Last week someone told me that I always seem to be so settled and calm (thank you!). It made me think I should share some of my not so 'settled and calm' experiences too ...
I fell right into one of my 'favorite' rabbitholes during the last two weeks, and even though it's a familiar one, it took me quite a while to notice it.
I've been doing pretty well in general since quite a while now, I still experience a certain amount of general muscle pain and have to rest regularly every day, but most of the time I don't have too much worry about it going on. During the last weeks I got very creative in different areas of my life (translating books, creating a training-group for my employees, recording youtube videos for my shop etc.) and it all felt super nice and pretty easy.
What I didn't really notice was the general state of mind I was getting in, which was pretty much about doing stuff and handling things.
Before I knew it I had read a medical book proclaiming if you just did this and this exercise AND got rid off your tension you'd never have back-pain again...
Since several bad episodes of really intense back-pain was what started my whole chronic pain experience I often notice that I'm still scared of making a wrong movement and 'hurting my back', it's like habitual thinking that's often going on in the back of my mind. Sometimes when I see it I get annoyed about it, but in a - more or less - clear state of mind I know there is nothing I have to do about it. It won't get better by adding more thinking on top of it.
But the last weeks, in my 'just do it' state of mind I quickly came up with a solution: I would just exercise a lot and build up so much muscle strength and additionally somehow (miraculously) would let go of all my general tension and this way I would make it 'impossible' for myself to hurt my back or even feel the fear of it again.
And I honestly didn't realize what kind of thinking I was believing in, even though I did feel tension and fear while reading the medical book.
The first sign I noticed of something going in the 'wrong direction' was when about a week ago I got very freaked out about an emotional habit I noticed (it was about being scared of people getting annoyed with me) and I felt that I very urgently have to solve it, because it might be what keeps my pain going. Luckily Chana had time to talk with me and helped me seeing it for what it was and let go of the idea of doing something about it.
I felt much better, but I was still not very comfortable in my body. I was feeling more afraid of hurting myself and I felt tense, but I still had logical reasons for it - I haven't been exercising for 5 months due to lockdown and so I thought that must be it.
On saturday morning I actually did 'hurt' my neck while brushing my teeth (so of course nothing was really 'hurt', but I couldn't move my head normally) and that's when I finally saw it. I was completely caught up in an attempt of control, of protecting myself against fear/pain/symptoms. My actions were coming from a state of fear and no matter what I do, when it comes from that state of mind, it's very likely to lead to more stress and suffering.
Luckily once I saw that it pretty much fell away and even though my neck/back is still more uncomfortable than usual I'm feeling at peace now. It's amazing to me how I'm very clear on some things when somebody else asks me about it, but for myself I can look right at it and still not see it, completely duped!
Ah well...
So stuff like this happens to me all the time, sometimes bigger, sometimes smaller. I guess what changed is that I don't stay caught up in it all the time. And that I made peace with it being a part of being alive, I don't blame myself for it anymore. So it stopped looking like a big problem.
(And of course I'm not saying anything against exercise here - I'm just talking about the inner place it's coming from.)
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