Many chronic pain patients who start on the path of mind-body healing soon discover that, as their pain level goes down, something happens to their mental health. They often report increase in anxiety, depression, mood swings or obsessive behaviors. They get frustrated and scared because they view these emotional issues as a new set of symptoms, often more unpleasant than their physical pain.
In fact, they are still dealing with the same problem. Physical and emotional pains are connected vessels. Remember, your physical pain is a result of a suppressed emotional pain. Your pain began when you started repressing the feeling of negative emotions because those emotions were too painful. Eventually avoidance became habitual, and your brain re-routed emotional pain into a physical circuit. Fast forward to today. You stopped hiding from your emotions and the pain went down, but all those bottled-up emotions are now staring into your face.
Does it mean that you are now forever stuck between the rock of pain and a hard place of anxiety? Not at all. This is your opportunity to finally address your underlying problems. I will walk you through the steps.
Let’s first understand what anxiety is. Emotions exist in our nervous system for a reason. Anxiety is an evolutionary mechanism that helped humans avoid dangers: tigers, falling rocks, lightnings etc. Before we can see a tiger hiding in the bushes, we are likely to hear a sound of a movement or notice a faint shadow on the ground. We don’t know what it is, but our brain generates suggestions that we may be facing a danger. That sense of an unspecified danger is anxiety, and it is, in a way, a good emotion. However, it becomes a negative emotion when it starts dominating your life.
You don’t believe me? Watch this presentation by Dr. David Hanscom, a renown orthopedic surgeon, who explains the mechanism of anxiety-generated pain. It is a bit detailed, but what matters is what you do after you are done watching.
So, what do you do now, how can you tame the beast of anxiety? There are three actions that you can take:
- Acknowledge that your previous life experiences led you to the elevated sense of anxiety. Continue re-examining your life and connecting past life events with your current emotional state. Remember that by now you were able to reduce your physical pain by doing so, therefore, your emotional pain will eventually go the same way.
- Use mind-body approaches to reduce anxiety. Read books and listen audios by Dr. Claire Weekes, the world-renown anxiety specialist. You can find her work here.
- Start meditating. If done right, meditation stabilizes central nervous system and normalizes emotional response. Multiple studies were down showing positive impact of meditation on patients with anxiety and depression.
Each one of these actions works on different aspects of mind-body, but all three get you to the goal of getting your life back. Remember, until you learn to recognize your emotions for what they are, accept them as part of your nature and learn how to handle them as they come along, you will be in this ping-pong between the emotional and physical pain, so get to work!
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