Good things come to those who wait. And if you are dealing with chronic pain, you may well feel you have been waiting rather too long. Chronic pain is defined as pain that has gone on for more than three months. Most tissue damage heals within this time frame. Which is no consolation if you are one of the 30 per cent of people worldwide dealing with chronic pain right now.
Some people in chronic pain have a diagnosis – such as fibromyalgia or rheumatoid arthritis. Some people have pain from a previous tissue or nerve injury, one which has continued to hurt beyond the normal healing time. And some pain seems to come from nowhere, although recent research suggests the pain may be caused by your nervous system becoming over-reactive. And there could well be overlap between these different categories.
Wherever you are in your journey with chronic pain, the way you relate to your experience, the way you talk to yourself, and the actions you take as a result, can all contribute to reducing your pain, or making it worse.
Patience when dealing with chronic pain
Patience is one of the attitudes of mindfulness. Learning unfolds at its own pace, and it helps to be patient with yourself, and with others. There are a number of direct ways you might use patience to help you deal with chronic pain.
- Reduce frustration associated with ‘I should be better by now’ thinking. Increased stress can impede wound healing, and slow down recovery.
- Accept that retraining your brain takes time, up to two months as a minimum to embed changes visible on MRI.
- Be more present to what is happening right here, right now. It’s an antidote to any tendency to be rushing off into the future, a thinking habit associated with increased anxiety.
- Keep faith when progress is not as fast as you would like. Sometimes the benefits of practicing mindfulness take some time to show up in your life.
- Take pressure off yourself. You are you, and your rate of progress is yours alone. It does not have to match anyone else.
Five ways to practice patience even when you have chronic pain
No two people dealing with chronic pain are quite the same. And given you have made it to this website, you probably already know there are no quick fixes. And no one size fits all. When you bring patience to your experience you also bring greater compassion to yourself – and you are more likely to persevere when you have set backs.
Here are five ways to practice patience in your daily life:
- Get comfortable with waiting. Find yourself in queue at the shops? Or in your car? Embrace the opportunity to wait. Look around, what do you see? Notice what you hear? Is there anything you taste? What can you touch? If you do nothing else, take a conscious breath. Practice being, rather than doing.
- Listen more than you speak. If you find yourself impatient to make your contribution, try this practice to help. While you are listening to someone, keep 50 per cent of your attention on your body. Maybe the feeling of your feet on the floor, or your hands resting in your lap. Doing this while listening keeps you present. It’s a gift to yourself, and to the person you are listening to.
- Take up a new hobby. And notice how your body and mind respond to being stretched in new ways. If you were trying to learn a new language, or a musical instrument, you would expect it to take time. Can you bring this same patience to any activity, including being more mindful?
- Deliberately slow yourself down. Talk more slowly. Walk more slowly. Use a journal to write down what you are thinking about your pain – handwriting is great for making your brain move more slowly. And with the slowing down comes greater clarity about what you are thinking and feeling. Only when you can observe what you are thinking do you have an opportunity to challenge it.
- Are there certain circumstances when you tend to be impatient? Use them for practice. Notice how you feel. Where do you notice impatience in your body? Does it create tension? Does it increase your pain? If so, can you use your breath to soften the tension? And what happens when you do? Can you bring curiosity to your experience? A STOP practice can be useful to interrupt the pattern of impatience. Here’s a guided practice to help you STOP.
Bringing patience to your experience of chronic pain is not easy. Being aware of impatience helps you not put undue pressure on yourself. It helps you set realist goals and see them through.
If you have made it this far and think mindfulness might help you, I’d love to chat. Please get in touch for a complimentary consultation.
And sign up for my regular emails, as understanding more about why you get chronic pain is one way to reduce it.
