Pain and Inspiration: November Kick-Off {Self-Discovery, Word by Word}

I’m incredibly honored to have my lovely friend, Shannon, take the reigns this month and be the virtual host for November’s Self-Discovery series. I know what she has to say will get you thinking as much as it did me. Read on…

{image credit :: visha}

The ceiling of my office is peppered with colorful tiles, hand-painted by kids who provide messages of hope and triumph. Every time I take a break from my work, I look up and admire their messages of inspiration… “Scars remind us where we’ve been, determination dictates where we’re going,” “It might be stormy now, but it can’t rain forever,” “When your mind says give up, hope whispers one more try.” It’s moving, really. To say I’m inspired by these kids and their tiles is an understatement.

I’m a psychologist at a pediatric pain rehabilitation clinic and when I volunteered to host my dear friend Ashley’s Word-by-Word series I decided to choose the word I deal with on a daily basis…Pain. It’s a loaded word that means many different things to different people. Perhaps the one common thread is that most people fear it. The word “pain” has many connotations; yes it can be physical but it can also be emotional, which has the potential to be just as crippling as the physical kind. Sometimes our emotional pain leads to physical pain. And sometimes treating one can lead to improvements in the other. How many of us have developed headaches or abdominal pain during times of stress? Experienced back pain after a long hard day at the office? Suffer from migraines, ulcers, fibromyalgia, arthritis, extreme fatigue, angina…the list goes on and on. Chronic pain rates are the highest they’ve ever been, among both children and adults, and they’re only getting higher. But why? Is it the inordinate amount of stress that we incur in our daily lives or is there something bigger, something more pervasive that is causing our bodies to alert us that all is not well within?

The program where I work is for most patients 3-4 weeks and they spend their days participating in intensive physical, occupational, and psychological therapy. The kids I see are usually deconditioned from weeks, months, sometimes years of physical immobility. They’ve essentially stopped living any semblance of a normal life because of pain. The goal is to teach them to live their lives in spite of pain and to help them realize a meaningful life is possible. As one kid I know put it, “pain is pain, suffering is optional.” My role as a psychologist in this setting is to send the message that the more we neglect our bodies and live under the assumption that our emotional and physical selves are unrelated, the more likely it is the pain and all its associated symptoms will get worse. As any one of the families I’ve worked with will tell you, it’s a vicious cycle that’s hard to stop.

My favorite tile is smaller than the others. On a deep blue background, the patient chose a quote by Lance Armstrong. In cursive print, it reads, “Pain is temporary. It may last a minute, or an hour, or a day, or a year, but eventually it will subside and something else will take its place. If I quit, however, it lasts forever.” Quitting for so many of these kids is not an option, because the alternative just won’t do. Coping with pain of any kind is never easy and sometimes it just takes a little inspiration to get through it. I’m lucky that mine comes in the form of ceiling tiles.

What are your thoughts about pain? How do you cope with it? Is it possible to live a meaningful life with pain, and how would one accomplish doing so? To participate in this month’s word-by-word series, feel free to answer any of these questions or send any thoughts/comments about “pain” to Ashley, at nourishingthesoulblog@gmail.com, post below, or link this post to yours and let Ashley know you participated. Since I don’t have a blog, she’s been so kind to let me use hers as this month’s posting forum! Ashley will post everyone’s thoughts in the round-up near the end of the month. Thanks for letting me join in on such a wonderful anthology! ~Shannon