SOOTHE ~ Parts of Me™ and Pain

There is something about pain that brought me into my body in a way that nothing else I have ever experienced did. I realised at the time that this was part of my learning. In my life, I had spent a lot of time ‘out there’ not fully present or grounded in my body due to not feeling totally safe in it.

Despite understanding he deeper why, it did not make living this experience any easier as it had with others. Pain just sucked. It was a real leveller for me.  

There was no way I knew, that I could frame pain to make it easier for me to experience it, day in day out. It bought me to my knees (actually I couldn’t be on my knees they were way to swollen and painful - so bought me to my knees metaphorically speaking). It made me realise that we are all capable of the entire spectrum of human experiences given particular motivations and circumstances. Waking up every day to the relentlessness of the pain experience, made the future feel very bleak and hopeless for me. With no diagnosis, I didn’t know when, if or how it was going to end.

Feeling my body dying slowly, was traumatic to say the least. Pain relief did nothing. I felt like I was on a train that I knew was going to crash, was calling for help from everyone including God. No one heard. No one helped (apart from my amazing husband who ironically felt totally helpless). No one saw the urgency of the situation. No one believed the train was going to crash. No one is, but me. Me and my husband alone. Together alone (I tried to shield him from my darkest thoughts – be probably sensed them anyway and so in his own way, he was also alone with this).

Searching for a way of thinking, feeling and managing pain that made my life doable led me down some interesting paths. One path included a well-meaning person telling me that pain was there, but suffering with it was optional. I was suffering. I was aware I was choosing to suffer – it felt like my only option. The pain was so all-encompassing and so that is what I did. Suffer.

Pain was my constant companion except for an hour or so before waking. Then every morning, I would wake filled with dread that today would be like yesterday – scared to move knowing the world of hurt that I would find upon doing so. Often, I would stay still as long as I could to get some respite. Next, I would take a deep breath and brace myself as gently as I could for what was to come. Tentatively unfurling my limbs, moving against my cramping muscles, I would prepare myself to move patently aware I needed to go to the toilet rather urgently. Some days I would make it, some days I wouldn’t.

This was my every day. It was my horizon too. It is all I could see at that time. Hope was hiding from me while despair confronted me.

Another path found me being advised to “Embrace the pain. Make friends with it”. I was dumbfounded. “Are you fucking kidding?” I screamed in my mind. I wanted to slap them. I wanted to shout. I wanted to cry. Instead, I went mute. I withdrew.

Thinking ‘I don’t want to embrace this pain. I don’t want this experience. I don’t want to make friends with it. This pain is trying to kill me. You fucktard.’

Anger built in me. How could someone say such a thing? Don’t they know what pain is? Have they never experienced great pain? Turns out they had. Knowing that didn’t help me understand it or why embracing said pain worked for them.

I knew I needed some way of being with the pain, but that was 100% not it. As hard as it was to hear such a suggestion, it did propel me to find a way of relating to the pain that felt doable and OK for me. It also brought me to accepting that I was in pain, it was my experience and so I began to own it. By owning it, I found a space where I could begin to act and do something about it. And this is I what I came up with…

I call it ‘Parts of Me™’. We operate in dualities all the time. These dualities create the contrasting experiences which are the spaces we reflect in and learn in. Quantum physics says an electron can simultaneously exists in two places (at least) at once and therefore, so can I – infinite in fact.

While Part of Me ™(a version or me if you like) is having this experience of pain, another Part of Me might be climbing Mt Everest quite happily, another dancing wildly at sunrise, while another is kayaking the Nile and so on. The pain is not me – it was an experience that one Part of Me (maybe a few) was having. It was not all of me. It was not all of whom I am or all of what I was experiencing. Thinking about it this way enabled me to create space between the Part of Me™ having the experience of pain and the rest of me who was OK.

In this space lay possibility, potential, healing. In this space, I was able to compassionately and lovingly embrace the Part of Me having the pain experience and accept them, listen to them, attend to them in the ways they needed me to.

I don’t know what is going to help you, or work for you. But do keep searching for a way of finding as much peace with pain as you can. I do know that ‘where there is a will, there is a way’.

Do what you need to do to make it doable (lots of do’s I know).

As it turns out, God/Universe answered rather swiftly. Within about 10 minutes, I found exactly what I needed to get through and really kickstart my healing journey.

How can you relate to or frame your pain (be it physical, emotional or spiritual) in a way that feels OK to you?

What parts of you crave expression and acceptance?

How can you acknowledge and accept them?

If you would like to find ways of managing your pain, moving through the pain experience and getting back to living in wellness and a life you love, check out my comprehensive and personalised 12 session Whole, Healed and Healthy™ program at www.anayasmiley.com. You can also book a FREE no obligation 30-minute call to power up your

 healing journey right now via my website. I’d love to meet you.

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Anaya Smiley © 2024. No part of this work can be reproduced in any way without the written and explicit permission of Anaya Smiley.

This blog is not medical advice and should not be considered so.

Before making any changes, always consult your primary physician first.