What Am I Learning?

In the post Listening to Pain Part I I mentioned that pain is my friend. Physical pain can tell me, "Don't touch that," or "Don't bend that way," or "Stop eating." A dull physical pain tells me that my muscles are tight and need movement. A dull psychic pain, like I've been experiencing lately, tell me that I'm out of alignment - that my thinking, or my actions, or both are not in alignment with who I am and my purpose here.

I used to react to this psychic pain by drinking alcohol or taking drugs, or engaging in behaviors that took my mind away from the pain, like eating or spending money, or spending hours mindlessly surfing the internet. Then I learned more constructive ways to deal with the pain - I could go to support group meetings and exercise. These drugs and actions are called palliatives.  Palliatives do not cure or fix what's going on; they give the person comfort. Palliatives really aren't for living; they're for giving a person who is at the end of their life a little bit of comfort to make the transition easier.

I'm not dead yet, and not even really close, I think. So it occurs to me that to cover up the pain I've been feeling lately is not the best option. It's the first option that comes up in my mind because covering up the pain one way or another is what I've done most of my life. This practice has gotten me by, but it hasn't gotten me too far. So maybe it's time for me to put on my big boy pants and face the music, whatever the tune is.

Let me state here that I am not denigrating myself or anybody else. Painkillers, in all their glorious forms, exist for a reason. There is a process by which a person awakens to themselves, and it rarely happens overnight. 

But after a while, the still small voice inside chides that the things I've been using to get by don't work so well anymore. And that's the signal that it's time to do something different.

I've been off of the medication that was prescribed to me 3 years ago for 6 weeks or a month now. I've been slowly weaning off of it for about a year. I've noticed that I am more sensitive now, and my moods go a little lower than they have over the past 3 years. I am grateful for the medication - it got me to a point where I could learn and practice helpful recovery tools. I've gotten a lot stronger, smarter, and wiser over the past 3 years, and I have medication to thank for the mood stability I needed to learn how to live in recovery. 

The psychic pain I've been experiencing lately has been similar to the pain that use to drive me to self-destructive behaviors. The difference now is that it is not as intense, overwhelming, or debilitating. I'm sensing it more as a signal that change is needed. The pain I'm experiencing now is my friend - it's not going to kill me.

One great thing I've learned over the past 3 years - when I accept and embrace those things I call hardships (life), those hardships turn into great blessings. I have consistent evidence that, if treated in the proper way, all the things that come my way make me stronger and better. I no longer feel like the next thing that comes my way is going to ruin me.

So, the next step is to ask and to listen - "What do I need to let go of now?" "Who shall I go to to learn from?" I know that when I ask, the answers are provided, and I'm grateful today for the willingness to listen and the courage to act.

Namasté,

Ken

Listening to Pain - Part II

I recently survived a very painful experience. The short version is that due to having too many things on my plate I wasn't taking very good care of anything in my life, including myself. I got to the point where I felt very overwhelmed, I felt like a complete failure, and I wanted to drink or kill myself. 

I'm familiar with that pain - I've been there before. A lot. Something was different this time - despite the way I felt, I felt something more deep down. I felt a connection to the life I have today - my recovery, the people I have in my life, the things I'm doing. I knew deep down that what I was feeling wasn't really the truth about me.

So, I quit school. I did talk with a confidant before I did that. The reason I quit school is because it's not really necessary right now, and it was the activity in which I was not honoring my integrity. I was doing school like I used to do school - skimming the surface, not really learning, but just doing enough to get by. That's the way I used to live my life, and I know today it's the main cause of depression for me. The way my program at school was set up, I couldn't just take a break; I had to get out. I baffled my two instructors, because they were very pleased with the work I had done so far - I'd received perfect scores on everything. Yet I wasn't ok with the work I was doing, and more importantly, I wasn't okay with me.  It's imperative to my recovery that I live in a manner that I'm ok with.

And after I quit school, most of the pain went away. Now I'm not really sure if I did the 'right' thing, and I'm not even sure there is a right thing; however, I know that I did something to stay in recovery, and, right now, that's the important part. The one thing I did right in this instance was treat my recovery like it is the most important thing in my life, which it is.

The pain was there all along (this is the start of the longer story). It starts with the thoughts, which lead to anxiety. Prolonged anxiety leads to depression. One of my challenges is self-discipline - I'm still a novice at that. So I didn't have a lot of self-discipline surrounding my school work. Eventually what self-discipline I did have unraveled, and I was doing next to nothing to take good care of myself. And I knew it. There has to be in my life a foundation of recovery, and I had let that foundation erode.

The pain I was experiencing was warning me that I was getting farther and farther out onto thin ice. It spoke to me in a way that I listened. I'm still a little in pain, because I have to repair my foundation; but I'm not in the kind of pain that makes me want to escape or die.

Sometimes we see recovery as two steps forward, one step back, and sometimes it is that way. That's why recovery can be frustrating, and why some people don't make it. It's not all rainbows and lollipops - it's a lot of hard work and character-building experiences. The way to make it easier is to listen to each of these experiences and learn as much as I can from them. 

And that's how pain can be my friend and my teacher today, rather that something to be avoided and shooed away when it shows up on my doorstep.

Namaste,

Ken

Listening to Pain - Part I

I have the great good fortune of being a tiny bit wiser than I used to be. I say this in all modesty, because much, if not all, of the success I enjoy today is not my fault. It's simply a matter of being in the right place at the right time, and the only thing I can really take credit for is keeping my eyes and ears open and being willing to learn.

One of the things I've learned is that pain is important in life. Pain has a purpose - it's purpose is to say quite loudly to us, "Hey, something's wrong!" It's like those strips on the sides of the freeway that make a lot of noise and shake our car when we're not paying attention and start driving off the road -  "Hey, wake up and straighten your wheel!"

We I don't know about you, but I seem to live in a society in which pain is to be avoided and gotten rid of as quickly as possible when it appears. I don't like pain, and most of my life energy has been spent either trying to alleviate pain or avoid pain. If you've been following this blog at all, you know that this tactic has not worked very well for me. To put it very succinctly, my practice of avoiding feeling pain has fueled my addiction and my mental illness. In all fairness to me, I must say that much of the time I didn't know any better. I thought I had found some pretty neat ways to get rid of the pain that appeared in my life. What was really happening, however, when I tried to 'get rid of' the pain in my life was that I was pushing it forward. I keep thinking of a snow plow pushing snow out of the way and creating a huge mountain of snow. That's what happened to me - I came to a point in my life where I couldn't push the mountain of pain I had been creating any more, and I had to deal with it. The tools and tactics I used to use for pain removal no longer worked. My plow was dead, and I had to start using new tools to deal with my pain.

The very first thing I learned about dealing with pain skillfully is I don't have to can't do it alone. You might have read me writing once or twice before that we live in a connected universe. None of us, me included, really live alone or live in a vacuum. We might suffer the illusion that we do, but we really don't. My air is your air; my sunlight is your sunlight; my pain is your pain, and, your pain is my pain. You may not feel my pain as much as I feel it, and I may not feel your pain like you feel it; however, it is shared. So, if I want to deal skillfully with my pain, somewhere along the line I will have to share with someone else that I am in pain. I need to expose it, to admit it. I need to let the light in on my pain. I have to admit that it is there. 

The second thing that I need to do in order to skillfully deal with pain is to begin to understand that pain is my friend. (It might as well be - it seems to have accompanied me my whole life!) Pain lets me know that something I'm doing or something I'm experiencing is not good for me and needs to change.

     I'm going to take a moment here to mention an 

     exception that I learned in yoga - the pain that I 

     feel when I stretch and grow is ok - the dull pain 

     I feel when I'm stretching and strengthening my 

     muscles is good - the pain I need to listen to in 

     exercising is any sharp pain - that's the pain that 

     says, "Don't do that!"

As I accept that pain is my friend, I stop attacking it or avoiding it. I begin to listen to it and learn from it. "What are you trying to tell me?" I can learn a lot from pain if I can sit with it and listen to it rather than trying, through various methods, to ignore it or get rid of it.

And then comes dealing with it. I don't deal with the pain! I try to find out what caused it, and then change or heal the cause. Sometimes pain is caused by a specific fear. Sometimes pain can be caused by a habit that no longer serves me. Sometimes pain is caused by something that I need to face within myself that I've been avoiding. And again, I don't have to do it alone. By now in my recovery I have people in my life whom I trust, and who are willing to support me in my recovery. And I support others. Again, this whole life thing is not just about me, it's about knowing my connectedness  with the whole. That means I have to give as well as receive. 

Thus endeth Part I. Part II will deal with a recent experience with my friend Pain.

Namaste,

Ken