Enduring physical pain made me take stock of my mental quagmire
I harnessed my mind while riding out an injury (leg)
When experiencing an ailment that requires complete rest and confinement to a room, a person’s mind inadvertently moves to the inside of one’s head.
It happened with me, very recently.
Numerous studies and research’s in the past few decades have consistently pointed towards a close association between physical pain and the onset of depressive episodes and symptoms of anxiety. I, too, was a firm supporter of this theory and have often enough helped people cope when they were facing mental health issues due to a physical ailment.
And yet I had a divergent encounter when i was healing from a leg injury. To start with it was not even a major injury till it got bad.I am going to save you the cringe by omitting the gory details of it. Anyway, the healing was slow and dragged. “ You just gotta wait it out”, were the exact words of my doctor.
The ‘ wait it out’ period turned out to be one of profound discernment for me. Each day I was zooming in, connecting and getting aware of my innermost fears, anxieties, personal bias’s and my recurring thoughts.
This astuteness was helping me gain control of all the tangible and intangible free-floating anxiety. I, for one, have self-proclaimed to be a high anxiety individual. This period of waiting out was the closest I came to unknotting the tightly woven web of thoughts I was forever in the grip of.
My injury was an angry and persistent one. It was not going to go easy on me anytime soon. Imperatively, I should have slowly slipped into a dismal abyss, but here I was smiling triumphantly at the fragility of my mind and it’s waywardness.
As my ‘ wait it out’ days marched on, I was getting numb to the pain in my leg and reconciling with my immobility. My meticulous self was now looking the other way at any unfinished or disorganised chore around me. I was not even guilty of doing away with my prior self assigned tasks and responsibilities( that’s another of my personality traits, ‘forever guilty’). I was asking for help when the need arose and was even enjoying the pampering that came my way(psssst…a gourmet meal served in bed). Was I turning narcissistic?. But hey, I was on a positive self-acceptance route, so no diversions allowed towards the negative side tracks.
My talkativeness was in check too, maybe I had silenced my thoughts by being mindful of them. Earlier, I was being propelled towards verbal diarrhoea by my monkey mind. I was now accepting and compassionate even towards it’s jumpiness. I understood the rationale behind it and was ready to take up the challenges of making changes wherever necessary. It was a call to action type of a clarity.
I was looking forward to my visible progress towards deep introspection and growth. I could sense it, almost smell it. It was a feeling of victory of sorts. A physical suffering had led me to reign in my mind.
“ Endure the pain in the sunrise, so when it’ sunset , there’s lot of profit to be gained”.- Seyi Ayoola
What could have led to existential anxiety even in the most calm individuals made me overcome my anxieties that were running across a longish spectrum.
As a mental health professional, one of my go to suggestions while providing support was that you need to get out of your head to get a fresh perspective on your issues. I, on the other hand, delved deeper into my mind and found myself making peace with whatever was going on in there and gaining a new perspective to my mental functioning.
It seems serendipitously, a not so pleasant happening turned into a blessing.
Some of the changes that transpired with my mental functioning were :-
- Deep reflection and introspection
- Cognizance and insight
- Reasoning and inference
- Fierce self-compassion
- Pragmatism
I’l pen off by this final observation that not everything has to go in one direction. Life may spring up many a pleasant surprise even in the gravest of circumstances. So let’s chin up and look out for that silver lining in a cloud.
“ Instead of worrying about what you cannot control, shift your energy to what you can create. — Ray.T.Bennett.
