Chronic Pain, Pleasure & People-Plesasing
Chronic pain has been and continues to be a mystery to even those who study and treat it daily. “Pain can transform a normal brain into an abnormal one,” says, David Borsook, associate professor of radiology at Harvard Medical School, he continues. “Pain becomes not just the symptom of disease but a disease itself.” Its origins can also be a mystery, it can stem from an injury, mistreatment of an injury, trauma, neglect, and/or stress, among many other things.
I won’t pretend to be an expert myself, but after finally coming out of a 10 month long battle with my body, one that started over 20 years ago, I am feeling hopeful about the research and connections I have made about how to heal. I also did a ton of research through books, articles, pain specialists, pro-dommes, focus groups from others with chronic pain and illness, and of course, gleaned so much wisdom from my own body. This humble article is just one approach, or even the seed of an approach, but an important one that I believe is crucial to understanding the treatment of chronic pain and illness.
The oversimplified findings from my research is: Pleasure is an ally to Pain. Because I know you want that quick fix, that special sauce, that “one thing” you can do to stop the torture of chronic pain, I’ll say in short, go after your pleasure. But the irony is, even pleasure is not so simple. It is also a complex weave of trickster energy that is rarely studied in the sciences, not endorsed by a capitalist, racist, sexist, homophobic, and a sex negative culture, and is often coupled (in dominant western culture) with the use of drugs and alcohol. Pleasure can seem like a mysterious energy that can come and go all too quickly, but it, like pain, has a real powerful physiological effect on our bodies that can truly alter our perceptions, our awareness, and our thoughts.
When we begin to attune to our pleasure, we create capacity to begin to attend to our pain.
This is true on a physical, emotional, and psycho-spiritual level. Most of us don’t want to look at our pain - whether it’s in our bodies or our hearts. We resist it, shut it down, and push it away. Which makes a lot of sense. We don’t live in a world where pain is accepted, expressed, and transmuted. The dominant culture sees pain as something to either fix, ignore, or avoid.
“For me it's reconditioning the pattern of a rejection instinct and turning it into a welcoming instinct and that's a craft.” says pain doula and pro-domme, Sky Terrapin.
“It's so hard to see your pain and to really invite it and not be afraid of it. It's so overwhelming to so many people. Especially chronic pain sufferers that have developed a conscious and subconscious patterning around their pain. It can totally take them over and they don’t feel like they have any agency in that response.” She continues.
Practicing pleasure inherently means recognizing our own desires & preferences, & honoring our own boundaries & needs. In going after our own pleasure we can learn to access our voice and choice and find agency. This is the fine art of nervous system regulation, which can happen when we go after what is pleasurable, what is easeful, what feels holistically good in our bodies, minds and spirits. There is the possibility of feeling okay to neutral, to even good, or if you’re truly practicing pleasure, really good. And when we practice pleasure, just like practicing yoga, or weight training, or patience, we expand it.
This is a direct contradiction to the fawning response that is often characteristic of folks like me who have chronic pain and illness. And of course, chronic pain sufferers can have all the sympathetic nervous system responses: fight, flight, freeze, and fawn. In a pain flare up, I can sometimes feel like all of them are operating at once. Fawning however, is the most insidious because it is so normalized, and even rewarded in dominant culture.
Fawning is a nervous system response that can look like smiling while in pain, enduring pain, pushing through pain, not sharing about pain/keeping it to yourself, and bracing yourself for the pain to come. It is an involuntary act of appeasing, people-pleasing, pretending to be happy when we are not and consenting to things we don’t want to do in order to spare another person's feelings.
So, not so simply but simply, when we go after what we truly want and need, we have a chance at settling our nervous system. A settled nervous system is a key factor in even being able to attend to our pain. With a settled nervous system we can think more clearly and make decisions about the help we need: doctors, medicine, alternative treatments, rest, etc.
Pain is always physical and emotional.
But don’t be mistaken, chronic pain is a vicious cycle to break away from, and it’s not easy to choose what you want or need, even without pain yelling at you from the inside. It takes a slow and steady re-patterning of the mind and body to be able to break these cycles. It also takes the willingness to look at the ways pain is serving you, and why you might hold on to it.
For myself, I realized that my pain was the best excuse I had to say “no” to something I didn’t want to do. I had learned this survival mechanism as a child when I learned that being or faking sick would mean I got to stay home from school and finally get the attention from my parents I wanted. This played out subconsciously as I got older as I learned I could only say “no” to things if I was sick, or not feeling well. Simply not wanting to do something, even if I was well, was not an option. I feared losing my friends, job, or opportunities for closeness if I had said “no” without being sick.
Some new attitudes I have adopted:
I am allowed to say “no” even when I am well.
I am allowed to feel well and do things that please only myself.
I have a right to rest when my body needs to rest.
I am worthy of feeling well.
I am worthy of receiving loving attention when I am well.
I used to wait until my body was in an acute crisis to stop working, take a vacation, or a nap. And back in my old life in the film industry many moons ago, I pushed through so much pain just so I could survive. Thankfully, the practice and tools of Somatic Sex Education have helped unravel this enduring pattern in me. Now, I can sense into when and with who it is safe enough to show my pain, be it emotional or physical.
Somatic Sex Education gave me the practice of leaning into my pleasure, leaning into my body, and leaning into less, which enabled me to even begin to listen to the messages my pain was telling me. I learned I needed to stop doing some things, and start doing others. I learned to get curious and even welcome my pain.
Some of the tools of Somatic Sex Education that help with chronic pain are:
Accessing & practicing voice & choice
Exploring somatic expressions of “no” “yes” and “maybe”
Boundary work
Learning safety shapes & nervous system responses
Cultivating a Mindful Erotic Practice
Learning embodied expressions of willing versus wanting (teachings of the Wheel of Consent)
I also learned that struggle is not a virtue. Struggle is about survival. We all deserve to do more than just survive on this planet. Even the birds who hunt for seeds and worms, take time to sing. The trees dance all the while soaking up water and trading nutrients with thousands of other organisms daily. We, too, are animals that get to do more than just survive.
There is so much more I can say about chronic pain and pleasure. In fact, I look forward to diving deeper into the connection between chronic pain and sexual trauma, the erotics of pain and what BDSM can teach us about chronic pain, and the spiritual life of pain, among so much more.
For now, wishing you ease wherever you can find it.
You do not have to be alone in your pain. If you’d like to explore your relationship to chronic pain and pleasure, my books are open. I’d love to work with you, in pleasure and in pain.