When Pain Becomes a Signal: Change Your Response

My health, and by that, I mean my general body condition, is important to me. I want to feel fit and feel good about myself, the same as everybody does. And I’ve always done some exercise in various forms since I was a teenager.

But I did also used to smoke, until my son was born, and then I quit. But strangely, even when I smoked, I thought I was pretty healthy. I guess it’s human nature to justify doing the things we want to do, even when it is doing us harm.

Like everybody, I have some things that I would call health issues, but in the last ten years, they have definitely multiplied. I probably get headaches every week and sometimes on the same day each week. These are the headaches that medicine won’t cure, and I just have to live with the pain until I’m released from it.

Going to the restroom is another example. I definitely go to the restroom more than anyone I know. And I’d say at best what I can get from it is...

feeling uncomfortable because I need to go, being embarrassed because I need to go again, and worrying about whether I’ll have the opportunity to go again in the future. These things are a constant problem and affect my whole day because I have to navigate through some tricky situations while also trying to cope with these health issues. Another thing that has multiplied in the last ten years is the amount of pain I have.

And by that, I mean actual physical pain. I’m not talking about anything major like fractures or breaks, but bruises, cuts, and scrapes have become part of my weekly routine. It’s honestly ridiculous.

I feel like there’s a weekly quota of pain that I’m unintentionally trying to achieve every week. And it’s probably the only area of my life where I really can’t see any rhyme or reason to it. Instead of "no pain, no gain," it seems to be more like "no pain....no pain!" But however pointless it seems, I still can’t avoid it, even though I’m very careful.

There are other times, though, when the pain does feel more meaningful. And it makes me think I should stop doing what I’m doing or that I shouldn’t have done the thing that I just did. There are times when the pain is like a wake-up call to change my behavior.

I’ll give you an example. I was at home in the shower recently, and I was stressing about a problem at work, and then I dropped the showerhead on my foot. It was painful, nothing serious, but it really made me snap out of my unhealthy thoughts and think that maybe I should stop stressing and think about something else instead.

And that brings me to the next thing I wanted to talk about: stress. This period of my life has without a doubt been the busiest and most stressful. And I’ve been under a lot of pressure in every area.

But after years of this, I do feel that it has had a positive effect, in that it has made me better at prioritizing what’s important and better at decision-making. The stress always comes in waves, and each time it comes, it pushes me to the limit or even beyond the limit of what I can endure, and then it fades away. All of my health issues are like this.

There’s an element of them taking me just past what I can bear, and then finally being released from it. But the two most important things that I notice about these issues are the repetition of them and the timing of them.

Spotting Difficult People—And Protecting Your Peace

Everybody is different, and it’s impossible to get along with everybody, but I want to. I don’t want to have bad feelings between me and anybody in my life. But sometimes I do upset people and although it’s not on purpose I can’t find any way to avoid it.

So instead I just don’t take it personally. Maybe a little pain is good for them. I also find in my life that different people play different roles.

And by that I mean that there are a set number of characters and different people have filled those same roles in different times of my life. I’ll give you an example. For me there’s always that one person who gives me what I categorize as “trouble”.

If this person is in the workplace then the trouble could be them criticizing me for how I’m doing my job, or it could be them saying something like I might need to work on my day off. And often to someone else this trouble doesn’t seem very bad at all, but to me, it feels like the worst thing ever. And as my life has changed of course so have the people, but sure enough I’ll be having trouble from one specific person again and again, and then I’ll realize that they are now filling that role.

But this is the important thing for me. Identifying them is one part of it but because I know who they are I can “expect” to have trouble from them at any time and I can be ready for it. I can also react differently to them because now their role in my life has been clearly identified.

One strategy I have is to not react to what they say. As in the example earlier they might be saying that I need to do work on my day off or that something is going to happen at work that wouldn’t be good for me. But in the end it turns out that I don’t need to work or that the work thing doesn’t happen.

I used to freak out and worry about what they had said, but now this has happened so many times over the years, with the person I’ve identified as the trouble-person, that I’ve learned to not react to what they say and just trust that it’s really not going to happen. Another trend in my life that I’ve noticed is that people are often rude to me or say insensitive things seemingly without even realizing it. Or people ignore me when I say something, and it’s as if I haven’t even said a word.

How I deal with this is to, you guessed it, not react. The best thing by far for me to do is to let it go immediately, or if what I’ve said has been ignored I don’t pursue it or try to say it again. I take it as being something that I need to hear about myself or something that I shouldn’t have said.

But I’ve gotten used to people acting very strangely around me and as I said before, I just have to not take it personally. Another thing that happens which I’m never sure is good or bad is that people often share their problems with me or personal things about themselves, whether I’m close with them or not. Of course, it’s great that they can confide in me, but I will rarely give them advice.

Giving advice is dangerous. How can I possibly know what the best course of action is?

How Life’s Toughest Moments Built My Real Confidence

My life was very different then, and I don’t mean my job or where I lived or what person I was. I mean that the way the world around me behaved was different, and by that, I mean the way that the world interacted with me was different. And I mean different in a bad way.

My life just wasn't going the way I wanted it to. That included the things that came from me—the things that I tried to do—but also the things that just happened to me, the things that were out of my control. And despite what I did, I was powerless to change my situation, and I felt just helpless, like a passenger watching a movie of my own life but knowing that my actions wouldn't change the storyline.

I found myself in situations that I had unwittingly started, either by accidentally saying something or by doing something that upset the people around me. And this gave me a lot of trouble when all I wanted was to get along with people and have good relationships. And in those situations, as I tried to fix things, the worse they got because the people involved wouldn't understand what I was saying, and there was no way to make things right.

Everything I said just dug the hole deeper and deeper until I just had to give up and accept that the person was going to be upset and feel hurt by me, which was the exact opposite of what I wanted. At the best of times, it is nearly impossible to change someone's mind about what they think or feel about something, but as these situations arose in my life, I could clearly see the futility of even trying. It was like they were being controlled to not see reason or think logically about what I was saying.

I would get an increasingly familiar feeling in the pit of my stomach. A horrible churning feeling, beyond shock, that would make my head feel numb. And on top of that, when I was in those situations, I also felt confused, and I couldn't think clearly at all.

I couldn't find any strategy to deal with it except to just wait until it was over. And even though I knew it was me that had triggered it, I knew that I wouldn't be able to stop it happening again in the future no matter how careful I was. And sure enough, I would say or do something again that sparked a different but all too familiar situation.

Luckily though, these situations didn't happen every day, every week, or even every month. But I dreaded them happening again, and I was always looking out for situations where they could happen. Of course, these were the extreme situations that came into my life, but as I said, the general flow of my life wasn't really positive either.

That's not to say that good things didn't happen, but the good things were just a little something to pick me up before the next thing put me down again. It was a period of my life that really built or rebuilt my character. Of course, I was still the same person, but it started a change in me.

I'm definitely thicker-skinned now and more confident. But it's not that empty confidence that a lot of people seem to have. , that confidence which is just an act that people put on to look better than they really are.

It's a deep-seated confidence right from inside here. And I can definitely deal with situations better because when stressful situations come up, and I have to make quick decisions, I am able to keep calm and think clearly, and most importantly, be more objective. And I couldn't be this person now if I hadn't gone through that difficult period of my life.