According to the American Academy of Pain Medicine, there are over 1.5 BILLION people worldwide that experience chronic pain. In the United States that number is over 100,000,000 adults who are affected by chronic pain. That is more than cancer, heart disease, and diabetes combined. Over 23,000,000 people experience severe pain on a daily basis.
I knew a man who had had chronic headaches for over ten years. He had seen specialists, tried every alternative treatment, and no one could help relieve the pain. He committed suicide. He couldn’t stand the thought of living one more day with debilitating pain. People with chronic pain are 3-4 times more likely to experience anxiety and depression. They are twice as likely to consider suicide. Chronic pain is the leading cause of long-term disability in the United States.
Where is our compassion for people in pain? Compassion including the use of opioids or anything else that gives relief and allows people participate their lives?
I have experienced chronic pain for over four decades. In that time I have had over twenty knee surgeries, seven elbow surgeries, three back surgeries, and a shoulder surgery. I have degenerative joint disease and my joints continue to wear away. I have tried everything to “conquer” my pain…physical therapy, exercise, dietary changes or restrictions, acupuncture, herbal therapy, Chinese medicine, massage, injections, prescription drugs, several rounds of talk therapy and reading, reading, and more reading. None of these have relieved my pain.
I have read numerous books on the topic of chronic pain. The majority offer “cures” to end chronic pain but my experience has been that they do not work. Change your diet, take these pills, lose so much weight…keep fighting. It’s exhausting and fruitless.
Hippocrates said, “Divine is the task to ease pain.” Pain, and our relationship to it, affects our family, friends, caregivers, work, our mind and body, our feelings regarding the quality of our lives, as we perceive it, our success, failure, our thoughts…the list could go on and on.
Everything we do involves a relationship with something. Relationships are at the heart of who we are as human beings. Our relationships include every person, entity, or thing we have contact with each day, including pain. Whether we like it or not our relationship with pain colors every other area of our lives.
While earning my Masters Degree in Contemplative Education I completed my thesis on Chronic Pain…and specifically my journey with chronic pain. We use words of war when describing managing pain or illness. We conquer pain, fight the war, and do battle to wipe out chronic pain. I realized with that language I was engaged in a battle with myself. In letting words of war go I learned how to befriend chronic pain and develop a relationship with my pain. I do not offer a cure but rather a way to embrace all of who we are and to thrive in that realization…a way to fully become who we are.
I developed and used contemplative practices to understand the nature of our minds, and how it influences all our interactions, beginning with ourselves, and our pain. Through contemplative practices, we develop the ability to recognize our unhealthy, habitual patterns. These practices provide the opportunity to transform unwanted habits in every area of our lives.
This work offers those with chronic pain, as well as caregivers, the opportunity to transform their relationship with themselves, and how they understand and interact with pain. Contemplative practices provide a way to befriend pain and to interact with it in a compassionate manor. Through growing, and maintaining, these practices we experience transformed relationship dynamics, increased openness, greater compassion, and improved ability and desire to resolve conflicts.
Chronic pain is a difficult topic to discuss with other people, and those in pain, including myself, frequently feel invisible. A disservice that many books create is the myth that if someone with chronic pain fights hard enough, does the “right” work (whatever that may be) then they will be healed. Which leaves those who are not healed feeling as if they have failed and it is their fault they have pain. Those with pain can also face the judgment of others who think you have not done the “right” thing to be healed. We struggle endlessly when we continue to look outside of ourselves for a “cure” when we actually have everything we need already.
I have a Bachelors degree in Psychology, a Masters degree in Counseling, a Juris Doctorate, and a Masters degree in Contemplative Education. I have spent my entire career working with people and helping them….as a therapist, a child protection caseworker, an attorney, and teaching mindfulness to young children, adults, and families. This work is an extension of a lifetime of work helping people with chronic pain to understand their pain and form a relationship with that pain in order to live a fuller life and to become fully who they are.
Kai Raines 