The stoic philosopher Epictetus wrote about ‘the real source of harm’. He concluded that it isn’t the person who takes a swipe at you who harms you. The harm comes from your beliefs about what the event means. While it may be difficult to accept, pain in itself is not good or bad. It just is. How you label it has the capacity to increase pain, or decrease it. The mindfulness attitude of non-judgement can help with reducing persistent pain.
You might be thinking – how can I be non-judging? Don’t I make judgements all the time? Mindfulness does not say stop making judgements. It encourages you instead to notice judgements, and not to be led into habitual unhelpful reactions because of judgements. Reactions that could be increasing your pain.
It’s not that judgements are bad per se, they are only thoughts. And these can be misleading. The human mind is great at taking fragments of information and building an inaccurate picture. Leaving you with increased pain, tension and stress. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce pain, in both clinical and experimental settings.
Non-judgement and reducing persistent pain
There are a number of ways you might bring non-judgement to your experience of pain.
- What goes through your mind when you are in pain? We do tend to label pain as ‘bad’, but in truth it’s a protection mechanism and therefore ‘good’. Its job is to alert you to danger and protect you from harm. This doesn’t mean you have to like it. The question is, does thinking of your back, for example, as ‘bad’, make a recovery more or less likely?
- The act of noticing judgements tends to involve a slowing down. This gives you more time to decide what steps you want to take, rather than reacting habitually. Stopping reacting means you can think more clearly about what will help you most right now.
- Make some space for not knowing. A common outcome of practicing non-judgement is to find you do not know what to do, when you stop your habitual reaction. This is a good thing. It can be scary – it contradicts our tendency to want everything figured out, quickly. But sometimes you have to stop what you normally do, to make room for new insights and options.
- A lot of musculoskeletal pain is non-specific – there’s no easily identifiable cause. Non-judgement helps you take pressure off yourself. You have not failed because you do not have a clear diagnosis.
- Even people with the same diagnosis may not have the same experience, or the same response to different treatments. It’s helpful not to compare your experience with others, or to assume you ‘should’ be feeling a particular way, because someone else did.
Five ways to practice non-judgement even when you have pain
Making small changes consistently can be one of the best ways to get started reducing your pain. You might think you have to wait till your pain eases before you can get started. Counter-intuitively, often it’s the act of making changes anyway, despite the pain, that leads to a reduction in symptoms.
Here are five ways to get started using non-judgement to reduce pain.
- Know how you talk to yourself. Strange to relate, many of your habitual conversations are so habitual, you don’t even know you are having them. To understand how you talk to yourself about your pain, what you believe about it, try making some notes. Hand writing slows the brain processes down, given you time to acknowledge what you are thinking.
- Sense how your self-talk impacts your body. Get into the habit of getting out of your head and checking in with your body. Notice areas of tightness or holding. What happens to your breathing if your pain is increased? Are you holding yourself rigid in any way? When you notice areas of tension or tightness, see if you can breathe into the area. See what happens if you reassure yourself, and ask your neck/shoulders/back etc to ‘let go’.
- Try the STOP practice. A short guided meditation that encourages you to meet difficult experiences and emotions by stopping, taking a breath, observing, and only then proceeding.
- If you find yourself stuck in a negative loop, try engaging the left and right sides of your brain. The seemingly simple act of going for a walk – moving left then right feet – or passing an object from hand to hand, across the midline of your body, helps engage and integrate the different sides of your brain. This can reduce stress, which will also have a knock on to your body’s ability to heal and recover.
- Some people notice that strong emotions or stressful situations can make their pain worse. If this is you, remember the 90 second rule. The physiological component of an emotion only lasts about 90 seconds in your body. It’s your ruminating mind and negative judgements that keep the relevant chemicals in circulation. So, when you find yourself doing or thinking something you suspect will make your pain worse, see if you can wait 90 seconds. Notice what you are thinking and feeling, but do not react. It will help stressors pass more quickly.
None of this is a magic bullet for pain. There is no quick fix for persistent pain. Patience and understanding your own experience, without judging it as good or bad, can help you find your solutions.
If you are ready to know more about using mindfulness to reduce pain, please do contact me for a free consultation. And sign up to my regular emails, as understanding more about pain is one way to reduce yours.
