The Gift of Pain: 3 ways experiencing pain has aided me

Lately I’ve been dealing with some annoying physical pain in my lower back. With all “less than ideal” things in my life, I try to figure out how to best contextualize and process it. In trying to practice what I preach (radical acceptance of my circumstances) I’ve been focused on accepting it versus resisting it.

Pain is not a thing I seek out. But pain has become an uninvited guest that I’ve come to embrace. Because for me to embrace a thing is to be prepared for it. When I am prepared and ready for something it removes the “shock factor”. So when something negative happens to me, I no longer look at it as unlikely or random. I look at it as an opportunity to build a frame of reference that will aid me in the future when I encounter it again. Keyword is “when” and not “if”. Because if I assume it will happen again, if it does not, great! If I assume it was an anomaly and won’t happen again, there’s a good chance I am setting myself up to be disappointed.

One of the ways I get through life is framing challenges in a way that helps me find value in them. The last 2 years I’ve had nerve related intermittent back pain that creeps up on me out of nowhere a few times a year. When it’s bad, I can’t even stand straight up or walk without extreme discomfort. It’s a bit of a mindfuck because I can literally be mobile without any sign of discomfort one day and be in pain and have to lay flat the next day.

In addition to the physical discomfort, I found myself becoming really depressed about it. Not just about losing the ability to do day to day things, but also because I grew up watching my Dad struggle with chronic back pain. My brain likes to assume a similar narrative of my future and I begin to wonder if what I go through will be similar to what he went through. He had multiple surgeries that were unsuccessful in alleviating his chronic pain. It was the combination of chronic pain and emotional trauma that led him to taking his life. As a kid, some days I watched him fall to his knees from a random spasm. The idea of experiencing what he did can be scary.

It’s not in my nature to exist in the negative or dwell on the “what if” though. My goal is always to experience and process my emotions, anxiety & fears and then move on from them. And in doing so I’ve come to identify some benefits of experiencing intermittent pain.

1. It reminds me that the absence of discomfort is a blessing that I often take for granted. I consider myself a very grateful person. I’ve been grateful for a long time because of the cycles I’ve been fortunate enough to break when it comes to not repeating many of the mistakes my family made. I’ve managed to avoid the drug abuse, poverty and debilitating depression that some of my family members have dealt with. But that said, I don’t naturally wake up appreciating things like my eyesight for example. I don’t wake up and impulsively feel grateful for my ability to hear sound. And until recently, I didn’t wake up and appreciate my physical mobility. Physical pain reminds me that the absence of discomfort is literally a daily gift. And this also helps me consider all of my other senses and abilities that I am very fortunate to have.
2. It temporarily increases my bandwidth to solve problems. When I am in pain it feels like a big portion of my mental bandwidth and cognitive ability is taken up by the feelings and thoughts of what it means to be in pain. Something that is a mild challenge becomes a significant challenge. My ability to be patient is impacted. Standing in a long line can be annoying when not in pain, but standing in line while in pain can make minutes feel like hours. On the first pain free day, all of the challenges I was dealing with while in discomfort feel much smaller and much easier to deal with. I think this concept is analogous to resistance training. In physical training when you apply resistance, you are performing an activity under circumstances that are more difficult than average. Like a 10 speed bike, dialing back to less resistance, peddling the bike uphill feels way less difficult.

3. I’m reminded of my mortality and how I spend my time. The days I am experiencing pain, I reflect on how I spent my recent pain-free days. I take inventory of the hours I spend leisurely rather than on creative projects, adulting tasks and family time. This helps to “reset” me in a way that I become hyper mindful of my complacency and laziness.

Whether it’s physical or emotional, life has taught me that pain is inevitable. And I’ve learned that I’m a much better version of myself when I can fully accept this versus resisting that sometimes things just don’t go the way I had hoped. With this mindset when things do go the way that I expected, I can recognize an average day as the gift it really is to be alive and breathing.