Family, Self

Are You Holding Onto Pain?

Why do people with fibromyalgia pain hurt all over?  And why do many pain relievers not work for people with fibromyalgia pain?  Could there be a mental / emotional aspect to it?  It is a real possibility. 

Fibromyalgia pain is chronic pain in the muscles that just doesn’t go away.  Our limbic system in the brain becomes over sensitive to pain due to chronic thoughts of pain and experiences related to the pain. The more often you have experienced physical, mental, or emotional pain, the more nervous system reactions you will have when re-thinking about the pain. After injuries create pain impulses, our body should be able to counteract the pain during recovery of the nervous system. The recalling of painful experiences actually increases our sensitivity to it, and will overload your ability to let go of physical pain.

Our emotions and experiences are essentially energy that can be stored in the cellular memory of our bodies. Do you have reoccurring pain in one area of your body? It is likely that area of your body still holds energy from that experience. When you have a pain in certain areas, it’s often related to something emotionally you are feeling within yourself. We don’t realize this because we are so busy taking care of others that we don’t have time to really think about our own issues.  We ignore our own issues until they cry out in pain. That is what I believe fibromyalgia is, your muscles crying out in pain, saying “pay attention to me!!!!”

During stress testing, my clients often come up with emotional imbalance as one of their top causes of their painful stress reactions. Recently, a client had re-occurring shoulder pain. She took short disability leave after being diagnosed with repetitive motion injury, and her pain let up. It only hurt her when she went to her work place just to talk to her manager. This proved that there definitely is an emotional content to her pain. Once we cleared the emotions stuck in her muscles related to work stress, she went back to work successfully.

Emotions and your mental state may not seem important, and may be easy to ignore in your daily life. Yet, research has shown that it takes 6 hours for you to recover from a quick negative emotional experience. On the other hand, when we have encouraging emotional experiences, there is an immediate increase in beneficial chemicals that have a positive effect on our health. For example, when we feel loved or appreciated and are reminded of it, nourishing chemicals are released into our nervous system. Even our own thoughts, whether positive or negative, will have an effect. Having a critical temperament towards yourself and others will create more nervous system problems than for those who have a positive temperament. Sometimes we are more critical of ourselves than we are of others. Remember to always treat others like you would want to be treated, and treat yourself like you want others to treat you.

Your heart is one of your most important organs, and can hold many emotions that are usually designed to protect you from perceived harm. But these emotions can make you numb to life, and you can feel more isolated. You are unable to accomplish what you want in your life because you can’t totally express your heart energy to those around you. You hold back from fully experience life. This can create chronic physical pain. By releasing trapped emotions you open up the communication centers in your cells and everything works better.

This story shows how unresolved emotions can cause physical pain:

Years ago, a relative called me with constant low back pain. She went to her medical doctor and he could not find anything that could be causing it. Medication did not help. She called me to send her a homeopathic remedy to relieve the pain. I found a remedy that matched her physical symptoms. She took a few doses of the remedy the next day, and her pain went away. While talking about the quick relief from pain, I asked what, if anything, happened in her life just before this pain started. She remembered that just a couple days before the pain began; she had had an argument with her husband. This argument was not resolved and she held onto the conflict in her back. Once she realized this she was able to resolve the conflict and the pain.

This is an example of emotional constipation, when low back pain comes from not letting go of conflict. She was physically holding onto this conflict in her lower back, which according to Chinese Medicine theory is a common place to hold unresolved issues. Chronic headaches are related to liver or gall bladder energy issues of held anger or resentment. In the low back pain incident, the homeopathic remedies worked to relieve both the physical and emotional symptoms.

When you are feeling a lot of tightness or pain, pay attention and see if there is a reoccurring pattern to this pain. When you get upset, instead of simply reacting, slow things down and observe.  If you believe you will get sick all the time, and believe you have pain because you are not in control, you will continue to have uncontrollable pain. We have to realize that we do have control of what we attract into our body. Once you are aware of the cause, you can more easily release it. Learn to observe yourself in your daily life and let go of emotions by recognizing them and releasing them. Releasing emotions is easier when you realize what they are and why they came up.

Getting a massage with the intention of releasing the pain will help. The other technique I use is to put one hand lightly on your forehead and the other hand on the lower back area of your head, and breathe to release these recognized emotions. There are nervous system energy points in these areas of your head that help focus your energy to release trapped emotions and experiences. The homeopathic remedy Arnica Montana 30c or 200C helps to release muscle stress held in tissues when caused by both physical and emotional stress. Also, there are emotional stress release therapies called Emotional Life Balancing or the Emotion Code that help you get specific names for your emotions if you can’t figure them out yourself.

When you are healthy, you are physically, mentally, and emotionally in an optimal state of well-being. Your body is always doing its best to stay in this healthy state. As Shakespeare wrote 400 years ago in Hamlet; "There is nothing bad or good but thinking makes it so."  It is not necessarily what happens to us that produces pain and stress. The meaning we hold about it makes it worse. Release trapped emotions and experiences to make chronic fibromyalgia pain go away for good.

Jane Oelke, PhD is a traditional Naturopath that helps clients understand how stress is affecting their health. Contact Jane to learn how you can release emotions causing you pain.