Ferndale, attending to your anxiety is benign. Ignoring the anxiety doesn't mean there's less of it, you're just distracting yourself from the anxiety that is there.
Eugene, good question! Like anxiety, pain is a danger signal. You could even think of psychogenic pain as a physical manifestation of anxiety.
Attending to pain is fine, the goal is to attend to these sensations free of fear. It can be hard for some people to attend to their pain without fear, because it's scared them for so long. But if you're able to, that is just as effective. Later on in the program, I'm going be going over a technique to help you learn to attend the sensations of pain free of fear.
Good question. Without getting into the physiology of it, most people are constantly distracting themselves from their anxiety; running from it. This avoidance just further perpetuates the fear. Imagine if you had social anxiety. Constantly avoiding social situations just serves to reinforce the fear. Leaning into these situations in a safe, mindful way, can help teach your brain that they are in fact safe.
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Alan has completed the new Pain Recovery Program. To read or share it, use this updated link: https://www.tmswiki.org/forum/painrecovery/Dismiss Notice
