Category: Healing Not Healed

After getting divorced when I was around 11 years old and both having gotten remarried, my mom and my dad announced this week that they’re playing together in a band, at what’s going to be their official public debut, on my birthday, this month.

To add a little more context, my parents were in a folk band with several other friends when I was a child, that slowly fell apart as life happened to the band mates. Fast forward to around two decades after their divorce, and my dad reached out to my mom to see if she wanted to join a little band practice thing he started in his basement with a few other friends. She eventually agreed. The band grew. The practices continued and the sound kept improving. And now, today, they’re ready to share what they’ve created with the public and jam again.

The reason I share this with you is to remind you that when you can confront your pains, learn to forgive and find common ground, evolve/grow, and lead with compassion and understanding… you get to move on and do other things with your life. Things that don’t revolve around the ruins of the past, but feature new growth that sprouts into the future.

P.s. This is their announcement poster and band name (lol).

In reply to my recent post on pain, a reader asked, “I think you were talking more about metaphorical pain, but in regards to physical pain I’m curious what your thoughts are. If I play basketball and my feet hurt, as long as it’s within reason, the solution is to play more basketball. What do you think? Is the pain the solution?”

My response: It might not always be as simple as keep playing basketball—although it could be.

I look at physical pain as a signal. A signal that’s trying to show me something about either my body or the thing I exposed my body to.

When I would run, I would often get spasms in my neck/shoulder area. That was a signal that my neck/shoulders needed more stretching—both before the run and as an ongoing preventive measure.

If I would workout and it caused excessive soreness… it was a signal that the muscle was intensely challenged and needed more attention/reps to be built up.

If an exercise caused injury, however, then a deeper exploration was needed. Deadlift, for example, is an exercise I had to remove from my routine altogether. I would repeatedly throw out my back regardless of how clean my technique was. This was a signal that I just had an injury-prone lower back and deadlift wasn’t appropriate for me. So, I opted for bodyweight and light/moderate resistance exercises instead.

And so, yes, I would still say the cure for the pain is in the pain—not to say we keep doing the same things blindly—but because it’s only by exploring and interpreting the signal of the pain that we can determine the appropriate path forward.

I shared a quote the other day to MoveMe Quotes that said, “The cure for pain is in the pain” by Rumi and commented, “Lean into it.”

To which someone replied, “What a load o shite. Lean into it? Really? Pain ain’t a Tug o war team. For some, it’s unbearable. Don’t lean into it. Get help!”

To which I replied, “Getting help nicely aligns with leaning into it. The point is simply not to avoid it/ suppress it/ run from it/ drown it in distractions, drugs, desires, etc.”

“Lean into it” is an expression I’m quite fond of in regards to this topic.

It implies a humble and aligned confrontation with the uncomfortable that isn’t forced, rash, or too intense.

It implies a calm courage that’s ready deal with whatever has been causing the pain… without haste—which further implies a willingness to persevere for the long haul (not being in a hurry is an excellent sign that you’re committed to the process).

…Because pain isn’t something that’s just cured and then gone from your life. Pain is something you have to keep leaning into. Something you keep confronting. Something you keep displaying a calm courage towards… not with the expectation of curing or solving it… but, with the expectation of understanding it, better managing it, and not exasperating it.

The cure for pain is in the pain.

…But maybe not all at once. Maybe by just a little bit after each session.

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What you do for yourself when you’re physically sick are the same kinds of things you should do for yourself when you’re mentally sick.

…And I don’t mean mentally sick as in innately twisted or morally malevolent… I mean just temporarily “under the weather” and like you’ve been infiltrated by some kind of “virus of the mind” if you will.

This could happen from being overworked and exhausted, from a hurtful comment from someone you love, from the loss of someone important to you… etc.

Being mentally “under the weather” might sound like:

• “I’m worthless”
• “I can’t do anything right”
• “Nothing I do is ever enough”
• “I’m a bad person/friend/parent/spouse”
• “There is so much more I should’ve done, but didn’t do”

What are the doctor’s orders when physically sick?

• Rest (including time away from normal obligations like school or work)
• Hydrate (so your body can keep things moving smoothly throughout your body—including the defeated sickness cells after our immune system is done with them)
• Maybe medicine if the symptoms get bad enough (things to either add immune system support or help you endure the pain/discomfort of the symptoms)

And what might we do to deal with a virus of the mind?

• Rest (including time away from people/places/things that might’ve infected your mind in the first place.
• Hydrate (by keeping fresh, mentally hydrating thoughts pouring in from high-quality sources)
• Maybe “medicine” if the symptoms persist or get bad enough (getting mental immune system support by having conversations with insightful friends, loved ones, or a therapist)—which I’d say is about as close to “mind medicine” that isn’t actually mind medicine as it gets.