Chronic Pain Runs Deep
Physical and emotional pain
Fear, pain, anxiety and depression or any form of suffering should only really be with us as an immediate response to injury, organic disease (e.g. cancer, MS.), or a current relational or environmental challenge. Physical pain and emotional pain are both expressions of distress in a system and are inextricably linked.
Many people today however, experience these symptoms of chronic distress as ongoing, without apparent reason. Or maybe it expresses in a slightly different way and we experience a big exacerbation of symptoms after a relatively minor physical or emotional incident. Others may find they have a significant health challenge, but then also endure a prolonged and difficult recovery. Syndromes such as ME/CFS, fibromyalgia and post viral fatigue are now common and could be included in this category of illness.
Chronic pain is different from acute pain
Chronic pain is different from acute pain. Suffering and discomfort that hangs around for a long time and for no apparent reason means that the nervous system may have become sensitised and is holding on to a pain pattern relating to past difficult experiences. Feeling bad without a clear cause can be worrying and stressful, and this in itself can deepen the pattern.
We each have our own unique set of past experiences that shape us and also have our own particular way of responding to stress, illness or injury. When old pain patterns held in the body become the primary cause of our distress, it can be interpreted not as a sign that we are failing, but optimistically, as a call back to health. It can become an opportunity to understand how we have come to be organised in such a way that pain has become a prominent theme in our lives.
Making sense of it
Biodynamic Craniosacral therapy offers a framework to help make sense of the way that we are feeling. Experiencing chronic pain does not mean we are broken. The frustration and despair that often accompany these conditions can be met here with understanding and a concrete plan and pathway to recovery. Using the guiding principles of craniosacral therapy, we can begin to undo the knots and habits that keep us bound into these difficult expressions by learning how to slow down and really, properly, listen to what the body is communicating through the symptoms - there is no other way really.
Insight and new perspectives
To do this we have to start by developing our sense of psychological safety and building capacity to hold feelings of discomfort with compassion and curiosity. With this it becomes possible to not be so reactive and fearful which in itself is very helpful. When we can hold the felt sense of the discomfort calmly and with some clarity and presence, the whole system loosens. With more room to sense ourselves, we can discover new perspectives and insight about what we need to let go of in order to be free.
Restoration of self agency
If there is a simple way to encapsulate what the process of recovery involves here, we could say that fundamentally, it’s a restoration of self agency. Gaining the self perspective capacity to finally see the limiting patterns that we adopted in our younger years as a strategy to survive, is a really big step. Furthermore, being able to hold and contain those activating patterns in the present, in a context of perceived safety, from an adult viewpoint, is profoundly empowering. A sense of self agency is a powerful antidote to a nervous system circling around a feedback loop of fear.
Craniosacral works in a very gentle way through the body, which, in it’s own time begins to feel familiar again, like home.