A smart and hardworking client who is a full-time student and almost full-time employee shared this thought recently. A cause of her angst? She took a nap after getting more done in a morning than I do some weeks. It got me thinking about this particularly sneaky form of perfectionism and self-criticism. It’s a crazy-making Catch 22: I’m not doing enough, so I better do more, which still won’t be enough, so I can either continue doing more in an increasing frenzy or get stuck and avoid thinking, feeling, and acting because it all seems like just too much – at the same time it’s not enough. Just perfect. (Pardon the expression).

When I think I’m not doing enough, I often do less. When I believe I’m not doing enough volunteering/donating/ paperwork/exercising/de-cluttering/flossing/?, I can become immobilized or unmotivated. Or I do the opposite: way too much. I overhelp from an anxious, pleaser place, which doesn’t feel good. It’s also annoying to most and under-appreciated by the rest…of those whom I am trying to do more for.

Why do we do this? In my case, I think it goes back to basic human fears: I am not safe; I am not enough. The irony is that self-judgment and perfectionism create conditions for the perfect (!) storm of the fight/flight/freeze response. This creates feelings of being even less safe and less adequate. Closely related to its cousins, “I should be doing more,” “I should be doing it better,” and “I’m not doing it right,” it’s also a setup for distraction and procrastination. Nothing happens, except we get to beat ourselves up for not doing enough (or anything.) Those of us who experience mind/body pain, anxiety, emotional eating, and other symptoms courtesy of the stress trifecta also get an excuse to view our disconnection through the same self-critical lens, and the “beat” goes on.

How to free one’s self from this loop? Here’s the thought I am playing with: maybe it’s all true. Rationally, I know that sometimes what I’m doing is enough and I just need to hold that thought. It may also be true that sometimes doing more would be better, and I’m not doing as much as I could be doing and it’s still enough. It might be what my body, energy, time, and sanity have to give right now, so it’s actually perfect. And some days, doing more is taking a nap.

Wishing you sweet days and dreams,
Ann

This week, I thought you might like to have my latest update of the Free Writing Tool.  Even if you haven’t been utilizing the Healthy Mind Toolbox Audio Course, you might find this tool helps you become aware of emotions you may be inadvertently holding inside your body.  Bringing these emotions into your awareness will give you a chance to release them, release tension in your body, and relax into healing.

Download the Free Writing Tool here.

Have you ever felt like your body was filled with lead and actually doing the items on your list was harder than pushing a boulder uphill?

Have you ever forced yourself to do them all anyway, and ended up feeling exhausted, doing less-than-awesome work, and feeling downright horrible?

Nah. That’s probably never happened to you.

It has, however, happened to me! At least a few times each month, I experience this phenomenon we call resistance.

I used to beat myself up and feel guilt for even experiencing it, and then push myself through to the finish line with dogged determination. I used to think that if I forced myself to work through resistance, I’d get over it. I used to completely ignore my body whenever it had the lead-filled feeling.

It’s REALLY hard to ignore your body when your hoo-ha is on fire, your bladder is spasming, you have terrible gas all the time, and your knees throb.

Which is, of course, the point.

My body got seriously tired of me ignoring it. And after several years of learning how to listen to it, I now have a different reaction to the lead-filled feeling. I realize it means I need to stop. Now. Check-in. Breathe. Ask my body what it needs. Listen. Obey.

Resistance tells us to stop. If we honor that, we learn something important.

Like: It’s time to rest. I need more singing in my life. My body wants to sleep more this week. I feel like taking up dancing. I never did write that book I meant to write. I need to connect with a friend. This project is big, and I need help. I need to learn to delegate. That idea isn’t right for this project/moment/year. I need a date with my spouse. I need to play in the park with my kids. Time to shift my priorities. Today is not a creative day. Today is not a working day. I need to breathe deeply more often. Etc.

Whatever the message is, it’s something we need to hear. So resistance comes up to make us stop, listen, and learn. Which is why overriding the resistance is not helpful. It’s okay if it doesn’t all get done today. It’s okay if it’s not perfect. It’s just plain okay.

Stop.

About an hour before the call I noticed a stabbing pain in my stomach.  Twenty minutes before the call, my older son’s caregiver told me she wasn’t feeling well and asked to go home.  At the precise time the call was scheduled to begin, my sister rang to ask when she could drop off my younger son.  My thoughts drifted to the tower of projects perched on my desk.  I asked myself, might it be better to reschedule (for the third time?)

The scenario above provides a perfect example of when my mind does it’s very best to distract me from doing my work.  It really “thinks” it’s doing the right thing by throwing in the stomach pain or the phone call from the sister – anything to keep the decoy strategy alive.

The initial purpose for the call was to find the reason for my late night eating when I wasn’t hungry.  I had ten extra pounds of suppressed emotions camping out on my hips and I was ready to find out why.  All the little distractions that led up to the call were my mind’s way of avoiding the examination of some painful thoughts.

So, I climbed into bed, took a deep breath and made the call.  The “Whys” were ready to surface.

I looked myself directly in the mind and answered my coach’s questions honestly, openly and without judgment.  Bottom line, I was in attack and judgment mode and felt crappy.  All the while I rubbed my stomach trying to ease the painful cramping.

Thirty minutes into the call I made a break through.  I took a deep breath and laughed and in that moment noticed the stabbing pain in my stomach was completely gone.  My body knew I was believing a lie and when I let go of the belief that anything had to be different than it was, my body relaxed and said thank you.  When I’m in a state of loving what is, everything around me and in my mind is full of love.

What’s cool is that when I “fall out of love”, I have this reference to return to at any time.  My body is there to gently (and sometimes not-so-gently) get my attention to let me know I’m believing a painful story that’s untrue.

Do you remember a time when you experienced physical pain that seemed to appear with no explanation?  Do you recall what was happening in your life at that moment in time?  What was your emotional state?  Were you stressed, anxious, fearful, or sad?  Can you recall if you wanted something to be different?

When your body starts to hurt in all kinds of interesting ways including pelvic pain, a migraine, back pain, Interstitial Cystitis, or IBS to name a few, it’s doing the very best it can to show you, teach you, let you know there’s a valuable message for you to discover.  Start asking yourself questions to discover the truth.  When you do, you’ll be delighted to find the pain dissipate and crawl back into the recesses of your body and wait to serve as a messenger when you get distracted.  And maybe next time you’ll notice it just a little bit earlier until it only needs to be a whisper instead of loud, chronic pain.

If you’d like help with the questions, I’d love to support you through your discovery.

Cheers to 2011 and to listening to the wisdom of your body.  It never lies.

Client:  I am so afraid of this pain!

Me:  What are you thinking about it?

Client:  It will be here forever, and I can’t stand it!

I think I have had that same conversation roughly 4,345 times, all with different clients.  Okay, that might be a slight exaggeration.  But it does happen a lot.  Which brings me to the thought for today:

You don’t have to live in fear of the pain.

In fact, living in fear of the pain just creates more physical tension, more fight or flight, and therefore…more pain!

Who wants that?

You don’t have to live in fear of the pain, but you also don’t have to live with pain forever.  The key is the sweet spot.  It lies just between fear and hope.  Some people call it acceptance.  That word brings a lot of negative meaning with it for many people, so let’s call it “what is.”  The “what is” is what is happening right now.  So yes, maybe that’s pain.  Does that mean there will be pain tomorrow?  In one minute?  Next year?  Not necessarily.  But the mind likes to plan ahead, and prepare to resist the experience.

In essence, the fear of tomorrow’s pain causes discomfort now and tomorrow.  It’s a lose-lose.

The truth is, you can do pain.

Of course you can.  You’ve been doing it.  You can do it.  It’s really not as big a deal as the mind makes it.  I’m not saying you have to love the pain, but isn’t it more relaxing to think – “Oh yeah, I have some pain, but that’s okay.  I can do pain?”

If you’re balking at the very thought, try this:  “I notice I’m fighting my pain right now.”

And there’s always:  “I’m having the thought that I can’t stand this pain.”

Don’t let the mind take you into tomorrow’s pain.  Because what if tomorrow, there is none?

And yes, that is possible.  (Oh, I know your tricky mind!)  It rarely happens any other way.  In fact, is it even possible any other way?  One day you have pain, and the next you don’t.  That’s really how healing happens.  Sure, you might have pain again the next, but pretty soon, you have more no-pain days than pain days.  So yes, tomorrow could be a pain-free day.  Don’t let the mind fool you into thinking otherwise.

I have avoided emotions for much of my life, most of the time not even realizing I was doing so.  I did not realize that much of the anxiety I was feeling was actually a by-product of me trying like mad NOT to feel some other emotion.  I was living life with “don’t go there” as my mantra.

Now, I live my life with quite the opposite mantra:  GO THERE NOW!

Physical pain is not the dilemma our minds like to tell us it is.  Our thoughts come roaring into our awareness:

This is the worst pain I’ve ever felt.

The old pain is back, oh no!

I can’t stand this!

And on and on…

The key to moving forward is to NOT GIVE YOUR MIND ANY CREDIT.  Treat it like you would a young child – lovingly, with compassion, but don’t take it seriously.  If you believed everything your three-year-old told you, your life would look much different.  You’d be feeding her ice cream because she said she couldn’t live without it.  You’d be letting her stay up late because she said she didn’t want to go to bed.

Respectfully decline to believe your own mind.

Pain is just there to let you know that you need to turn and focus on your emotions and what’s been shoved down, pushed aside, or stuffed away for later.  It’s the steam escaping from the pot right before it boils over.  It’s just a signal, a message, or an alert.  Beep, beep, says your pain!  You must GO THERE NOW!  To the emotional stuff you don’t want to face!

Can’t find that emotional stuff?  Don’t know what it is?  That’s okay.  All you need to do is focus your awareness on your emotional inner world (use last week’s post to help you do so).  Let the pain be – it’s there, and that’s okay.  There’s no denying, no arguing, no fighting against it.  See it for what it is – just a signal – and then follow the directions it’s trying to give you.  Go toward all those things that haven’t been dealt with, faced, or felt.

That’s the journey.

When you’re in pain, it can be difficult to think about anything else.  Pain becomes the boss, dictating what activities you choose, how much you enjoy or don’t enjoy life, and how you feel mentally each moment of the day.  It’s no wonder that chronic pain sufferers tend to end up depressed, unhappy, or hopeless, because pain overshadows every moment of their lives.

Most pain sufferers focus their thoughts on what it would be like to live without pain.  I remember this clearly from my own battle with chronic pain.  I spent much of every day thinking about how happy I would be without pain.  I dreamed of living normally, of just doing activities without even having to consider pain.  I imagined myself living a fulfilling, joy-filled life, all because pain was not present.  Now, I have that life.  I live it every single day – day after day of no pain.  Do I relish the joy of living without pain?  Do I think often about how wonderful it is to live without pain?  Truthfully, no.  Every so often, I feel immense gratitude for the life I have now, but other than that, I think very little of physical pain or how it used to feel in my body.  I am too focused in the present, living my current life, to remember the pain.

Ask any mother to remember the physical pain of childbirth, and she’ll pause, think, and tell you she’s forgotten what it felt like.  It’s difficult to remember the physical sensation of pain once it has left your body, for which we can all be thankful.  However, if you take a minute to really consider pain from this perspective, it can be extremely enlightening.  Though pain is felt in the body, it actually exists in the mind.  Without the mind to tell me I am in pain, I would experience pain as only another sensation – like a breeze against my skin or the tickle of sweat between my shoulder blades. 

When I was dealing with vulvodynia and IC, I felt a rotation of symptoms including burning, sharp pain, dull aching internal pain, and itching.  My doctors would often request that I rate my pain on a scale of one to ten, and after a while, I automatically rated my pain throughout the day.  My attention was completely focused on my pain all the time.  After months of this, I began to notice that when I was distracted and not paying any attention to my symptoms, I couldn’t rate them.  I couldn’t put my finger on a number from one to ten because I wasn’t paying attention. 

Which begs the question:  If I didn’t notice the pain because I was distracted, was I feeling any pain?  The answer was no.  When my attention truly left my pain, when I allowed myself to let go of the rating system and not check in with my pain, it simply didn’t exist.  Why not?  Because pain is actually experienced in the mind.  It is a complex, fascinating, and absolutely freeing concept. 

I wasn’t able to completely let go of all my pain.  Often, it would intrude into my distracted state and bring me back to a pain-focused state.  Simply realizing that my focus made the pain stronger, however, was a very helpful idea.  I let down my vigilant guard whenever I felt safe and let myself focus on other aspects of my life.  I let myself stop wishing for a happy future and brought my attention to happiness available to me in the current moment.  I let myself experience distraction from pain as often as I could.  The less I focused on the pain, the less I felt pain.  The less I felt pain, the happier I felt.  It was the opposite of the other cycle, in which the more I focused on pain, the worse I felt, both mentally and physically. 

Playing this mind-game with pain helps open your experience up to include more happiness, more joy, and more pain-free moments.  There is no need to look to the future for hope – find the good feelings now and bring the future into the present, one moment at a time.  Recognize that pain is simply a sensation.  It does not have to become the boss and take over your life.  You are still in charge.