When I was 10 I tore ligaments in my
left ankle while playing tennis, when I was 17 I tore them in my right ankle
while doing aerobics. When I was 24 I tore a ligament in my right knee playing
netball and in my late 20’s my lower back began to hurt due to all the long
distance running I’ve done. And they say
sports good for you right? I recently went to my sports masseuse who said that
all the later injuries could well have been caused by that original tearing of
my ligaments back when I was 10. You see when our bodies experience pain a
system called the ‘withdrawal reflex’ kicks in. It
is the system that works in such a way
that when we feel pain our bodies quickly and without conscious recognition,
adjusts to change what we are doing in order to not feel that pain anymore. An example of this would be when you sprain
your ankle, messages are sent to the brain saying ‘ouch’, this activates the
danger threat and the response is a reflex resulting in you hopping on your opposite
foot and taking the weight off the injured foot.
Clever ehh? How helpful!
Well, not always. You
see much like my own body, when your body doesn’t heal the original pain you
get a nasty knock on affect which can lead to other pains in the future. The
withdrawal reflex helps short term, but actually adjusting all the time only
leads to an imbalance and more injury.
This doesn’t just apply to our physical
bodies but our emotional bodies too.
“Self-preservation is behavior that
ensures the survival of an organism. It is almost universal among living organisms.
Pain and fear are parts of this mechanism. Pain
motivates the individual to withdraw from damaging situations, to protect a
damaged body part while it heals, and to avoid similar experiences in the
future”.
When we experience emotional hurt we adjust, we put in place
things that will avoid the pain and protect us from being hurt again in the
future. Ever decided after your last
break up to never let anyone hurt you again? That’ll be why your still single.
At the end of the day if you don’t get close to people they have less chance of
hurting you right? What about that absent parent? Surely learning to be utterly
independent will ensure that you never need to depend on anyone again right?
Yes, this will definitely ensure you wont’ ever feel let down by the one who should
have been there for you. What about the
self loathing? Surely a nice sugary chocolate
bar each time you hear the internal criticism will take that voice away and reinstate
you as the loving person you know you are. Yes, that cigarette will be your
companion rather than experience the pain of singleness and that bottle of wine
on a Friday will be the most excellent reward for making it through another
week at a job you feel too inadequate
for.
We all do it, we all avoid pain by creating ‘pleasures’ in
our life. The trouble is, these
pleasures are lies, they are false, they are placebos. You see when we avoid
pain, we in fact create more. The life of solitude breads loneliness, the
chocolate creates weigh gain, the cigarette Lung cancer, the lack of intimacy
anxiety and body tension, the wine, addiction and what’s the solution to these new
pains? More avoidance – solitude can leads to meaningless sex, weight gain can
lead to diet obsessions, the wine is an issue so let’s just swap it for drugs.
And so it continues. What we think free’s us from our emotional pains, in fact
binds us more! Our emotional alignment adjusts too much and our emotional posture is that of
an 80 year old!
Go back and deal with the original source of pain. Don’t look for plasters to cover it up and
quick fixes to make you feel better. Expose the wound, sit with the pain and accept
it, only then can true healing begin and this is where the true beauty is.
“The most beautiful people are those who have known defeat, known
suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the
depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding
of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern.
Beautiful people do not just happen.” – Elizabeth Kuble Ross
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