Stop Identifying As A Chronic Pain Sufferer || WBWL Ep 91

Chronic pain is something that many people have or deal with in their lives.

There's are a large majority of these individuals who identify with chronic pain.

Chronic pain "sufferers" embody chronic pain, and they interweave it into every facet of their lives, from the things they do, the conversations they have with people, the communities and forums they join, etc. And this has a tremendous impact on your quality of life, as well as lowering the possibility of you ever getting rid of chronic pain for good.

This is a message to those "sufferers", and to change your mindset to think otherwise.

Hope this will hit home for you; it did for me when I too felt like I suffered with chronic neck pain and thought I would never find a solution out of it.

But I have; and I want to share those tips with you too.

Transcript

0:01

What I want you to do right now, if you're suffering with chronic pain, is stop telling yourself this self fulfilling prophecy. I am a chronic pain sufferer. Because as soon as you identify as something, You start to hard embed that into your DNA, metaphorically speaking, of course. So there's a vast difference between if you're saying you're a chronic pain sufferer versus just somebody that's dealing with some sort of persistent pain. Both people may be dealing with the same type of pain, but one person is going to take vastly different actions. So I'm going to tell you why, because identity is something that gets hard rooted and embedded So I'm going to tell you why identity is something that gets hard rooted and embedded into everything that you do, because as soon as we identify as something, we start to reflect on the actions that we take. Those actions are going to yield a certain result, and that result is therefore going to perpetuate certain beliefs about ourselves. So chronic pain sufferers is exactly this, and let me know if this sounds familiar. Chronic pain sufferer therefore seeks out treatment, some sort of manual therapy or something, has some sort of therapeutic benefits. And therefore, you go home, the pain comes back, and therefore, it creates a vicious cycle, and then you repeat that over and over again, and therefore, you start to feel depressed, you start to feel overwhelmed, you start to feel a specific instance of, I'm not worthy, or I, I'm not financially well, my relationships are poor because I am a chronic pain sufferer. So the thing here is that if you identify as such, again, it's going to reflect on all the negative actions that you might take. You may never be able to get out of chronic pain because you strictly identify as such, okay? It's the same thing like religion, if you're Buddhist, if you're Christian, if you identify as that, then you're going to start to reflect those beliefs. If you're somebody that says that I'm a great Video game player. I'm a great athlete. You start to identify you start to actually take the actions you start to embody That specific person so I identify as an athlete. So how do I identify as an athlete? Guess what? Guess where I'm filming things. I'm filming it in a gym I'm also wearing shorts and I pretty much wear a tight tank top or a tight t shirt every single day because this is my identity I am a reflection of everything that I do. I work out seven days a week Every day, even when I'm not filming things, I'm pretty much like working out with my kids, I'm involving my kids in everything that I do. So this is me. This is my identity as an athlete. I also identify as a physical therapist. I identify as that person. I love helping people to resolve injuries and resolve pain. This is my identity. Okay, but if you're going to identify as a chronic pain sufferer, then you're going to take exactly the actions. You're going to reflect that, you're going to wear that on your skin, you're essentially going to tattoo that onto your body and letting people know that I am a chronic pain sufferer. So how do you change that? Start to change some of the Negative inflections and words that you say to yourself, okay? This saying that I always say too is that we oftentimes have 99 negative thoughts, but only two to three of them are actually true. And those negative thoughts that we bring on to ourselves is a reflection of the actions that we're going to take. But if we simply just say that I am somebody that simply deals with a chronic pain or I have pain once in a while and that once in a while this pain can be rectified with certain measures like exercise or other strategies, then you start to not You start to take off that identity, you take off that mask that you've embodied yourself as a chronic pain sufferer, and you can finally say to yourself that chronic pain is just a small entity of my life. It's not an identity, it's not a part of my genetics, I'm simply just dealing with it once in a while. Okay? Because I've had, elbow injuries, I've had shoulder injuries, maybe knee injuries that have lasted three months, six months. I've had injuries as long as maybe even nine to twelve months. Okay, but essentially chronic pain is defined as any sort of pain that is there for longer than three to six months. So that's defined as chronic pain, and if I identify it as oh, I have this cartilage here in my knee, and so I'm a chronic pain sufferer, then I probably, that would probably interfere with like my ath, my athlete identity. That would interfere with the, a lot of the identities that I have. And so therefore, I can start to feel overwhelmed by that. I start to feel more clouded, right? Chronic pain starts to feel like a cloud that follows you everywhere you go, and you can't leave it, okay? So rather than, again, having this identity factor, start to just say to yourself that pain is just a small entity that I deal with once in a while, okay? So a saying that I always say is that, pain, I don't live with chronic pain lives with me. I don't live with chronic pain, but pain lives with me. If you live with chronic pain, that means that you're saying to yourself that chronic pain, just like a house, chronic pain is bigger than you. But if you say it the opposite way around, that pain lives with me, then that means you're the bigger entity. You're bigger than this pain. Pain is just one small factor that is a part of your life. You can still enjoy the many aspects of your life that still are great. Whether you go to a restaurant with your family, whether you exercise once in a while, you enjoy those hikes that you used to do. Many years ago, you can identify as somebody like a grandma or grandpa that can still play with their kids despite having maybe some low back pain, but you still enjoy that part of your quality of life. That way, these other identities, these other hats that you wear, become a stronger identity than what you perceive, right? That this chronic pain sufferer, if I simply just say that pain is, An entity of what I have, right? Not what I am, but simply like pain is something that I have once in a while. And again, am and have are very different terms, right? Am is like you are identifying versus I have this once in a while or I deal with this once in a while. It's vast, it's a vastly different terminology and perception of what pain actually is to us, okay? So I used to back, back in the day when I went through two car accidents in my early 20s and I had a lot of other family tragedies during that time is that I was identifying as a person that suffered with chronic neck pain. I suffered with it. It embodied me. Every action that I took was like I was going to a bunch of different offices, massage therapists, chiropractors, trying to figure out the root cause. Then I would go home. I would just mope and be depressed about my situation. I was like, Hey, how can I, if I identify as this person with chronic pain, can I embody these other hats and these other identities that I want to be in the future, such as being a father being an athlete again. Okay. I know I couldn't put on these other two identities as a father and as an athlete, which I am now. Because this chronic pain had this chronic pain identity was so overwhelming and it was so fixating onto my body again Like a tattoo that I couldn't think of anything else and it made me very sad depressed Anxious about my life and everything that I did was I just had to hide it, right? I can be with my family be you know Be present to an extent but everything that I did I was just thinking about my pain every single day I just thought about pain And nowadays, now that I've smarter I've learned how to fix the pain through like exercise, movement, nutrition, sleep, and all these other factors, change my lifestyle, change my habits, moving more. Now I no longer identify as that as that. I identify as the things that I wanted to be. Okay? And you can do that as well. You can have identities. If you can't get rid of the identity because maybe it's enrooted into you, Then start to perceive that these other identities that you have these other hats that you have Start to make those more magnified start to believe that you are a you know Despite me having chronic pain or maybe you still identify as a chronic pain sufferer Maybe you can still tell yourself that i'm still a strong mother, i'm still have i'm still grandma I'm still grandpa and these are the things that matter most to me Okay, these are the things that I will never give up So if I can identify more as these things And maybe those identify identities become so strong that maybe you're like, okay, if I want to take care of my three year old grandchild who you know, who runs around and I can't keep up, maybe I need to start empowering myself. to do more exercise, to start jogging more, to start to get my cardio up. Maybe I start to eat better and start to put on more muscle. And then maybe that strengthens my identity as a grandfather or grandmother that wants to always be there for them and not just watch from the sidelines. Those identities eventually will potentially kick chronic pain sufferer. Identity to the curb because your identity your other identities become that much stronger Okay, but eventually as these identities get stronger, maybe eventually you can essentially permanently Remove that hat of you being a chronic pain sufferer and simply just saying to yourself that pain is Essentially just a normal part of life every single person that I know There's no person in the world that doesn't say that they have chronic Pain once in a while. Okay, that'd be very dangerous if we didn't have pain telling us specific things, like if I didn't have pain in my upper back after sitting for a long period of time, then pain would not be alerting me to get up and stretch, to move more, to get some sunlight to de stress. Then I would simply just be suffering even further, right? So pain is just simply a knock on the door, just letting me know that something could be modified at this point, okay? Something could be modified, okay? If my knee hurts that is, if my knee starts to hurt and it persists over a long period of time, Then maybe I need to start strengthening the muscles around the knee. Maybe I need to start doing my own self care, start foam rolling more. Or maybe I need to start strengthening my hamstrings and my quads. And again, it empowers you to tell you that, Hey something is going, is off kilter, and maybe I need to fix that, okay? So this is all about just, not necessarily changing your identity, but starting to have, embody other stronger identities that can overwhelm this chronic pain suffering identity as well. Okay, so as soon as you can remove the identity piece, the sooner that you can start to empower yourself and fix some of the things that are going wrong in your life and stop thinking daily, almost hourly about pain because it's so deeply embedded into you, okay? Start to empower yourself through other measures, okay? That's what I got for today. If you have specific questions for me definitely let me know. Also, if you're watching this on the Won Body Won Life podcast, definitely leave a five star review. And also, if you have any specific things you want to say on a review, that can be through Apple Podcasts, Spotify, feel free to write something about our podcast to let us know that you're actually getting a lot of value out of it. And also, if you have any if you have any feedback for us, definitely send us an email, either jason@flexwithdoctorjay.com or also you can text us 415 965 6580 and feel free to let us know how we're doing. Okay. That's it. That's what I got for today and I'll see you on the next one.