Chronic Pain
Chronic pain can sometimes feel like the bane of the human experience. While emotional pain can be just as severe, physical pain often strike us as having much to do with the mind. It feels here to stay. Moreover, it often feels completely detached from our psychological state of mind.
On top of the unpleasant sensation, we often experience a tremendous amount of inner turmoil, anger, and guilt, which takes us even deeper into a negative place.
Unless you can walk on water, there are no doubt lifestyle and diet changes are often needed to be addressed, and obviously in more serious cases modern medicine is necessary. But great strides can be made through doing these in conjunction with an appreciation of the power of thought and an understanding of some not-so-well-known fundamentals about how emotions really operate.
Dr. John E Sarno, a chiropractor, had many patients throughout his decades of doing work that had chronic pain, notably along around the spine and back. Noticing that nobody was fundamentally getting better from his practice, he turned to resources outside of the scope of physicality. He stumbled upon the notion that pain had a psychological root, specifically unconscious guilt. He started to recommend his clients see psychologists in addition to getting their chiropractor treatment. Surprisingly, he began to notice people actually becoming cured of their physical ailments.
While this may sound crazy, once we begin to see that the brain and the body are literally one system, and that the experience of pain is fundamentally a subjective experience, it doesn't sound too far out at all. In fact it sounds obvious and simple. It's the very reason why thinking of a lemon makes your mouth water. Thoughts are powerful!
The thoughts you feel generate emotions. You can go from ecstatic bliss to a deep depression while sitting in one spot from one moment to the next all because of thought.
Emotions are not separate from the body. They send chemical signals and can literally shift genetic expressions, encourage different microbes to grow in your gut, and do all sorts of other magical things. Oxytocin, which is released when we intent for positive appreciative thoughts, is in itself a painkiller. Why do we always reach for drugs when we can reach for thoughts that are painkillers in and of themselves?
Fundamentally, the disharmony we feel within ourselves at moments we are in physical pain - more specifically chronic pain, not the kind where we get stung by a bee and do a little jump for example - is amplified greatly, and it some cases purely caused by, inner psychological conflict. This disharmony in the mind generates a tremendous amount of negative emotion, which zaps our energy and lowers our ability to see clearly, and our body's ability to enter a state of healing.
If this is something you'd like to explore more, feel free to get in touch with me. It's free!