Pain should be taught more

I think our society has an aversion to anything painful or unpleasant and it’s done a real disservice to those of us that ply our trade in professions that require use to interact with those two factors. You think pain is bad, that’s your first mistake. Let me guess the first sign of pain you take a painkiller?

I won’t shame you for it, it is the conditioned response. If you can’t sleep, you take a sleep aid. If you have pain, pain killer seems like the obvious choice. Yet, that’s not right. The reason is that a lot of pain killers are really toxic and it doesn’t take long for them to build up. Building tolerance is quick. So if you go taking them for every stubbed toe, you’re going to be in more pain if you ever break a leg.

Not just that, if you exceed the recommended dose you destroy your kidneys, hours, days weeks or years it’s an awful and painful experience. Either your kidneys or your liver.

There are other things pain does though. It releases helper chemicals throughout your body. I learned this from years of body building and working out. The pain from working out sends the chemicals that repair the sore muscle. It sends happy chemicals back to your brain, making you pleased that you worked out, feel satisfied. It makes you want to sit still and not exert yourself, those hormones specifically fill you.

You knock out the pain, you won’t get that hormone plug. You could over exert yourself, and people do. You could feel miserable.

Anyway I’m writing all of this to say why I’m glad I lean into listening to my body, and not taking pain killers. It’s part of a holistic approach I’m trying to get into of letting my body do more of the work. Today hurt, all day, still hurts. Yet, that pain seems to be doing good things, keeping me indifferent to how insanely busy we’ve been. So what? It’s always like this. I do the work, as fast as I can as well as I can. There’s no emotion in it apart from what joy I can withdraw, because I’ve got all the grief I can stand right now. The world is cruel and unyielding, I don’t know how much I’ll be able to get out of it.