Living With Chronic Pain – Spiritual Healing – Think & Feel
When you are trying to process painful difficulties, it’s really important to do two things: think and feel.
Too often many of us either focus to tightly on compartmentalizing our problems or we take the other route by emotionally overreacting to the circumstances given us. Being lopsided with either approach breeds unhealthy behaviors.
When dealing with adversity, like chronic pain, I’ve found that the “think and feel” approach works wonderfully. For instance, there are days when I feel physically ill. It seems like every joint and every tissue in my body just hurts. Yet, if I allow this pain to dictate my attitudes and my behaviors throughout the day, this is when I usually experience depression and hopelessness. Self-pity causes doubt about my faith as well as demoralizing any optimism regarding my options about the next day. And similar destructive patterns occur when I only focus on thinking through my chronic pain, it seems like my heart becomes hardened and my compassion towards others runs very thin.
So to counteract deep attitudinal valleys of depression and cynicism, I allow myself to “feel” the pain, then after gauging its affects, I’ll strategically “think” about how to dispel fear and anxiety and how to persevere throughout the day. This approach of thinking is deeply rooted in faith, requiring God to renew my mind and to allow me to really discover who I am, what I have, what is meaningful, why I’m here and where my journey is taking me. He’ll do the same for you if you have faith in Him.
I encourage you to avoid being stuck regarding thinking too much about your pain or simply absorbing every negative feeling about your suffering. Persevering each day provides excellent benefits for your soul.
Keep me on your favorites. For more about living with chronic pain, as well as spiritual healing, visit me at www.gordonselley.com
To your health, Gordon Selley
