My System for Handling Pain.

Pain is a constant. That’s my reality.

I learned most people suffer more than they need to because they don’t know how to respond to pain. They treat pain like a punishment from God or a catastrophe.

I want to introduce you to my ways. I tell you about the medicines people have used to kill pain and how they were made in the series of articles I call On Medicine. Now I want to share my personal method for accepting and living with the pain whether you have medicine or not.

This method is how I handle my pain and how I have been able to set aside my ability to take care of myself with the knowledge I have in order to help other people handle theirs.

It isn’t therapy and it isn’t “self-care.”

It’s the only way I’ve found that works for me, and it kept me alive long enough to get better, think clearer, and find purpose in it.

Every day starts the same for me. I wake up in pain. How much depends on a lot but that I will hurt tomorrow from the moment I rise is guaranteed. I start my day by taking stock of my physical and mental state. This is the process.

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First Step

I Calm Down Before Doing Anything.

Pain triggers panic, and panic multiplies pain. On bad days it is like waking up on fire. That doesn’t change what I have to do for the day, but it definitely changes how I am going to get it done.

When someone is hurting, their body tenses, their breathing shortens, and their brain exaggerates every sensation. If I do not collect myself and adjust my expectations for the day and compensate for myself… I have a bad day. If I have a bad day I have a bad night… If I have a bad night… So this is very important for me to do. To get ahead and stay ahead of my problems. One day at a time.

So, the first step is simple but imperative:

Calm down.

I stop myself from spiraling so I can figure out whether the pain is serious, temporary, emotional, physical, or a combination of so I can take control of it by staring it in the face like a snake.

I can’t make good decisions while my body is in alarm mode, so I have to consciously turn it off.

This step prevents emotional amplification where the body turns ordinary pain into something unbearable because the mind is panicking.

Control my breathing. Control my emotions.
Then examine the pain and my physical and financial situations objectively weighed against the days wants and obligations.

That is how I wake up and begin my day everyday.

Step two

I Determine Whether I’m Injured or Just in Pain

Pain and danger are not the same thing. People confuse the two constantly because Pain is a warning sign that something within yourself or society is not ok.

My Method requires that I calmly assess:

Am I in immediate danger? Is this an injury or just pain? Do I need emergency help? Or is this part of living in a body that hurts?

Every morning and every time how I feel is abnormally bad I go through this process. It helps me keep my feet on the ground and in control of residual pain that comes as sure as a debt collector… The price of things done.

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Chronic pain feels intense, but it is rarely an emergency. The reason they get away with not treating pain is they consider it a symptom that will not kill you because it won’t. Your heart may fail you in a few different possible ways but the pain itself will not. So don’t be afraid of the pain. It’s a lion but you can tame it.

If you are not injured, do not treat it like a crisis. The pain is what it is. You can take it. I know this because you take it every day. I tell myself this often.

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Step Three

Accept the Pain Instead of Running From It

If it’s not an emergency, you need to accept it as something about your life that just is. If I can bare it I I can keep from complaining about it. Another thing I tell myself often.

I cannot ignore my problems without them getting worse, I cannot put them off till tomorrow without them getting worse… I cannot wish them away nor pay someone to deal with them for me… If I want a normal life it means doing normal things in pain.

Everyone hurts. I point this out to myself often because I hurt so much it’s all I knew and could remember for a long time. I learned at some point the opposite of my life is not a pain free life. The pursuit of a life void of pain is unnatural and honestly not a realistic goal when a person thinks about it but that was my dream. My expectations should not be unrealistic so my goal has not been a pain free life in a while. My goal now is to have a good life, full of friends, family, cherished moments, adventure, prosperity that births new opportunities for myself and others… whether I am in pain or not.

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Let yourself feel it for a bit: (Sit in your shit)

Take stock of your situation… note the quality, the intensity, the patterns and emotions attached to them.

I learned how to separate the emotion from the pain and in doing so… I separated the suffering from the pain.

This changed my life more so than anything else. I learned it through studying stoicism

See pain is something we all have to go through. Suffering though is how we respond emotionally and that is something we can get a say in.

This keeps the pain from controlling your behavior. Robbing you of life.

Think of a raccoon with his leg in a trap. He may panic for a while but at some point resigns itself to eat its foot to get out of the trap. It does what it has to do and limps off to lick his wounds and forget about it. My mom always taught me to be a Duck. Let my problems roll of my back like water off a ducks back… I do but I am also part raccoon.

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Step Four

After Accepting the Pain I set my Emotions Aside

Once you’ve felt it and recognized it for what it is, you set how you feel about everything aside. That is acceptance.

You do not deny the emotions about how you feel you process them and walk past them.

Why?
Because you need mental clarity and the other option is to run from them and hide in your drug of choice. If you can find it and that life is bad.

Pain clouds judgment.
Emotion magnifies pain.
Together they ruin decision making.

So you stop feeling the emotion long enough to ask yourself questions about them:

What can I do right now? What can’t I do? What will make this worse? What will move me forward whether I am in pain or not?

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Step Five

I use the Emotional Energy to Improve My Situation

Once I accept the pain, I use the emotional energy to plan out my day, month, year… My life:

What small improvements can I make today being in pain? What routines can I do in pain that reduce pain long-term? What habits are making my situation worse that I have to avoid pain? What choices put me in a better position physically, emotionally, financially, spiritually that I have been avoiding because the change hurts?

The pain of changing must become smaller than the pain of staying the same. You have to get there on your own mentally.

To get there, I had to stop masking my pain with distractions, drugs, excuses, and sleep.

I had to sit in my shit until I hurt so much emotionally and spiritually I could handle the two hours of walking with a severe limp 2-3mph a day in front of people. That pain of my situation unmasked was great enough adding hunger pain onto it was also less than the thoughts and feeling I had to deal with about my health sober.

It as it is until the pain is so great the change is the easy way. The only way to do this is objectively. With ones emotions in hand. Once you have ahold of your emotions I challenge you to let go of your crutches whatever they may be.

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Step Six

I Accept That a Pain-Free Life Is Not Real

Most suffering comes from a false expectation:
the belief that life should be pain-free. That it can only be lived and enjoyed on pain free days. I mentioned this earlier so let me explain why this matters.

It shouldn’t be this way…
It never was supposed to be like this…
It never will end…

Normal is not a life void of pain. Normal isn’t the opposite of our lives. Normal people hurt daily too just not on our level. Everyone’s ten is a ten though and no one is pain free. You can be in pain and have a normal life. I promise and I don’t make many.

What you think of as normal might need to change though.

The sooner one accepts that everyone hurts, the less they’ll chase false cures and the quicker they’ll find stability in their life that can not be shook by waves of pain.

This lowers the odds a person will get physically and emotionally addicted to feeling good.

The slope is steep chasing normal. Remember the grass you have is good grass. It’s yours to make of what you can. Grow a garden.

Pain is part of this world.
It is not a special event no matter how extraordinary it is in our lives.

Accepting this brings a long lasting underlying peace.

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Step Seven

The Purpose of my Pain.

“Let this pain be for something.” I remember… I was on the floor of my bathroom covered in mess unable to help myself… I had rolled out of bed unable to get up and army crawled to the bathroom. I was sick and recovering from a spinal fusion. every time I threw up I thought I was going to rip myself open. I cried on the floor after not making it to the toilet for probably 30 minutes before I calmed down. I had begged God for mercy, for help, for medicine… to die… On that floor covered in vomit and… unable to raise to my knees… I asked God to use me. I told him ok I was done asking for things. I told him I have nothing to lose I’m not willing to walk away from… being the burden I was… I wasn’t going to Kill myself so I gave myself to God to do anything he asked.

I would go anywhere, say anything, fear nothing.

When I stopped asking for comfort
and started asking for a job on the behalf of my God, my perspective changed immediately. Seeds of Vice began to take shape in my mind. If I got to pick my Job I wanted to answer the same prayers I had been prayed being prayed by people all over the world.

I stopped wanting the pain to end and started wanting the pain to count.

If you serve others as if they were your God… This has led to the most fulfilling season of my life so far.

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Step Eight

Turn Pain Into Strength by Serving Others

Serving others overrides the body’s limits… the same phenomenon behind a mother lifting a car.

Love is the Key. Love for yourself, Love for your friends & family, Love for your enemy as much as your love for God. Love has to drive you. Not vengeance, the need to right a wrong, the need to change laws. Love is the Key.

When people feed others, help others, protect others, teach others, show up for others… Answer other people’s prayers and tell them to thank the God of their choosing… In the name of their own God privately…

their pain becomes secondary.

It doesn’t disappear but it is noticed as much as normal people notice their pain. As it is secondary in their lives it to becomes secondary in ours.

Service replaces self & focus with duty out of love. Duty and Love bring with them Strength.

To me it is like Popeye eating his spinach.

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Step Nine

On Days When Purpose Isn’t Enough, I Study & Prepare for a better day.

There will be days where the pain is too much to preserve through. On those days, the instruction is simple:

Study through the pain and fog with faith that what needs to stick will stick. I Learn about the law, plants, medicines & exercises, my body, history. I Learn about my God.

The more knowledge someone has,
the harder they are to force into a life of suffering. So, when I can’t do I learn.

Studying builds internal strength when external strength is momentarily out of reach.

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Step Ten

I focus on becoming Unbreakable

A person becomes unbreakable when they have:

faced their pain honestly, accepted reality, surrendered their pain to God, served others, studied deeply, survived bad seasons, taken advantage of good seasons, fed people, cared for people, taught people, and claimed responsibility for their health and authority over their pursuit of health.

And then something crucial happened:

I became surrounded by the people I have helped…
People who I see helping themselves, inspiring and teaching others, strengthen themselves, and finding new ways to support themselves and others. People every bit as loving, kind, strong, independent, and devoted to a God. You all.

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My Final Goal Personally

This is the next article listed on the Start Here page of Seeds of Vice.

No Right to Medicine