An excerpt from the acclaimed book – Master Your Chronic Pain: A Practical Guide – by Dr Nicola Sherlock
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Train Your Brain to Beat Chronic Pain: Learn how to Work with your Thoughts and Manage the Stories in your Mind
We have talked quite a bit about the fact that everyone’s mind is always chattering and generating stories, many of which are very familiar to us and which get replayed over and over. We know that people who struggle with anxiety have a mind that likes to tell scary stories! Often, vivid images accompany those stories.
To illustrate this, I will tell you a story about my own life. Many years ago, when I was training to be a psychologist, I was asked by my clinical supervisor to do a presentation to a group of parents. Although I had some public speaking experience in the past, this was the first time in my clinical training that I was being evaluated on my presentation skills.
As the evening of the presentation drew closer, my anxiety levels started to increase. In the hours before the presentation was due to start, I was experiencing many of the bodily anxiety symptoms that I described in the last chapter. My mind was full of chatter and the main story that was being played out went something like, “You are going to mess this up in front of your supervisor. You are going to get up in front of all those people, and you won’t know what to say. They will think that you are an incompetent fool.” Coupled with this story was a very vivid image of me standing in front of a group of people stuttering, red-faced, and looking like a fool. Thankfully, despite my nerves, I managed to complete the presentation but the anxiety symptoms were far from pleasant.
We know that when people have difficulties with anxiety, their minds often tell them stories that make their anxiety worse. Just like my experience, these stories and images just add to people’s worries, and can be so familiar that we don’t even notice them. This is how mindfulness meditation can be helpful; regular practice can help us tune into and notice our thoughts and stories. If we can recognise these stories as just stories, we can develop the capacity to prevent ourselves from getting hooked into them and believing them.
In the example from my own life, above, what do you think would have happened if I had really, truly immersed myself in the story that I would mess up the presentation and make a fool of myself? It’s likely that I would have made up some excuse to get out of doing it. I would have pretended that I was sick or that there was an emergency at home. This would have been problematic for me in the longer term, as presenting information is a big part of a psychologist’s job. Because I knew something about managing anxiety as a result of my training, I recognised that these stories were just stories, generated by my mind in an attempt to keep me safe, to stop me from doing something outside my comfort zone. I knew that my mind, like all minds, was exaggerating the danger.
While this knowledge didn’t make the anxiety go away (I was shaking like a leaf when I got up to speak), it did allow me to ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’. Because I had developed the capacity to take a step back from my thoughts, to recognise them as just thoughts, my anxiety was unpleasant but I did not avoid what was making me anxious. Incidentally, presenting to groups of people is now a big part of my job and it is one of my favourite things to do at work – this teaches us that…
>>> Anxiety decreases bit by bit if we continue to do what scares us <<<
Train Your Brain to Beat Chronic Pain: Ways to Manage our Tricky Mind
Your mind uses lots of tricks to try to keep you safe.
- Your mind will exaggerate the danger. “You will make a fool of yourself,” “Everything will go wrong; it always does.”
- Your mind will jump to conclusions. “That pain in your chest means that you are having a heart attack,” “This dizzy feeling means that you are going to faint,” “The last time you went for a walk, you paid the price with your pain; if you go for a walk again, you will be crippled for days.”
- Your mind thinks that it can mind read. “Your boss thinks you are stupid, he regrets hiring you,” “People think you are boring.”
- Your mind likes to tell you “what if” stories, like “What if you have a panic attack in the supermarket?” “What if you go to the party and have to leave early because you are so sore?”
- Your mind likes to label you. “You are a born worrier; you always were a worrier and always will be a worrier,” “You are such a loser; you could never accomplish that, you are too anxious,” “You are not a well man, you couldn’t do that.”
These anxiety-provoking thoughts fuel the vicious cycle of anxiety.But we don’t have to let this happen. We can learn to notice the thoughts and recognise them as being thoughts that our mind is generating in an attempt to protect us. We can then have the freedom to decide if we want to take on board the thought, or if we want to just notice the thought but not act on it.
It can also be helpful to consider the costs and benefits to you when you notice an anxiety-provoking story.
In the example from my life, described above, I recognised that if I chose to take on board my anxiety-provoking story (“You are going to mess up”), it could have implications for my career.
Train Your Brain to Beat Chronic Pain: Engage in Problem-Solving
We all have things in our life that we worry about from time to time. Some of the things are outside our control, whilst we can potentially change or make others better in some way.
It can be hard to accept that there are some things in life that we cannot change or control. As humans, we don’t like uncertainty and things being out of our control; we are much more comfortable dealing with predictable situations. Unfortunately, in a lot of circumstances, we can’t have 100% certainty and control, and we cause ourselves unnecessary distress trying to achieve it.
However, there are situations in life that cause us to feel stressed or anxious that we can do something about.
>>> Sometimes there are practical things we can do to help our situation and reduce our worry <<<
In this case, adopting a problem-solving approach can be helpful. I have outlined the steps involved in problem-solving below.
- Identify the problem.
- Try to list every way that you can think of to overcome the problem. Write down anything and everything. You might find it beneficial to ask other people for advice.
- Consider how you have solved similar problems in the past, what your friends and family might advise, and how you would like to see yourself dealing with the problem.
- Work out the pros and cons of every solution.
- Pick the solution(s) that works best for you.
- Break down the solution into smaller, more manageable steps if possible. Move through the steps at your own pace.
For more information on how you can master your chronic pain, check out Master Your Chronic Pain: A Practical Guide