From Chronic Pain to Passion

Tips from a chronic pain recovery therapist

Healing is activism and activism is healing.⁠ Here’s what I mean…⁠

Emotions are not pesky symptoms caused by cognitive distortions.⁠⁠

Emotions are how our mind-body system is designed to respond to our experiences.⁠⁠

Emotions like joy let us know when something is good for us.⁠⁠

Emotions like sadness let us know when we need some extra tender loving care.⁠⁠

Emotions like fear and anger let us know when something is wrong and it needs to be addressed. Fear and anger are not error messages. They let us know when there’s danger and when our boundaries are being crossed. They are crystal clear signals.⁠⁠

However, we’ve been taught by obedience culture to ignore those signals sent by our emotions. We’ve been taught, instead, to obey authority figures — even when they’re telling us to go along with things that are bad for us, like allowing ourselves to be exploited, undermined or controlled.⁠⁠

Having been trained to ignore the crystal clear signals of our emotions, we wind up creating distortions to manage these emotions.⁠⁠

We feel angry, but we’re not allowed to challenge the status quo, so we distort our emotion into self-blame or acting out or scapegoating instead of addressing the status quo head on.⁠⁠

We feel angry, but we’re not allowed to express ourselves authentically, so we suppress our feelings and our nervous system explodes with symptoms like anxiety, depression, chronic pain, inflammation, etc.⁠⁠

In order to heal, we need to do things that obedience culture tells us not to — like listen to our emotions and express ourselves authentically. Which is often at odds with obeying authority and accepting the status quo.⁠⁠

This is why, in my opinion, healing is activism and activism is healing.

➡️ If you need support with chronic pain and anxiety, take my FREE QUIZ called “Why the *bleep* am I still in pain?!” so I can help you get some clarity.

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