Have we been sold a lie our entire life? We are told P A I N is a nuisance. Pain is unpleasant. Through advertising about the latest painkilling drugs and the newest techniques to relieve symptoms, we are raised to think that a pain-free life is a happy life. Society views this common emotional experience as a pathological experience. But would we know pleasure without knowing pain? Is pain something that gets in the way our life? Or does it allow us to experience life?
Earlier this week I was at the nail salon and a mother came storming through the door in a cloud of panic. This salon is in Highland Park Village. So, if you are familiar with Dallas, you’ll understand the stereotypical woman I had encountered. As I sat there across the room, I couldn’t help but listen. She was loading cases of water in a hurry before dropping her children off and school and had torn one of her manicured nails. Blood and tears were involved. As she sat in the chair waiting to get to have the acrylic nail removed, I overheard her saying “I wish I would have sliced an open wound. That way I could just swing by ER, have it numbed, stitched and be on my way.” I watched her sit impatiently, in pain, tears in her eyes, scrolling on her iPhone waiting for the acetone to remove the acrylic. I thought of recent moments I have been in pain. Physically and emotionally. Had I reacted in this way? Was there a divine orchestration that had happened that morning for her to take a second? To be present and notice the life that was unfolding in the moment. Was the universe giving her time to slow down and B R E A T H E?
I know more of us are guilty of this situation that are willing to admit it. Moments caught up in our to-do list when we cannot possibly have time for something outside of our schedule to be happening. We interpret it as a burden, a nuisance, an annoyance. BUT as humans we haven’t always thought this way. According to literature, painful experiences didn’t actually start being referred to as an annoyance until the early 1900’s when the phrase, “pain in my neck” became popular.
First of all, what is pain? Pain is a brain signal interpretation. It is a sensory and emotional experience. An experience that signals the brain to respond, in THAT moment, to its surroundings. Many describe it as an unpleasant or annoying one, but I’d like to challenge if that is always the case? Is pain P U R O P O S E F U L beyond serving as a defense mechanism?
Our brain is constantly receiving feedback from the body allowing it to know where the body is in time and space. The brain receives continuous afferent signals, but what creates these “unpleasant” bodily perceptions and information for your brain? Nociceptors!! Although there are multiple scientifically classified types of pain, these sensory receptors fire when an alarming sensation is sensed and send signals from the spinal cord up to the brain. There are portions of your brain that activates a network involved in deciding what signals to pay attention to. Painful signals are a high priority and brought to immediate consciousness. Meaning that it brings your awareness back to the present, back to the stimulation that is occurring in THAT moment.
What is this “painful” feedback received by the brain telling you? To simply pay attention? To slow down? Or might I suggest it is giving you a reminder to be exactly where you are in that present moment! Not in the future, or in the past. There is a P U R P O S E. Pain interrupts everything we are thinking or doing and creates a focus on what is happening in the here and now; something I wish I could have suggested to the mother in the nail salon. Next time you feel pain will you interpret it as an inconvenience or take it as a chance to be in the moment?
-M