How I Resolved My Despair

Even when it still hurts.

Some of you may know I have been dealing with chronic pain for the past year. In truth, the symptoms have shown up since I was at least two. They morphed and emerged in different expressions at different times.

I didn’t start calling it chronic pain until this year because this year is when it turned from discomfort to intolerable pain. Pain that left me unable to manage anything besides a hot bath—if I was lucky. I’ll be sharing more details about healing chronic pain in the new year, but today I want to focus on how I resolved the heavy emotional experience of despair.

Despair shows up when we feel defeated.

It is a weight that pulls us down into hopelessness. In the well of despair lives no chance of improvement and no energy for creating change. Despair is the place we find ourselves when there is nothing left to do but die.

So we do.

We die to the need for anything to be different. We surrender.

Don’t worry. The surrender is not the big lesson here. Surrendering to my pain did not release my pain. In fact, there were times that it seemed like it got worse.

Each time I woke up in pain, felt pain arising during the day or was laying in bed another day, I became afraid. I was afraid that the pain was going to get worse and I wouldn’t be able to work. I was afraid I’d miss out on social plans.

I was afraid that the pain was coming in closer increments and the eventual landing point was being unable to function and live a healthy life.

This was not overt fear. I wasn’t lying in bed terrified, but when I looked closely, fear was in the background each time I experienced pain.

All year long I have been seeking understanding. My lived experience and the emotional excavation I’ve done didn’t seem to fit with what my body was expressing. But there it was, so I had to look at it, and I had to continue digging for answers. Finally, I found them, and they made so much sense to me.

Through this understanding, I felt total confidence I could heal myself.

…and then a few days later I spent a whole day in bed in pain.

This was a tough day. It was one of the worst I’ve experienced physically, but emotionally I was strong. Not once did I go into despair. The despair was gone because I knew this was only a setback. I knew what I needed to do to heal myself, and I have had so many years of emotional healing under my belt that I know how to apply what I have learned to the understanding of what is causing my physical pain.

One of the things I have learned is that the fear I was feeling when I was in pain was contributing to the pain itself. I knew that just because I was having a setback it didn’t mean I was regressing. I tended to myself very gently and lovingly, and I felt no fear in my body.

When you understand why you’re experiencing what you are, you have to remind yourself that you’re in the process. You remind yourself how to get yourself through. We often experience impatience when the mind knows something but we aren’t experiencing it yet. It takes time and commitment to integrate something we learn. We have to apply it and practice it so it becomes our reality.

Knowing it on the level of the mind is not enough.

When you don’t yet know why you are experiencing what you are, don’t lose hope. Stay seeking. There is so much information being presented to you, so much information available on the planet right now, and so many helpers here to guide you through.

The pain, whether physical or emotional, is the way through. It is the information we need to understand ourselves better. Through that understanding, we make the changes necessary to heal and better ourselves and our lives.

I’m working with a few people in a 1:1 setting if you need support finding your own way through. Enrollment to The Way Through closes on Thursday. You can learn more here.