The sign off at the end of my backtoactive bites emails is “take it easy”. This isn’t me being quirky, it’s like a low level philosophy I try to imperfectly follow.
It comes from having a history of more than a decade of awful back pain, and doing a lot of trying hard to sort it out. In the all the ways you might imagine. From doing ALL the exercises, to getting all the treatments, and researching therapy after therapy.
But I also worked very hard in ways you might not think about. All things that are completely normal and understandable, but that I realise now were part of the reason I stayed stuck in pain.
- Pretending I was coping
- Pushing through and not pacing
- Having a lot of emotional pain and grief due to living with pain, but not accepting those feelings
- Fulfilling my obligations to others (mostly) but leaving no time or energy for joy
- Not accepting that I had pain and I had to start working with it instead of fighting it.
There is another way
When I started to learn other ways to manage pain lots of it was no brainer stuff once it was shown to me:
- Good posture is easy posture? Fantastic, just show me how.
- Rest that isn’t just crashing or sleep is essential? Great, just give me some guidance!
- Exercise for pain is about soothing your nervous system not normal exercise goals – I see, so just show me how that works in practice!
But taking it easy by being kinder to myself was harder. I think its the key for a big subset of people with pain. You aren’t out of condition. You aren’t unmotivated. You just need to take it easy – in all kinds of different ways that can actually be really difficult.
- Being less hard on yourself.
- Asking for help a little more.
- Pacing – in a way that prioritising your happiness and fun.
- Acknowledging that having pain is hard, and letting yourself have feelings about it.
It can happen in baby steps, but this stuff needs to shift for pain and stress to shift. For me, I was lucky the shift was complete, slow to happen, but the pain did go in the end. This won’t happen for everyone, but luckily it’s all stuff that helps you feel better, cope better and have a better life, so it’s never a bad approach.
So, please… take it easy
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