Chronic Pain: Somewhere Between Obsessing and Giving Up

Maybe This Will Help: How to Feel Better When Things Stay the Same (pictured above) by my friend Michelle Rial is a book of clever charts about navigating grief and chronic pain.

Listen to the audio version below:

I suffer from chronic migraines.

My “condition” is a big part of how I experience the world and navigate life, work, and my relationship with myself. I don’t talk about it a lot—except when it gets really bad—because I don’t want to come off a drag, a flake, or a broken record. Pain isn’t sexy or clever or fun to be around, so I usually stuff it down. Besides, I don’t want to be in pain so I often pretend that I’m fine. Because of this, my pain has become deeply isolating.

I’m currently in the throes of a very private battle over one agonizing question. “Do I surrender to the pain or do I fight for relief?”

This is one of the many unknowable questions my pain asks me to consider. I’ve decided that pain—like any bodily challenge—like life—is a state of inquiry. It’s a conversation; not something to “figure out.”

The truth is that I don’t know how to live with pain. Not really. Sure, in some ways we’re intimately acquainted. I’ve been both accepting and resisting it for ten years. I know how to manage it, usually. But every once in awhile, the pain brings me to my knees in a puddle of deep, unknowing humility.

In the early days, I viewed my migraines as a problem to solve; a beast to conquer. I wouldn’t accept what was happening to me. “Figuring out” my migraines was my mission. I was in action mode. I devoted millions of precious life-minutes to researching, appointments, and trial-and-error. It helped, but also it didn’t help.

The past few years, I swung the other direction. I went through a long period of trying to accept (ignore?) my migraines because I was oversaturated with other priorities. There was no fight in me left for this particular issue, so my migraines and I learned how to coexist. I downshifted my migraine attention to “neutral,” no longer trying new things, talking to doctors, or viewing the pain as a problem to solve. I started to see it as a fact of life, in that grim way that’s just a hair’s breadth away from giving up on myself. This also helped, until it didn’t.

And now, the pendulum is swinging back toward the middle. I recently admitted to myself that my pain needs my attention again. Not in that obsessive, all-consuming, speeding bullet sort of way. I simply realized that my usual coping mechanisms aren’t working for me right now. My quality of life could be better.

I have enough experience that I’m trying not to assign meaning to this shift. I don’t want to obsess about what’s causing more intense episodes. I’m trying to simply accept that things have shifted, and my pain now requires more caretaking.

Being a caretaker is hard, even when I’m caretaking myself. As both the suffering patient and the fatigued caretaker, I’m having a lot of feelings about it all. As a caretaker, I’m cycling through the same struggles I would if I were caring for someone else. I love my body and want to care for myself. And also, it’s HARD. Caring for this chronic condition is an unrelenting, draining, inhibiting, frustrating, and often thankless job. But I’m here for it.

My pain and I are ready to take our relationship to the next level. As I do this, I want to flow between acceptance and resistance.

Acceptance is knowing the pain is here to stay. It’s living my life hand-in-hand with migraines. This pain is not my fault, and the amount of control I have over it is small. When I practice this surrender deep in my body, I feel a release of the holding, inner resistance, and muscle tension that makes the pain worse. Acceptance offers me some freedom.

But I won’t let acceptance hold me to impossible standards. I don’t believe in detaching from the reality of pain—trading in my trusty pills for the promise of becoming so enlightened that I’m above the suffering. I’m still human. I can still hate that this happens to me, cry in frustration, and curse the sunny days I have to spend in bed. But I’m going to love myself through all that, rather than fighting it. Acceptance means: this is really hard, and it’s all welcome here.

Another nuance—I can’t let my acceptance slide into denial. When my pain gets to a certain point, it needs tending. I won’t bypass my pain so much that it isn’t acknowledged. I won’t suffer in silence, barrel through it, or give up on a better quality of life.

That’s why I’m currently welcoming back resistance. Resistance is the flame within me that (understandably) got extinguished a few years ago. I need to get my fight back.

Sometimes pain is the body’s cry for help. My body has been crying extra hard lately, and it needs support. I can't go numb, accepting this crappy status quo without question. As activist queen Angela Davis says, “I am no longer accepting the things I cannot change. I am changing the things I cannot accept.” Resistance is critical - for self-care and collective care.

When I make a decision to do something, I tend to do it at 110%. I apply rocket fuel to everything, indiscriminately. (I’m working on it.) But instead of resisting my pain with 110% of my energy, I’m going to gently push back on it. I can’t go all-in on this mission again, but I’m not abandoning it either. I imagine it feeling more like a several-years-long-marathon than a sprint.

I'll resist by advocating for my pain without derailing my life. I want to get curious again, reevaluate, take some small steps, try a few things. I deserve to actively care for myself; to fight for my right to feel better.

I’m going to aim for something between doing nothing and being obsessed.

As I resist, I’m also going to practice detaching from the outcome; to try not to get my hopes up. I don’t plan on spending a ton of money or up-ending my entire lifestyle. Been there, done that. Instead, I’m looking forward to resisting with a light touch, being curious about what helps, and knowing things may not change much. But at least I won’t be giving up on the possibility of something better.

Sometimes accepting a cry for help as "normal" is a betrayal.

Other times, accepting the reality of an unchanging situation is a relief.

This is the see-saw we ride as we care for ourselves and each other through hard times. As we try to live in this broken-but-beautiful world, we cycle through resistance and acceptance. Some days we suit up to fight, and some days we take off our armor and sink into bed.

There are times to lean into Being and times to lean into Doing. There are also times to laugh, because joy gives us something to fight for.

My conditioning wants me to stay quiet when I’m hurting. It tells me that I shouldn’t talk about healing until I’m healed; that I shouldn’t share my confusing struggles until the problem is solved and I can tell the story with a smile on my face. By writing this, I’m acknowledging that this pain is part of my story. It can come out of the basement and into the fresh air. It doesn’t make me weak or less lovable. It makes me human.

Maybe we can bond over our shared experience of pain, just as much as our joy. Maybe we can celebrate the struggle just as much as the relief. I’m here for it.


P.S. Maybe This Will Help: How to Feel Better When Things Stay the Same (pictured above) by my friend Michelle Rial is a book of illustrated charts about navigating grief and chronic pain. It’s funny, insightful, relatable, sad, and clever as hell. I recommend it to anyone who’s “tried everything.”