:51

to feel a little bit better. And when

11:53

you're in a lot of pain and you can feel a

11:55

tiny bit better, that's progress.

11:57

And for me, I've made significant progress

12:00

over the last years in working

12:02

on this kind of level where I begin to address

12:05

how can I feel better about myself? First,

12:09

and then paradoxically,

12:11

the pain starts to feel better too. It starts

12:13

to lift a little bit. And I think there's physiological

12:16

reasons for that too. I think we do begin to relax.

12:18

I think we breathe differently. I think the blood

12:20

flow begins to release, we contract less.

12:22

There's lots of things that go with that. And

12:25

so where do we start. Let's get

12:27

into some of the things that you found that we're

12:29

helpful for you. There's a number of ways

12:31

to start. One is to begin to see

12:34

pain a little differently. As we started

12:36

out talking about, to allow yourself

12:39

to think, Okay, I'm in this, I'm

12:41

already here in pain. Fighting hasn't

12:43

helped, you know, fighting is helping, and you're moving

12:45

out of pain by fighting it, keep doing it. You

12:47

know, if that works, a lot of people find that

12:49

they end up locked in a battle. But you

12:51

know, pain is pretty strong and it's

12:54

like it's not releasing. So if that's

12:56

not working, then began to see

12:59

pain different, to allow yourself to

13:01

step back a little bit, just take a little

13:03

bit of a breath and say, okay,

13:06

what if, just what if instead

13:09

of treating pain is the enemy? I

13:12

asked it a different question. I said

13:14

to a pain let's say he turned towards pain

13:16

in a sense and say,

13:19

well, what could possibly be

13:21

your positive purpose here? There must

13:23

be a reason you're here beyond just torturing

13:25

me. So beginning to relax

13:28

a little bit around that, just the whole concept of

13:30

pain. And that sounds like a tiny thing,

13:32

and it is sort of a subtle change,

13:34

but it's also very profound. When

13:36

we're when we're head on with pain, we're locked

13:38

in this battle. We're kind of we've drawn

13:41

our lines and pains on one side and we're on the other,

13:43

and we're using our medications and we're

13:45

using our treatments, and we're gritting our teeth and

13:47

we're getting and we're going to get through it or and we're

13:49

pushing, pushing, pushing, and you

13:51

know that old saying what you resist persists,

13:54

is it can be really true with pain too.

13:56

So it's not about um giving into

13:58

it, not at all. It's not about acquiescing. It's just about

14:01

kind of stepping away from the battle line and

14:04

thinking of pain rather than in front of

14:06

you as something that you have to kill

14:09

get rid of. Stop thinking

14:11

of it as sort of moving to the side in

14:13

the sense of, okay, we're going to become partners now,

14:16

and beginning to imagine that pain

14:19

is in fact the voice

14:21

of something in you that wants

14:23

to be healed. It's trying to

14:25

heal you even though it feels

14:28

really bad. But changing that

14:30

perspective, all of a sudden begins to

14:32

relax just a little bit, and

14:34

I think of pain almost kind

14:37

of weird. It's almost like its own entity,

14:39

but it isn't. But it is part of you, but

14:41

it's also feels like it isn't. So

14:44

when you can imagine pain as a positive

14:46

force, a positive being that's trying

14:48

to get your attention, it's very unpleasant,

14:51

but it must be saying something really important,

14:53

because it's really using a lot of

14:56

jews to get your attention, so you kind

14:58

of turned toward it. So that's the f thing is

15:00

to begin to try to create a different

15:02

relationship with pain and

15:05

on a more positive level. What

15:33

we resist persists. I use this phrase

15:35

all the time, you know, suffering equals pain

15:37

times resistance, right, And

15:40

I have I'm not going to call it chronic pain.

15:42

I have back pain that is around

15:44

a lot of the time, and sometimes it's

15:46

more severe than other times. Sometimes it's

15:49

pretty bad, and most of the time it's pretty

15:51

manageable. And I've just really realized

15:53

how when I actually, like you say,

15:56

turned towards it a little bit, it

15:58

gets much better. My brain seems to take these

16:00

shortcuts where I get a twinge of pain

16:03

and my brain then goes off into

16:06

all the stories about that pain. I

16:08

can't take it, how it's going to happen, I mean, all this

16:10

stuff. And if I can stop that and for a second

16:12

and go back to it for a second,

16:15

I I often realized that, yeah,

16:17

the sensation is there, and it's unpleasant, but

16:19

it's not nearly as unpleasant as the whole

16:22

mind state that I have gotten myself

16:24

into as a result of feeling

16:26

those physical sensations. And

16:29

I feel that when we go there, when we go into the

16:31

fear and we go into the resistance. Yeah,

16:34

I mean it's easy to do it as a natural response,

16:36

but if we can kind of let go of that,

16:38

then we're helping pain move on. We're

16:40

helping it move when we you know, we lock it in

16:42

place when we get get into that resistant mode.

16:45

And again, it's so easy to do because

16:47

it's like there that is again, uh. And

16:50

one of the first things we do. You may have noticed

16:52

when we feel those twinges or

16:54

much bigger than twinges for some of us of

16:57

pain, and some of us are in pain all

16:59

the time, there's there's just sort of

17:01

levels that kind of go up and down, but it doesn't

17:03

go away. The first thing we often

17:06

do when we feel into the

17:08

pain is we we

17:10

pull our breath in, we hole we

17:12

we try to stop it and and often

17:14

one of the ways we try to stop it is by not breathing.

17:17

And this is one of the things I

17:19

discovered when I thought, what can I

17:21

do with this pain? If I

17:24

can't really do any of the treatments and I can't

17:26

really you know, help it with pharmaceuticals,

17:28

and I'm trying to eat right and nothing's working.

17:31

What can I possibly do? And I

17:33

thought, well, I don't know. I can try

17:35

to meditate with it or something. But

17:38

sitting still and trying to breathe

17:40

deeply actually made me much

17:43

more pain because my condition doesn't work well with

17:45

sitting in the same position for too long, and deep

17:47

breathing wasn't so great. So I thought, well,

17:49

it doesn't work. But it did put my attention

17:52

on breath and how I was breathing,

17:55

and I started to notice that, and I

17:57

thought, oh, I'm holding my breath a

17:59

lot in fact, and I'm breathing very

18:01

shallowly. And sometimes we feel

18:03

like we have to almost, you know, because if

18:05

we breathe deeply, will feel more pain.

18:08

Sometimes that's true, but

18:11

we also want to notice not to hold our

18:13

breath too much because that restricts

18:15

the blood flow, it restricts the oxygen. It's we're

18:17

you know, We're we're tensing up. We're also contracting

18:20

a lot. There's a lot of ways we respond

18:22

to pain and we don't even realize

18:25

it. We're responding physiologically by holding

18:27

ourselves in. So if we can begin

18:29

to say, okay, I'm just gonna be with pain,

18:32

then I can I'm gonna begin to breathe just a little

18:34

more easily. It doesn't have to be deep, just breathe

18:36

a little bit. And one of the things I experimented

18:39

with was asking

18:41

myself, what if I let pain

18:44

relax? What if I let pain breathe?

18:46

What if I imagine pain was, you

18:48

know, sort of all contracted and weird, and I just

18:51

kind of with it, just

18:53

started to breathe differently and just relax

18:56

a little bit around the pain, and the pain

18:58

was still there. Didn't automatically fix everything,

19:00

but just kind of relaxing around it.

19:03

And then I moved into a space of Okay,

19:06

what if I let pain have a little more space

19:08

instead of contracting and trying to stop it, what

19:11

if I let it kind of breathe outward

19:13

and just take up more

19:15

room. Which sounds like the worst thing

19:17

you can do, And yet if you try it and

19:20

you just kind of imagine, okay, pain take

19:22

the room you need, it's strangely

19:25

starts to relax a little

19:27

bit. And and I have found dissipate

19:29

and a lot of people that have tried this. It's

19:32

not that pain is going to go away instantly, but

19:34

if you can find these ways of being

19:36

a little more relaxed around it, of

19:38

breathing a little bit more freely, of letting

19:40

it just be where it is. That's

19:43

the path to healing you mentioned

19:45

earlier, sort of seeing that pain is

19:48

sending us a message or it's there

19:50

to do something for you. What

19:53

were some of the I don't like this

19:55

word lessons that pain taught you, because

19:57

it's not like, you know, I don't believe that, like

19:59

we get these awful things in life to teach

20:01

us lessons. I agree, However,

20:04

there does seem to be truth that I guess.

20:06

The phrase I like is, you know, it's not that things

20:08

always happen for the best, but we can try and

20:10

make the best out of what does happen. Um,

20:13

you know. And so for you, what what are some of

20:15

the things that you felt like pain brought

20:18

to you? What were some of its messages. There's

20:20

a couple levels of messages. One is,

20:22

of course, the almost obvious

20:25

physical level of Okay, you need to change

20:27

something physically on what you're doing

20:29

in life. UM, And that's often

20:32

one of the first things we look at, is what do I

20:34

do differently? And sometimes

20:36

we don't even listen to that. It might be slowed

20:38

down. It might be rest more.

20:41

It might be I need you to just you know, be

20:43

more relaxed, be differently with your

20:45

breath, as we were talking earlier. So there's

20:47

there's the levels of how we

20:50

are with our body that it might be sending messages

20:52

about absolutely what we're eating,

20:54

what we're you know, imbibing, in whether we a

20:56

lot of us don't rest enough, we stay

20:59

up too late, we're on screens all the time.

21:01

There's a lot of things that pain from a condition

21:04

that might seem not related to those things

21:06

might be benefited by

21:09

if we really listen

21:11

and we can even turn Sometimes I imagine

21:13

pain is sitting in a chair and I say, okay, what do you

21:15

need? Which is also a question we

21:17

don't often ask pain what do you need?

21:20

We we usually say how can I get rid of you? But

21:22

you might surprise yourself and imagine

21:24

pains that in there and it might say, wow, thank

21:26

you for asking. You know, I'd

21:28

love you to just take me to the beach, or

21:31

you know, I need your toes to be in

21:33

some sand and some earth, and these things

21:35

that we kind of forget about in our rush rush

21:38

life can be incredibly healing,

21:40

and we overlook them because

21:42

they're not giant, big things,

21:44

but a lot of things that so so

21:46

a lot of times pain might be telling us to do a

21:48

lot of small things that add up

21:51

in terms of changing how we are

21:53

in life physically. But it also

21:56

if it's chronic, if it stays around,

21:58

it kind of for says you to look

22:01

at yourself, to be with yourself, or you can

22:03

maybe you don't have to go that direction, but

22:05

for me, I had to start asking

22:08

questions about well, who am I

22:10

now? I can't do all the things I

22:12

used to do. Is pain sort of

22:14

part of me needing to change

22:17

who I am in life? Is that part

22:20

of what's going on here or whether

22:22

it was meant to be that way

22:24

or or you know, I agree with you, I don't

22:26

really into the Oh, it must be here to teach

22:28

you a lesson or it's some kind of punishment and I don't.

22:30

I don't go that's not what I see at

22:33

all. But it may be asking

22:35

something, and it may be that on

22:37

a soul level, perhaps

22:40

something's been asking you to

22:42

change for a while and the only way it could get

22:44

your attention was to come through through pain.

22:46

Again, it's not a punishment thing it's more of a

22:49

if you can think of it as a a as a

22:51

directive or a signpost or okay,

22:53

look over here. Oh

22:56

well, maybe I need to change

22:58

how I am in life. Maybe I'm

23:01

way too critical on myself. Maybe

23:04

I um for me. It had a lot to do

23:06

with learning how to be with

23:08

myself, which sounds sort of like an oxymoron.

23:11

How can you not be with yourself? You're always with yourself,

23:13

But a lot of us go through life

23:15

kind of being here for other people, especially for

23:17

parents, or we don't

23:19

really notice how we are.

23:22

We run from ourselves. We're always on

23:24

movies, or we're running to work, or we're out

23:26

doing something. And I found

23:28

that when I was with my condition, I

23:30

couldn't go anywhere. I was stuck in my

23:32

little house for a lot of the day.

23:35

And then I was stuck with me, and

23:37

I couldn't even you know, I couldn't read books,

23:39

I couldn't watch movies. I was in so much

23:41

pain. I was so limited that I could barely do

23:43

anything. And there I was me

23:46

and me, and and it's

23:48

just you, you know, learning how

23:50

to be with you. It may sound

23:53

like a small thing, but it's really huge.

23:55

I had to face loneliness. I had to face

23:58

who I thought I was. I had to come

24:00

to terms with how I was uncomfortable

24:03

just being alone with myself. And

24:06

I didn't really want to learn those things particularly,

24:08

and I certainly wouldn't have want to learn them through pain.

24:12

But they now feel like very rich

24:14

gifts that I was offered ultimately.

24:16

And again I don't know that we have to go through pain

24:18

to get those, but I have them

24:20

now. I have a different way of being with

24:22

myself that is much more self

24:25

accepting. It's much calmer. I

24:27

feel at home with myself in a way I never did

24:29

before. So there are very

24:32

unexpected gifts if you look for them. And

24:34

so what is your experience of

24:37

pain? Like now, So how long

24:39

ago was this that this happened? So

24:41

this was eleven years ago, So I've been in it for a

24:43

long time. And that I'd say about

24:45

the first five years I was in very

24:48

intense pain, which I

24:50

mean it's a long time. And um,

24:53

I found that things didn't help.

24:55

So I stopped doing all the things we're making it

24:57

worse, and I learned to live very

25:00

restricted life. It was always really

25:02

painful, but i'd keep it from spiking too much

25:04

by just limiting what I did. I

25:06

did that for a long time. Plus I had to be a

25:08

mom, so I kind of had to be able to get up

25:10

in the morning for someone and get

25:13

him off to school and then collapse for the rest of the day

25:15

and then go go get him at school. And you know,

25:17

that was my life for a long time. And

25:20

then I kind of went, wow, I can't.

25:22

I can't live like this. You know, it's kind

25:24

of a stoic just putting up with it thing. And

25:26

so that's when I started looking at more closely

25:29

at what pain is and how I could be

25:31

with it. And so it took some number of years for

25:33

me to kind of develop this process and figure

25:35

out because I wasn't a lot of pain, so I

25:37

wasn't sitting around every day wondering how

25:40

I could do this differently. It was just every

25:42

so often I go, Okay, well, what can I try

25:44

now? And so it

25:46

took me quite a while to get to the places

25:48

where I realized that I needed to be with

25:51

pain and with myself very differently.

25:53

So now what's happened as I still

25:56

have pain twenty four hours a day,

25:58

but it's way more

26:00

reduced. I couldn't be talking like this when

26:03

I first started out. I mean, I would have been exhausted

26:05

by now and the first five minutes,

26:07

and my brain would have gone off to I wouldn't

26:09

have known what I was talking about, or I couldn't remember

26:12

what I just said five minutes ago, because

26:14

you don't have much of a brain when you when you have a lot

26:16

of pain. And so for

26:18

me this the changes have been significant.

26:21

I'm still limited in what I can do.

26:23

I'm still working with the

26:26

physical restrictions, but my

26:28

energy levels are much better, and

26:31

my ability to think is better. In my

26:33

ability to of course, I wrote

26:35

a book which took me a long time, but the

26:37

process of writing it helped

26:40

me kind of express which is another

26:42

thing I talked about. I think it's important to

26:44

express pain, find a way to express

26:46

it, and that helped release more and more

26:48

so so my process has been pretty slow.

26:51

On the other hand, I was told I would

26:53

never get better. I would nothing

26:56

was ever going to be better by the doctors, and in

26:58

fact, it was going to get worse. So

27:01

you can even when you're in a pretty

27:03

hopeless situation and the doctors say

27:06

nothing's going to work for you, there

27:08

are ways you can work from the inside out,

27:10

I think, and make things improve.

27:51

Do you think that had you had

27:54

the skills that you now have

27:56

earlier, that your journey

27:59

through pain would have been less

28:01

painful? Absolutely? I. In fact,

28:03

I wrote the book I wished I had

28:05

been given when I first got in

28:07

pain, because I was looking around for like, what

28:09

what do people do? What do you do? How

28:12

do you deal with this? And how do you live? How do you

28:14

get up in the morning? And you know, when

28:16

you when you're waking up in terrible pain?

28:18

And some days I felt worse when I woke up

28:20

than I went to bed. I don't know how that could be so,

28:22

but I would just I would toss

28:24

into an all night. And I know people that have terrible

28:26

pain recognized this. You wake

28:29

up feeling like you've been hit by a freight train and

28:31

you've been you know, boxing with a

28:33

gorilla all night and you're like, oh man. And

28:35

the only way I could get up was because I

28:37

had a child to take care of, so you

28:39

know, that kept me going. But I was slogging

28:41

through my days, just barely able

28:44

to you know, maintain And

28:46

I'm not the only one who's gone through that. And

28:49

I looked hopefully for something

28:51

out there that would help me make

28:53

sense of it, help me at least

28:55

feel like somebody else knew what was going on. And

28:59

that's when about five or six

29:01

years in, I started, well, maybe I

29:03

can write about what's going on. And writing was

29:05

very painful. I could barely hold a pencil, but I thought,

29:07

well, I'm going to write a sentence a day,

29:10

and that began to release things. So yes,

29:12

if I had I think something

29:15

similar to the pain com pain and some some similar

29:17

ideas when I started, I

29:20

really think it would have helped a lot. And and people

29:22

have written to me and called me and said,

29:24

wow, just knowing that somebody gets

29:27

it, that they read it and they go, ah,

29:29

you get what I'm going through is a relief, and

29:31

a relief is healing. So

29:34

being seen in your pain and being recognized

29:36

and being acknowledged can also be the

29:38

beginning of healing too. It's really important.

29:41

I A. That's the other part

29:43

of the book we haven't really talked about is the first

29:45

part of the book is very very practical. It

29:47

talks very much about ways

29:50

to organize your life and interact

29:53

with others and and you know, some

29:55

very practical ways of dealing with pain,

29:57

and then the second half of the book tends to

29:59

go more into deeper

30:02

ideas of non resistance

30:04

and allowing pain space. And then eventually

30:06

you have a bunch of meditations in the

30:08

book that are also intended

30:11

for people who are in chronic pain. Yeah.

30:13

I sort of developed these for myself.

30:16

I think I have about eleven different, very

30:18

easy, simple practices. One of the

30:20

first things that I did too, you

30:22

know, I didn't know I was developing these

30:25

ideas and sort of meditations,

30:27

but I when I was thinking, Okay,

30:29

I'm really stuck in this and I can't

30:32

go on like this. I cannot imagine my

30:34

life going on for decades

30:36

more in horrible pain and even

30:38

getting worse. I just can't deal with it. So

30:41

I thought, what what can I do in my little

30:43

you know, in my little house with you know, I

30:45

am so limited. I've got to go inside

30:48

to find the answers. And that's

30:50

when I started asking about, well, what if I looked

30:52

at pain differently? And so one

30:54

of the things I did was I said to myself,

30:56

well, all right, let's say pain is

30:59

that it feels like it you know, it feels like an invader

31:01

when you're when you're in a lot of pain, it feels like something

31:03

else has shown up, and like,

31:06

you know, your roommate you never wanted. Only it's a bodymate

31:08

you never wanted. You know, what are you doing here? And

31:10

I can't go anywhere without you? It's it's everywhere,

31:13

you know, Like, could you just leave me alone for a while?

31:15

But it won't, you know, there's no vacation. So

31:17

I thought, okay, well what if I started

31:20

to use sort of an active imagination

31:22

process um with it, And

31:24

I thought, what what would pain look like if

31:26

if if it kind of was outside of me and

31:28

I met pain, you know, my pain specifically,

31:31

what would it looked like? And I had a lot of nerve. Pain

31:33

is a lot of what I have. It's very

31:36

pins and needles and stabbing stuff and

31:38

a lot of burning. And when it was the worst,

31:40

it felt like my whole body was on fire in my brain.

31:43

So I thought, well, okay, I'm gonna imagine that

31:45

I'm gonna meet pain and we're gonna have a talk.

31:48

So this is when I thought of pain is a horrible,

31:51

you know, negative thing. But I imagined,

31:53

okay, I'm gonna let pain come to the door.

31:55

Which in itself is kind of scary if you're if you're

31:57

in a lot of pain, you don't really want to look at it.

31:59

But I'm going to open the door. I'm gonna take a glance

32:02

at what pain looks like, and then closed

32:04

the door again. You know that that's about all I could handle.

32:06

So in my mind, I imagine

32:08

going to my real front door of my little house

32:10

that I was in, and I imagine opening

32:13

it and not letting pain in, but just

32:15

kind of taking a look. It's already here, but so

32:17

you know it's I've already it's already in, but

32:20

I wanted to metaphorically look

32:22

at it. And I opened the door

32:24

kind of cautiously, and I expected almost

32:26

like a fiery demon out there or something

32:28

really really awful, and then I could slam

32:31

the door on it again, but it would have

32:33

started some kind of process, I imagined.

32:35

But I opened the door and there was this very

32:38

nice looking young man out there wearing

32:40

silver with silver

32:43

shoes and the silver hat and wings

32:45

on his head and wings, little

32:48

little wings on his shoes, and he was just very

32:50

friendly looking. I said, what

32:53

And it had a little like a postcard. It

32:56

was herm's or otherwise known as Mercury,

32:59

the mess and Year of the Gods. And I

33:01

was so shocked. I sort of jumped out of

33:03

my meditation. I thought what

33:06

And that's when I started thinking, Oh,

33:09

pain isn't just the enemy or just

33:11

a horrible thing. Pains a messenger. Oh

33:14

pain has something to say. That's when

33:16

I really shifted the way I was with

33:19

with with it and looking at it. So a

33:21

lot of these, like many meditations

33:23

that I have at the end of the book, are about

33:25

how we can create a different

33:27

relationship with pain. Because that's when it really

33:30

started to shift for me was I went, Oh,

33:32

my gosh, pain is something

33:35

you know, to offer me? What does that mean?

33:37

Pain is a message? Pain? Is it? And then I really

33:39

started thinking about it. Well, of course it's a

33:41

signal from the body, so of course it's a

33:43

messenger. And then I began to think of it

33:45

as it a messenger on other levels of the being

33:48

besides physical, which is always I've

33:50

always been somebody who looks at the

33:52

other side of things, kind of mystical sides of

33:54

things, and and so I've always going to ask

33:56

the question, Okay, what else is there? What else?

33:58

What else do I need to see. So

34:01

the meditations aren't particularly

34:03

deeply mystical in nature, but they allow

34:05

you to look at the other side of what's

34:07

going on. They allow you to work with pain as

34:09

something that you could actually have a

34:12

conversation with. You could actually

34:14

write a letter. That's one of the things I

34:16

m talk about as writing letters to pain,

34:18

and I have some of them in the book. But it's a way

34:20

of Okay, I'm going to start a dialogue

34:22

with pain. I'm going to start interacting in a

34:24

more positive way, and then you begin

34:27

to see, oh, something's coming

34:29

back. I'm getting a few little instead

34:31

of just pain sort of shouting at

34:33

me in the sense of that that sensation

34:35

of horrible pain is to me in my

34:37

mind like pain shouting. You know. It's

34:39

like pain can can calm down

34:42

because you're finally listening. It doesn't have to shout

34:44

so loudly. And it actually for

34:46

me had physiological

34:48

effects as well as as emotional and psychological

34:51

to do these things excellent. Another analogy

34:54

that you used in the book, a metaphor

34:56

you used was to imagine pain as a wild

34:58

animal injured and a own mm

35:01

hmm. That was one of my imaginings

35:03

that I thought wow, you know what

35:05

if it's like because you kind of go into the space

35:07

off, Okay, what what does pain feel like? I

35:10

finally realized one day, well, pain is in pain,

35:12

which is weird, but it's like your your

35:14

body's in pain. It's not against

35:17

you, it's not trying to fight you. It's trying to heal. So

35:19

pain is the feeling of healing in

35:21

a way. And that helped a lot,

35:23

and I thought, well, what if I imagine,

35:26

you know, what, what if pain is I

35:28

don't know, scared or or you

35:30

know, what if all of this horrible feeling

35:32

is not something so big

35:34

and powerful and scary trying to get me,

35:37

But what if it's what if I think of it differently?

35:39

So I just sort of spontaneously got

35:43

this imaginary idea of there's

35:45

a wild animal. It's say it's a tiger

35:47

or a lion or something, and it's in your house, but

35:50

it's wounded. So that's

35:53

what pain felt to me one day, was like this

35:55

thing with claws and it's literally scary

35:58

and that and then I then but it itself

36:00

is in pain, So I thought, well, what if it's a wounded animal?

36:03

What if it's this big, scary thing but it's

36:05

it's actually trying to heal. And

36:08

so I I did this thing of imagining,

36:10

well, what do you do Let's say you have

36:12

a wounded animal in your house. I mean, do you run

36:14

up and try to hit it, that's what we do with pain,

36:17

or do you kind of slowly,

36:19

kind of get a little bit closer and a little bit closer

36:21

because it is kind of scary. I mean, pain is really

36:24

scary and it can be

36:26

um, it feels very dangerous to get

36:28

close to pain. So using that

36:30

kind of metaphor as a way to kind

36:32

of move toward it when it's really scary,

36:35

because some pain is really big.

36:38

It's like people say, you're crazy, I'm not going to

36:40

get close to that. So when you imagine

36:42

it as the animal that's wounded,

36:44

you can begin to just really gently

36:47

get a little bit closer, a little bit closer, and

36:49

you develop a trust relationship, which

36:52

also again sounds sometimes strange.

36:54

We don't talk about pain in these ways, and

36:57

yet that's part of it. You're beginning

36:59

to trust the part of you that is

37:01

trying to heal, that's really what's going on,

37:04

and then you can get a little closer and a little

37:06

closer and then you can begin to breathe a little

37:08

differently and maybe just sit down next to that

37:10

painful thing, and then you begin

37:12

to notice, Wow, it's not quite

37:15

that scary. This thing is in pain

37:17

too. How can we help each

37:19

other move out of this wonderful

37:21

well, Sarah, it's quite an extraordinary

37:24

journey you've been on and a gift that

37:26

you've given to people who are in chronic pain.

37:28

So I want to thank you so much for taking

37:31

the time to come on and talk with us. Oh,

37:33

thank you, Eric, and thanks to all the listeners.

37:35

Really appreciate it. And we'll have links

37:37

in the show notes to your book and all

37:40

of your other work. Great, thank you, all

37:42

right, thank you bye.

38:00

If what you just heard was helpful to you, please

38:02

consider making a donation to the One You Feed

38:04

podcast. Head over to one you Feed

38:07

dot net slash support. The

38:09

One You Feed podcast would like to sincerely

38:11

thank our sponsors for supporting the show.