Reduce chronic pain and gain greater authenticity by addressing difficult emotions.
Facing repressed emotions is a prescription for healing chronic pain. But it’s not easy to process feelings like anger and the underlying emotions that fuel it like grief, especially if we’ve seemingly benefited from pushing these feelings down for years. Especially if we’ve been led to believe that pushing these feelings down kept the peace and benefited everyone — forgetting that everyone includes you.
The consequences of this misguided idea can over time show up in the body as pain. Chronic and unrelenting and with some added flavors like fatigue and depression.
A tendency to people please and ignore one’s own emotions can create great internal tension. This tension of being nice can lead to chronic pain over time and it is especially true for women. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 70 percent of chronic pain sufferers in the US are women. Those who forsake their own emotions to consistently prioritize others become as Gabor Mate says, “the shock absorber of society.”
As long as the centering of others continues, so too will the symptoms that can range from anything from migraine and neck pain to IBS and back pain — and even all of the above.
The body holds this tension of niceness waiting for our awareness to release it.
Facing difficult emotions can often bring intense feelings such as anger at the reality of injustices, especially ones we failed to see as injustices at the time. Anger arises and so too does rage. The tension breaks and as we begin to delve into the feelings, it can seem as if the anger will have no end. It will.
Step Off the Sacrificial Road of Pain
Healing from chronic pain means you may fear you’re not the nice person you thought you were. But one can be kind without being nice, complex without being “bad.” Human beings hold multitudes.
In the early phases of healing neuroplastic pain, when the onion of anger begins to peel off, you may find yourself reaching for the soothing idea of forgiveness. You may reach for it as an escape valve, a way to be the bigger person, a way to sidestep all this emotional dredging and the consequences it may have in your relationships. But this sacrificial road is well worn and won’t bring pain relief.
Are you willing to continuing making others comfortable at the expense of your health and well being? Now is the time to center your own perspective. Validate your own feelings and opinions. Shelve forgiveness for now. Healthy forgiveness comes with distance.
Often the new sensations of being completely free of pain may be destabalizing. Who are you without your trusty symptoms to distract you?
The truth is transformation isn’t easy.
Healing physical pain brings emotional pain but it also brings us closer to our authenticity and a greater sense of self. Healing also brings us greater energy and energy brings power. It could be you’ve never entertained the idea of having power. You may have felt just fine allowing the default status quo to dictate the way things should be.
The reality is that for many people who experience chronic pain, self sacrifice is like oxygen. If you were brought up as the family peacemaker and emotional crutch, that role may be so integral to your identity that a sense of empowerment feels foreign. Changing aspects of our personality can be incredibly unnerving but you’re on the bridge to transformation. Don’t turn back now.
Integrating the experiences of the past with emotional honesty is work. It is a process and it can take some time. Give yourself grace and allowance to feel whatever it is you need to feel. Even if it is anger. Even if it is rage.
You Might Actually Like Power
Anger has information that we sometimes don’t want to hear. The anger can feel never ending. But the pain dissolves and eventually you realize that anger has a lot of power in it — and you might actually like power.
Give yourself permission to have negative thoughts about people who may have devalued you. Be careful not to turn those thoughts inward. That may have been what they wanted.
If you’re like a lot of people with chronic pain, you were raised to feel like a bad person for not giving others the benefit of the doubt, but consider that was not for your benefit. It can be revelatory to realize you may have been raised to keep from feeling anger. To keep from standing up for yourself. In some ways, prioritizing others’ emotions may have helped everyone get along. As a child, this served you well. It doesn’t serve you anymore.
You Might Even Feel Joy
What will happen if you express your anger? Will you lose friends? Family? Will you feel like an outsider in a community that you’ve been a part of your entire life? Maybe. Consider that when we put up boundaries in our lives we open doors to people and experiences that put us in greater alignment with our values. We get in sync with our purpose. We may feel grief but on the other side of grief we may feel something better. Much better. Consider that you might even feel joy.
Action and Boundaries
Anger is meant to move you to action and it can sit alongside the fight response, a response that can be more energizing than the freeze and fawn response. When we go with our fight response, we can take action that benefits us. It doesn’t mean we have to lash out. It may mean we put up necessary boundaries that improve our life.
As you begin to listen to and respond to your anger, the stronger your boundaries and self esteem become. The stronger your self esteem becomes, the easier it is to make good on your purpose and dreams.
When people go into this work fearing all the emotions and anger they’ll feel, what they eventually find is that by processing the feelings under the anger like hurt and grief, they free themselves to feel less anger. When we explore these emotions with curiosity, we’re less apt to become dysregulated in response to them. When we release the tension of being nice, we replace it with ease and authenticity. And pain relief.
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Here are some questions you may want to explore as you continue to address repressed emotions like anger to heal chronic pain:
What in your life needs to be addressed?
What boundary needs to be set?
Who do you need to distance from?
Are you listening to your body’s needs, such as getting enough food, sleep, breaks?
Are you allowing yourself to have fun or are you allowing others to have fun instead?
Are you not doing the things you’re good at?
