Meditation for pain management and mental health
When my headache and seizures started I quickly learned that I could kind of ball up the pain and shove it away… just like emotional pain… Of course, in physical, or emotional pain, this is probably not the recommended procedure. But I was a disabled single dad with a full time job. Who has time to deal with pain?
Other than just forcing the pain away I thought I would try meditation. It worked fairly well, for pain management, but when I meditated a lot of stray thoughts would surface.The more stray thoughts I had, the less the meditation helped in pain management. In meditation I keep hearing people say to clear your mind, so I would try to stifle the thoughts.
With physical pain I could hide it away, but had to release it before I could relax and sleep. It was a temporary fix. With emotional pain I could bury it deep and ignore it, mostly. This is where much of my emotional baggage came from. One day I realized that it was not just random mental noise bothering my meditation but mostly my emotional baggage surfacing. I had been pushing tha stuff down my entire life. I decided it was time to unpack that emotional baggage and stop carrying it around with me. As good as that sounded, I was unsure where to start.
As I meditated I would let the thoughts surface and I would investigate them. I no longer saw them as intrusive – and pain management was temporarily no longer my goal. The problem was that what came up first was all the big stuff. I was not ready to deal with most of that yet. So, major trauma – particularly parents – got pushed back down…but gently.
I would have to deal with my emotional pain so I could meditate to deal with my physical pain. It sounded good in theory. The idea was to take each thought, or incident , and deal with it, finally. I was really surprised at how small and petty some of it was. I am sure at the time it all seemed quite important.
Triage – Sorting the Trauma
Some of the “trauma’ honestly was pretty minor. To the 8 or 12 year old me that shoved that pain away – it was important. As I examined those I could see that they were minor and could simply let go of them. So far so good. Other issues would require more work.
Starting with the smaller issues seemed to be working well. As I dealt with larger and larger issues I learned to deal with them better. I would look at each problem, and each person involved, and try to look at all sides of the problem.
- Why did this happen?
- Was I at fault in any way?
- Were they just being assholes?
- Can I let it go?
- Is it still a problem?
- Should it ever have been a problem?
In answering these questions I would avoid victim blaming but would try to honestly see if I could learn to deal with things in such a way that I could avoid some of this in the future. Quite often, particularly with older issues, I had already learned how to deal with it. I just never thought to inventory my emotional baggage and unpack it.
One of the early lessons I had to learn was to look at the situation from the other person’s point of view. This helped me understand the why. What makes a person a bully or to lash out? What were they trying to achieve? Was I really the target, or did I just happen to be in the way of their anger at their own issues?
My first major breakthrough was to realize that most people are not bad people – they are just damaged. I spent most of my life as a scared 10 year old. Many people, I suspect, are the same. They are slaves to their baggage as much as I have been.
Most of the bullies were simply reacting to their pain… whether the bully was a kid or an adult. I honestly had more bullying from teachers than from other students. I spent most of my life as a scared 10 year old, my father was a hurt 5 year old, I do not know what everyone else is, but it seems that many people are spending their life running from their life.
Forgiveness is for Yourself
If you can learn to deal with your issues as they arise you will be a more well balanced adult. From what I see around the world… that is uncommon. Everyone thinks they are messed up and that everyone else has it figured out. As if you missed a day of school where they gave the secret of life. Nope. We are all screwed up, some more than others. We think we are the abnormal one, but what is “normal”?
Realizing this really helped me deal with others better. Most of the time someone hurt me, emotionally or physically, it was honestly not personal. They were damaged people reacting poorly, and I was the unfortunate target. This does not excuse bad behavior, but it helped me understand it.
Over the years of unpacking (it was many) I was able to deal with the smaller issues and start on the big stuff. School yard bullies, kids and teachers, were pretty easy to let go of after 30 years. Family issues were numerous, and much harder to unpack. Some of the abuse would surface and get put back in for later, much later.
My father wanted to be a good man, a good husband & father, a good provider… he was none of these things, and that made him angrier. None of this was my fault and I could do nothing about it at the time, but in retrospect I can understand him better.
It was not really his fault either. It was just life. Life is pain, at least that was the lesson of my youth (and a great quote from the movie Princess Bride).
Forgiveness is really for you, not the offending party. I have heard that holding a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die. Half of the junk I was carrying around was caused by dead people – well, they are dead now, not when they caused it. These folks are long dead, why am I still carrying around their trash? Forgiving them will do nothing for them, it is for me to move forward. And for the ones still living, I can forgive them, let go of the issue, and move forward, but that does not mean I have to let them back into my life. Cutting a toxic person out of your life can be very healthy. I am not holding a grudge, but I do not have to share dinner with you.
Leftovers
Towards the end I had dealt with almost all the emotional baggage. I did have some leftovers that were not able to reach any resolution. Hopefully your leftover pile is small. There are some things that simply should not happen. If you can get that far in this self semi-therapy there are a few options for the leftovers. You can try and continue to come up with a resolution, you can repack it and keep carrying it around, or you can shrug it off and say “well, that happened” and just let it go.
Letting it go is what I chose to do. If I could not forgive, justify, or understand… I just let it go. I did not exactly deal with it so this may not be the ideal solution.
If you can understand the other person’s life it may help you understand their choices, but some things should never be done to a child. There is no excuse, there is no reason, and it certainly was not my fault in any way.
For those things I had to just walk away from it. I may not be “healed” of that event, but I am not going to carry it around any longer. I will move forward, and have a better life.
And on the plus side, I can now meditate better to deal with my physical pain. After all that is what started this whole exercise.
Years later, I was reading some Buddhist literature and found many of the lessons I had taught myself. Particularly books by Thich Nhat Hanh… apparently I am naturally a Buddhist?
