How to Get Rid of the Pain
Sitting in the waiting room, fighting back years. Fifth doctor in as many months. Very little hope left.
I’d felt this pain off and on for almost a decade, but in the last year it had gotten worse. Prickly pins up and down my arms, sometimes in my chest too. Light pricks at times, sometimes hardly noticeable, but other times deep and stabbing, unbearable.
Crying has become the norm. I can be sitting at a family dinner, everyone chatting happily around me, and know the tears are coming. Or out with some friends and suddenly I feel the sting of tears. The pain gets worse and worse until I can’t hold back the sobs. I often have to leave social situations. I can manage the pain better when I’m alone, distract myself with TV or keep busy with various tasks. Time can go by so slowly at family gatherings or work meetings, though. Too much time for the brain to wander, and it always lands on the pain.
I’m embarrassed by the tears, embarrassed that I don’t have control of myself and that I can’t bear the discomfort with stoicism.
The first doctor I went to dismissed me quickly. He said he’d seen this before, it’ll go away in time, take some Tylenol, and wait it out. I had hoped he was right, but it didn’t get better with time — it got worse.
Another doctor said there was nothing she could do but she suggested some affirmations. She said this had helped her other patients. When the pain gets bad, she said, look in the mirror and say, “I do not have pain,” at least ten times. Eventually your brain will get the message and block the pain signals.
Needless to say, that didn’t work.
I was optimistic when one doctor said he had medication that could help. He prescribed a drug that I knew many people were on. It bothered me that I heard of more and more patients taking this drug — a wonder drug of sorts. That always makes me skeptical.
I tried the medication, though, because I was desperate for relief. It took a few weeks for it to kick in, and then I felt somewhat better…for a while. After a few more months, the pain came back though, worse than ever.
I was at my wits’ end when a friend suggested the doctor I was waiting for now. I felt so discouraged, certain that I would be in this pain forever. I didn’t want to try another doctor. I had very little hope that she would know anything different or better than the last one.
My friend swore by her, though. She said this doctor had a unique ability to see the real problem — the underlying problem. So I agreed to try.
The waiting room looked the same as any other. I gazed at the other patients and wondered what their stories were. Finally, the nurse called my name.
I didn’t have to wait long in the small exam room until the doctor came in. She smiled brightly and introduced herself. She asked me to tell her what brought me in.
I explained to her the nature of my pain. It feels like sharp, tiny stabs all over my arms. Sometimes they’re just an annoyance, not too unbearable, but more and more often the pain is excruciating. When the arms get really bad, I start to feel it in my chest, too.
She nodded her head and jotted down some notes. After a brief pause, she looked at me kindly, and said, “You know you’re holding onto a cactus, right?”
I immediately felt hot in the face, indignant, as if it could be that easy.
“No, I’m not.” I asserted. But I refused to look down. There’s no way I was causing my own pain. It had to be something else.
The doctor leaned back in her chair. “You can keep holding it if you want. I’m not going to make you put it down. But if you’re ready to not be in pain anymore, I give you permission to let it go.”
I turned away from her, as if trying to hide something. I felt exposed even as I denied it in my head. I felt the hundreds of pricks in my arms and decided to take a glance, just to see if she maybe, perhaps saw something I couldn’t see.
I slowly lowered my chin and strained my eyes downward. Sure enough, there was a large, round cactus in my arms, covered in tiny, sharp spines that were poking into my flesh. I was hugging it tightly, as if it were about to run away.
I loosened my grip slightly and looked up at the doctor in amazement.
“What…why…what is this?” I sputtered.
“It’s okay that you didn’t know,” she said, “Most of my patients don’t. And many other care providers don’t see it either.”
She continued, “It’s weird, but when we have painful stories about ourselves or our lives, our tendency is to hold on tighter and tighter to them over time. That’s just what humans do. Most providers haven’t had the training I’ve had to know how to show patients that they can let go and set themselves free. Once patients see that they’re holding a cactus, I don’t have to teach them how to let it go, they just naturally do.
“Of course, you’ll pick up other cactuses in life. You might even pick up this one again sometime in the future. That’s part of living this human life. If you have this type of pain again, look to see if you’re squeezing a cactus. If you’re not sure, you can always come back to see me, and I’ll help you recognize it.”
I was overwhelmed by all this information. Could it really be this simple? I guess it’s one of those things that is simple but not always easy. Our natural tendencies often make the solution difficult.
But I felt more and more relieved as the truth of this dawned on me. I relaxed my arms and let them down to my sides. It felt so much better! No more sharp, stabbing pains. It was amazing.
I still felt the remnants of the pricks on my skin, but I knew that would get better with time. I couldn’t believe that I’d finally found the right person, the right answer. I understood that I’d have the pain come again in the future, but what a relief to know how to handle it when I did.
*I attended a writing workshop at a conference recently. We were instructed to write something unexpected, something allegorical. I love this analogy of our painful thoughts being a cactus we are determined to hold on to. It was fun to make it into a surprising story. In the story, the pain is all emotional (although for me, the tears were real!) and the doctors are different mental health providers or self-help programs or books. The final doctor, the one who correctly “diagnosed” me, represents my life coach (trained at the Life Coach School). I still have problems come up, but I have a framework for how to deal with them. The mind management principles I write about here have helped me so much, and I continue to apply them almost daily.
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“Disappointment comes in the gap between expectation and reality.”
