You may have been to a variety of different health care practitioners who have shared possible ‘physical causes’ of your chronic pain, but nothing is definitive.  The frustrating part is that these possibilities don’t seem to overlap, are inconclusive, or downright contradictory.  Even more frustrating is that the pain comes and goes – it may even migrate to different places in your body – which has you constantly trying to predict when the next flare is going to show up.  Times of reprieve are coloured with uncertainty and tension, which would be bearable if it weren’t for your mind’s habit of meeting this uncertainty with worry after worry.  Your sleep has gotten worse over time, and that just compounds the underlying tension you feel.  You have often heard that ‘you’ll just have to deal with it’ for the rest of your life, or ‘it’s just in your head’ – which leaves you feeling discouraged, exhausted, and alone. 

First of all, at Radius we hear you: we know your pain is real.  And the one thing that you may not have heard is that there is a good chance that your pain is neuroplastic: a centralized feature of how your nervous system has learned to respond to stress through amplifying the perception of danger. The good news is that the brain-body overlap between beliefs, thoughts, emotions, and sensations can be profoundly changed and the brain can unlearn patterns that have gotten it locked into escalating pain-fear loops.  Recovery is possible.

You feel at times like the past continues to cast a fearful shadow on the present.  Your mind ‘slips’ into those memories, as if attracted by a magnet – and it seems as if you must remain vigilant to protect yourself from the memories, and the feelings, for fear that if you step too deeply into them, they might consume you.  So, you put them away.  Or you find yourself turning away from whatever reminds you of losing control, to just get on with things.  But this ‘getting on’ starts to feel more like ‘staying numb’ – like you have lost a part of yourself in that shadow – a part you would really like back. 

Working through trauma occurs when we intentionally turn toward those fearful features of the past and trust that whatever feelings may emerge will bring, in their wake, a deepened sense of self-acceptance, meaning, and vitality.  And when such deepening does occur, the mind acquires a sort of clarity – an ability – to look back on the past from the position of one grounded firmly in the light of the present.    

Your thoughts have a habit of keeping you up at night.  Its as if they pull you into problem-solving mode, and you of course follow that direction.  Or often you find yourself focused on those few things you ‘did wrong’ the day or even week previously.  You’d like to see these occasions as learning opportunities, but all too often they leave you with a sense of feeling hollow or insignificant.  A heightened sense of responsibility has been with you almost as long as a felt need to avoid conflict, to be a peacekeeper, or to please others.  You understand that these patterns lead to feeling depleted, and you see more clearly than ever that change is necessary.

Well, the good news is, with the right tools and support you can also change these patterns.  With practice and perseverance you can put anxiety in its proper place and spend more time in a life infused with vitality, purpose, meaning, and calm.