Great article - Day 34 Breaking the Pain Cycle, by Alan Gordon, LCSW

K

Kevin Barry

Peer Supporter
Hi, I am on day 34 and just finished what I think is a really great article that I posted in the title and that you can access by going to day 34. From the start I have totally believed in the cause of my pain being emotional and that I need to stop thinking about it in ways that I have done all of my life. This article makes it clear to me that if I give the pain power I am really giving power to my underlying default emotion of fear and that is what I need to remember as I try to break the pain cycle. What I do with articles or whatever really resonate for me is I copy and paste them and save them in a file to go back and read them over again. This is one that I did that with because it really helped me understand the pain-emotion connection. Just an aside of how I am dealing with taking the power away from my pain. The term my hip is "barking" or my knee is "barking"is something we all have heard I am sure. When I first started the program I looked for ways to take away the power of the pain. When it would flare up I would start verbalizing the the word "bark" to imitate the pain barking. And it would go something like this, "Bark, bark, bark, bark . . ." that I would say to myself as I was walking which is when I would feel the pain mostly. It was a way for me to make fun of my pain to take its power away. After the first couple of times that I did it I noticed that the "Bark, bark, bark, bark . . ." sound that I was making actually sounded more like a chicken clucking than a dog barking which helped minimize the power of the pain in my mind. A chicken clucking is a lot less threatening than a dog barking. Also, being a chicken carries with it the connotation of being afraid rather than something to be afraid of. So I was able to put the label on my pain that it was a chicken, it was the fear itself and not something to be afraid of, and that I no longer had to fear it like I used to fear it like a big bad dog. The emotions behind the pain is really just a banty legged ole cluck-cluck and one day if I keep doing what I am doing it will just get the cluck out of here. And just for the record I am getting better . . . slowly, but it is worth the wait!
 
Fantastic! I love the idea of a chicken clucking. I sing nursury rhymes I make up. Such as Tms, Tms, see how it runs, see how it runs, you can't go at it with a carving knife, you can only stop it with good advice, its Tms, Tms. They are silly, but that's the point, isn't it?
 
Thanks Kevin, my first belly laugh of the day. I am going to try this bark/cluck technique. Maybe a bit of a laugh at myself. "a batty-legged old cluck- cluck" How could that not make a person smile.
Lainey
 
Kevin Barry said:
oh I thought I got it wrong and you were correcting me! always appreciate the whatever help I can get,
Click to expand...
no correction intended. . . . Just thinking of banty or even batty legged chickens makes me smile.
I tried your clucking method this afternoon while out and about. It made me smile, my pain was there but I was doing myself to ignore it and cluck away.
Lainey
 
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