Developing a relationship with your pelvic pain
“Killing the Pain”
From a pain science perspective, those with chronic pain, (including pelvic pain, endometriosis, interstitial cystitis, etc) can have a heightened sense of imminent danger as their body attempts to protect them from new experiences of discomfort and suffering. This guarding can create added patterns of muscle bracing, tension, and holding. Learning to work with chronic pain is a process of trusting your body’s capacity for neutral and pleasant sensation. Sometimes this means that it’s not necessarily the pain itself that changes or “goes away,” but rather our relationship to it that evolves over time. As a practitioner, I can’t promise that we’re gonna “kill the pain” or “destroy the pain” (I don’t abide by these metaphors, because I see pain as a necessary protective mechanism that deserves respect), but I can promise that we can shift the relationship to it.
That’s why when I give out exercises and homework for clients, we work collaboratively to see how it can fit into their everyday routines, and how much capacity they have for different practices. I use words like “play” or “experiment” instead of giving out prescriptive routines. Engaging in the “work” of healing in a way that supports curiosity rather than resentment or guilt for not “doing your exercises” helps folks engage in a new orientation to listening and taking care of their body.
Define a healthy relationship for yourself. Some key ideas that come to my mind are: collaborative, attentive, honest, warm, fun, patient. Developing this orientation to our relationship with healing, as well as the sensation of pain, can help support us to take care of ourselves in a different way. When “healing” becomes relational, even within one’s own body, it allows us to take on a more expansive meaning of the term. Rather than bullying our chronic pain, which will most likely only reproduce patterns of bracing, tension, and discomfort, we can see healing as an ongoing process of listening and responding with care.
