Pain is a mindset

What if I told you that much of what you interpret in your body as pain is mostly in your head? This will likely piss a lot of chronic pain sufferers off, but hear me out. I promise to change your perspective.

Pain is subjective

Pain is a very subjective feeling. What is painful to a ballerina is mostly likely excruciating to anyone else. Not every sport or art form requires you to bleed on a daily basis while making things look easy, but ballerinas learn to manage early on by taping our feet, using Second Skin and sticking our feet in an ice bucket. Even the most seasoned ballerina suffers daily. Then you have kids who learn to skate and fall once and are terrified to get back on the ice again. As a Learn to Skate coach, I try to help them overcome their fear, but also my head cannot grasp how something so insignificant like one fall, could deter someone from a sport where you fall at least 10 times a day. Some say I just lack compassion. To some degree, that is right. But extending compassion to others is easier for me than extending compassion to myself, so whatever tiny ounce of compassion you get from me, consider it a treasure and an act of love.

Remember two things as I go down a rabbit hole: I am a chronic pain sufferer and I lack compassion for myself. Both facts are extremely important.

Diet and lifestyle aren’t the only factors

My favorite class in college was a stereotypes in the media course. This course is why I cringe at the idea of “persona development” in marketing and product development. It’s just one giant stereotype exercise, but I digress. Recently, I was reading The Invisible Kingdom Reimaging Chronic Illness by Meghan O’Roukre and she talks about how historically African Americans tend to have higher rates of chronic disease (diabetes, heart disease etc.) than other demographics. An uninformed person would say, “Oh it’s their diet, oh it’s their lifestyle, oh it’s genetic.” Those aren’t root causes.

The truth is that a black woman in America is more likely to die giving birth than their counterparts. In a very dummy’s book to US history, what do we know about the Black community dating back to as early as the 1950s? We lived with a segregated United States of America where ‘negros’ as they called them, were not allowed into medical school, colleges, employment and restaurants. They even had a separate water fountain, treated like a lesser human. There are common elements of this story that also apply to Native Americans and Hispanics. And we are still have the audacity to blame their diets? Minorities have been living under chronic stress conditions for decades — sometimes enslaved, discriminated against and targeted by employers, police and neighbors. And yes, you can say being a woman makes you susceptible to chronic illness. Your fibromyalgia is not in your head.

My own journey

I’ve always had a high tolerance for pain so when I was diagnosed with endometriosis at the age of 19, I shrugged my shoulders and was like oh well. I never felt the urge to have kids so if I had them great. If I didn’t have them, fine. My biological clock never ticked. I was always focused on external achievement (education and work) and children were a life sacrifice I was never that excited about. They felt like hard work and it’d be very difficult to control the outcome of their lives. I also knew I’d suffer a lot as a mother. I’d want the best for them and if they weren’t the best, I knew I’d parent them hard. I also knew I couldn’t be that easy going parent who let kids get dirty at the playground. Who would want a mother like me? While we are at it, who would want me as a wife? My exes describe me as persnickety and a hard ass. When I let loose and seem to be having fun — those moments are rare — and usually a margarita or two has been had. I can be the life of the party and my closest friends will tell you, their most fun memories usually involve me. I’m just not there all the time. Sometimes I’m very deep in my own thoughts and inner mess. I sound bipolar, but I’m not. I’m just traumatized and didn’t know how to express myself before.

Doctors cannot be trusted

My doctor at the time, who I trusted explicitly (and why I will never trust another doctor again) took me on a roller coaster of hormone therapy that included the breast cancer drug Femara. This forced me into medical menopause (temporary condition) at age 23 and made me temporarily osteopenia. They wanted to give me medicine for my bones, but afraid if I had children, it would cause deformities. I was put on Metformin, the ‘longevity’ drug that David Sinclair is touting for keeping glucose levels down. Knowing what I know now about glucose levels as a continuous glucose monitor user, I was insulin resistant and hypoglycemic. I didn’t need Metformin. I needed a better diet and lifestyle. I also took Lupron and Depoprovera. My brain stopped working. This is important to note because at the same time I was an investment banker on Wall Street. I worked 80 hour weeks, powered by adrenaline, caffeine, American Chinese food and no sleep. I’d sometimes make stupid mistakes like transpose a number, which had serious repercussions on my work. I didn’t talk about what was I going through at the time because of the shame of having a reproductive disease. We didn’t have the internet widely available. We didn’t have social media. There was no “omg me too” or “thank you for sharing your story with us.”

My life and health is very different now. I’m considered to be at the “elite” level of heart health. I no longer have endometriosis-like symptoms. I look back at the best years of my life and I cannot help but get so mad at the medical profession. I don’t trust them. I don’t think they all know what they are doing. I will forever rely on technology and science versus some outdated education system and improperly incentivized insurance and healthcare system. And for anyone who knew me back then, I’m sorry for making you stay up late trying to figure out what was wrong with my financial model. I wish I could do it over again and not taken the drugs that were supposed to help me.

Chronic pain is a body that has been through too much

My body has always hurt just a little but if you ask me, when did my chronic pain begin I was 36. Interesting enough, this was 10 years ago when I was in the middle of launching my startup, dealing with the stress of a team, investors and cofounders. I had recently graduated from Harvard, had over $100K in student debt and gained another 20 pounds. Yeah I made things happen — but at what price? Mentally I was a mess. I was dealing with extreme anxiety, I couldn’t sleep, I have always struggled with low-grade depression (think Eeyore). What happened next?

I shut down my startup, joined Dialexa and my coworker Steven Ray was really into health and fitness. I’d say he was probably one of the first biohackers I’ve ever met, before biohacking was even mainstream. We’d talk about nutrition and diet. Tim Ferriss made the ‘slow carb’ diet popular. MyFitnessPal was the new kid on the block. We all had our FitBits and competed against each other to see who walked the most. Everything was competitive at Dialexa at that time. Even getting to the office was competitive — who could check-in on Foursquare first and become the Mayor. I lost 30 lbs in 3 months and then….my hip started hurting. For years, I would complain about my hip. Finally, after two years of pain and a clicking sound, I went to the doctor. I had a torn labrum. Huh? From walking? From sitting? They injected it, I went to physical therapy. Nothing helped. We talked about surgery but the doctor said to me, “Your pain is not caused by your labrum. It is something else. We see this in women a lot. [gaslighting much?] At your age, approximately 60% of women have a torn labrum.” What. Once again, the medical profession disappoints.

Some of the pain I currently feel right now is caused by my journey to become a competitive figure skater after being a sedentary adult who has been through the wringer. How do I know this for sure?

I’ve had a different hip pain for almost 9 months now. It started two weeks before my competition last October. Even my coach mentioned she has never seen me so stressed about a competition. Buried under all this emotion was the fact that I had broken both my leg and wrist, six months apart. This would be my first competition back. I put an incredible amount of pressure on myself to “make a comeback” and I wasn’t going to go down easily. I landed the holy grail of adult figure skating “the axel” in competition. Truth be told, I never thought that would happen, especially at my age. I don’t know why I thought that. I’ve never not landed an axel in competition. They haven’t all been wonderful, but they’ve all been credited as axels. The pain continued. It got so bad that I had to take the axel out for my qualifying competition. The week after my season was over — the pain went away. I have a different pain now — it’s in my groin but it’s too early to call it chronic so I’m actively working to strengthen so I can hopefully get back to working at the same level I was before. I’m also paying attention to my emotional state as that is what will tip the scale to this becoming a chronic condition.

TL;DR what I learned about chronic pain

Once I realized that my chronic pain was a result of my deeper, sometimes traumatic life experiences, I changed my mindset towards the pain. The first thing I did was go off all medications. No more painkillers, no more ibuprofen, Lyrica. If I felt pain, I took a CBD, ginger and turmeric. I also hired a trauma coach. It’s as weird as it sounds. This isn’t talk therapy. This is role playing so that we can get into the subconscious and unlock information so I could later process it. The ‘later process it’ is a work in progress. I’m not very good about feeling my feelings. Default is to shove them into a closet until they become too much to bear and then spill out on the unfortunate soul that triggers me just right. I don’t recommend not feeling your feelings if you want to fully heal. Journal, talk, think, walk away. Whatever you have to do.

Do not accept the belief that you are a chronic pain sufferer and that is the cards life handed you. I think sometimes we want to feel special or fragile because it is the only way we can convince ourselves that we deserve compassion — something has to be truly wrong with us — a medical diagnosis, an injury or a mental condition. You don’t need to be sick to deserve compassion. You deserve compassion period. The Dalai Lama will not kill an insect because the insect’s life is worthy. Don’t you think you are worthy too? My lack of compassion towards myself boils down to one thing: I do not feel worthy of it. It is hard to change ingrained belief systems, especially as a first generation American. Children of immigrants are going to be traumatized, even if their childhood was full of every opportunity imaginable. Some of us were never allowed to be kids. We had to dress for success. Playgrounds were for children who didn’t have to worry about whether they’d break an arm or leg and end their aspiring ballet career. Let me tell you something, every single person on this planet, even the rich kids who grew up in Highland Park in Dallas, will be traumatized in one way or another and 9 times out of 10, the relationship they had with their parents will reveal a lot of information. Best to come clean with yourself and make peace with that. Understand everyone did their best to help you grow into an adult, but as an adult, also try to understand your triggers and where your limiting beliefs, no longer serve you.

Today, I use pain as a compass. If something hurts, is it a stored emotion, am I experiencing stress or do I have a biomechanical weakness? Pain is information. That is all it is. It is not a death sentence. It is not permanent. It is there to serve you, to help you better understand yourself and to help you overcome your limiting beliefs.

If any of this resonates and you want to dig in more, here are some resources for you: Joe Dispenza, John Sarno, Paul Conti, Nicole Sachs is doing great work too (She wrote the Meaning of Truth), Bessel A. van der Kolk who wrote the Body Keep Score. I also enjoyed The Invisible Kingdom by Meghan O’Rourke. She helped me understand how chronic stress plays a role. Also, Andrew Huberman just did a podcast with Paul Conti on trauma.

I recommend going to the library and checking these books out. I check out so many books at a time that I have a part-time hobby of investigating all of my intellectual whims.