Beyond the Pain

The February 2006 issue of Psychology Today reports on a study at Boston University.

Professor Glenn Saxe that giving children large doses of morphine following a serious burn or accident will reduce the number of post-traumatic stress disoder (PTSD) symptoms.

Researchers are uncertain if it’s just the morphine or if anything that reduces pain will do the trick.

Saxe suggests that undertreament of pain because of a fear that patients will become addicted could lead to greater rates of PTSD — which ironically, in children, gives them an increased risk of substance abuse as an adult.

All I know is that all lot of folks (mainly men) who I suspect of having PTSD (from a little event called WWII) chose to self-medicate with alcohol. The end result: alcoholism in my family of origin, stress, abuse, and PTSD in the children (well, at least me).

Too bad folks in the 50s and 60s and even the 70s didn’t know about PTSD. Maybe, there’d be fewer fucked up people today.

When reading When The Body Says No I was struck by Gabor Mate’s description of many pain sufferers as "strongly independent" and able to endure a great amount of pain. One who might be called stoic.

His words so fit my experience. The phrases, "suffer in silence", "tough guys don’t cry", and "suck it up. it really doesn’t hurt that much" come to mind.

I grew up in a family where fun was not a priority. Survival was. Toughing it out was. Doing for others before onself, was.

Goodies were rare. And, you sure as hell didn’t indulge yourself. Life WAS hard, damn it!

Yet, one of the things I am learning out of my pain is that those messages are all crap!

That in fact, indulging myself — or at least what seems like indulging myself — is in fact the best thing I can do.

My body doesn’t need to be beaten or treated like shit.

It needs to be pampered and soothed.

When I take of my body, treat is special, it takes care of me.

Want to feel better?

Indulge yourself.