Are you using a carrot or a stick approach for your pain recovery? Are you gently allowing your body to ebb and flow with the pain and doing activities that relax and soothe it when you can? Or are you giving your body a hard time? Berating your body for letting you down? Speaking harshly to yourself for not walking far enough, meditating long enough or eating the wrong things?

Why does it matter?

Our thoughts, moods, and emotions have a profound impact on physical health. Whenever we experience a specific emotion or thought, neuropeptides transmit messages between the brain and body. These peptides, which link our perceptions in the brain to our emotions and bodily responses, are constantly shifting in response to our changing emotional states. When our mental and emotional balance is disrupted, neuropeptides may trigger physical symptoms in the body.

Neuropeptides, or nerve proteins, are chemical messengers that regulate nearly all life processes in our cells and facilitate communication between them. These peptides, small fragments of protein produced in the brain and throughout the body, include examples like endorphins (our “happy” hormones) and serotonin (the “feel-good” chemical). The discovery of neuropeptides bridged the connection between the body and mind, as, in the words of Candace Pert, “the chemicals that are running our body and our brain are the same chemicals that are involved in emotion.”

Our mental and emotional state plays a critical role in either strengthening or weakening the body.

Emotions and attitudes—such as love, joy, hope, optimism and self-compassion—promote health-enhancing chemicals that relax the muscles, boost immune function, reduce fatigue and have a restorative effect on the body. In contrast, emotions like fear, anger, shame, or guilt release chemicals that put us into more of a fight or flight mode causing the release of cortisol (the stress hormone) and adrenaline, which prepares the body to face danger by increasing heart rate, blood pressure, muscle tension and energy mobilisation.

If this stress response persists for too long, the build up of these chemicals can affect multiple systems in the body, leading to issues like memory problems (brain fog), energy regulation issues (chronic fatigue), digestive dysfunction (IBS), mood disorders (anxiety/depression) and chronic pain. Does this sound at all familiar?

So how is your internal dialogue? Could you be more compassionate?

Why is self-compassion important? If we are not practicing self-compassion we often find it hard to attend to the more emotional side of our chronic pain recovery. And whilst emotions are not ‘bad’ or ‘good’ we need to be aware of our emotional state to aid recovery from chronic pain.

Why? Well supressing or repressing emotions can actually increase pain levels. One analogy we use is to think of your body as a container. What happens to the container if you hold in your thoughts and feelings? Imagine if you are doing this for a long period of time, like everyday at work for example. What happens to your container then? Does even imagining holding in the thoughts and feelings make you feel tense and agitated? If so read on for how to change it.

Now, we cannot just blurt out all our thoughts and feelings all the time… although sadly in the world we are seeing a lot of that happening… but if we become more compassionate towards ourselves, we are more likely spend a little bit of time each day processing and soothing our stressed out systems. This will also help quieten our inner critic which decreases the stress that we are adding an already overwhelmed system. The peptides of self compassion are different to those of anger, shame and guilt.

Having the compassion to spend time naming emotions, understanding them and processing them will help change the container/body and all the processes occurring within whether neural or hormonal.

Here are some quick and easy ways to help change your pain through self-compassion.

Journaling

One of the best ways to do this is with journaling. Offloading all your thoughts and feelings at the end of the day, positive or negative. Think of it as your daily download. Just spend 5 minutes writing everything you need to get off your chest. You can say what good experiences you had that day, thoughts and feeling you noticed and rage on the page if necessary. If you want to find out more about journaling for chronic pain relief then visit our journaling page here…

Self-Compassionate Touch

Another super simple and quick (20 seconds a day!) technique is self-compassionate touch. A practice of sitting with a hand on your heart and on your belly, where you just breath and quieten your inner critic and foster a moment of self-compassion. Just sit and breathe loving kindness in and out. It takes a moment to get going because it feels a bit odd but just try it and notice how you feel before you start and when you finish. If you find it helpful try to make it a habit; the easiest way is to attach it to something else you do every day-when you have a cup of tea or coffee for instance.

To find out more about self-compassionate touch have a listen to The Science Of Happiness Podcast where Brittany Luce, host of NPR’s “It’s Been A Minute,” shares her experience and researcher Eli Susman also shares the fascinating science behind this practice. Showing how effective it is despite being short and sweet especially if you find ways to make it a habit.

Self Compassion Guided Meditation

Sometimes being self-compassionate is a struggle, especially to start with, so here is a guided meditation that will help guide you to integrate and be compassionate to all parts of your self – even the parts that are hurting.

More Resources

We have a playlist on the Change Your Pain YouTube channel with other helpful resources to foster self-compassion. You can check it out here…

“If you want others to be happy, practice compassion. If you want to be happy, practice compassion.” ~Dalai Lama

This is a quote heads up a great article from Tiny Buddha about understanding the Mind Body approach for Chronic Fatigue that you can read here…. It beautifully demonstrates the changes that can occur with self-compassion.

Individualised Support

If a lack of self-compassion is an area that you have identified you are struggling with alongside your chronic pain or fatigue, then working with our SIRPA trained practitioners can help. They can help to identify and incorporate the parts that are important to your recovery. Our Mind Body approach looks at your whole health story including any emotional factors that may be relevant and can help guide you to incorporating more self-compassion into your recovery. Contact us, or book a free discovery call, to see if we can help ease your pain.

Here to support your recovery – Pippa