Armand DiMele knew that emotional
distress can morph into addiction to pain itself!
A life-dis-affirming feeling
such as grief, fear, anger, worry or despair, can become
so automatic and habitual that we don’t think we can get
through our lives without it.
There
are important reasons to get a handle on pain addiction in our
lives. It cripples more of us in my opinion, than any other hangup. It is
a pretty general concept too, and covers just about any screwed up person if
you ask me.
If we don’t know how to keep
free of the pain-trap of our general society….we will be hard pressed to feel
pain-free (as it were) in our personal life.
When a person is continuously
stressed by emotional pain, there are subtle changes in the body that create a
dependency on stress-related chemistry and we are all starting to learn
that changing habitual patterns of pain is often just as challenging as
giving up nicotine, heroin or alcohol.
The person addicted to emotional
pain literally seeks out unique or general occasions which were formerly
experienced as painful to the seeker. A personal history of negative
and stressful relationships might be a red-flag regarding emotionally addictive
relationships.
For someone like this, pain and
love are so close that they would actually become “welded” to each other.
Pain is love and love is pain. To love an unavailable person and to
find excuses for staying in an impossible “relationship” are two classic
signs that pain and love have become inter-meshed.
The
Physiology of Pain Addiction
Physically speaking, the
addiction is not really to an addiction to the pain itself, but chiefly
to the free-flowing chemicals called endorphins, which work
as part of our pain/pleasure chemical network. Endorphins are
hormone-like substances released by the body during painful
moments. They are very similar in structure and effect to the
opiates, like heroin and morphine. Endorphins are pain-killers.
When you bang your arm, you
feel a sharp pain, immediately followed by numbness, which accompanies the
anaesthetizing endorphins. The feeling of numbness associated with endorphin
release can be an almost euphoric sensation. Joggers and bodybuilders are
prime endorphin-freaks.
All strain on the body yields endorphins. Additionally part of our daily
stresses are emotional.
When the strain is constant,
the body will fire endorphins continually, resulting in a
nearly-imperceptible dulling effect. When endorphin flooding is part
of one’s habitual life, the bodily experience of life itself is numbed
out. At least it’s made livable for some. Gabor Mate talks at
length about that, please see another post featuring Mate:
Many workaholics experience this to
give another example, but just as in the arm-banging example, the
feeling can be somewhat pleasant.
With sustained endorphin release we can still feel emotions, but only if
they are intense, such as anger, rage, sorrow and fear. Those would engender
continual release of endorphins, which in turn would lead to
further emotional shutting-down.
And once habituated to this life,
whatever triggered it..it is very hard to give it up. With so much
feel-good chemistry we get satiated. We settle and concede to things. It’s a
shield inside the body that protects us from the knowledge that what’s behind
this is the PAIN of not getting your need(s) met. That is our body’s
way of telling us to please fix what’s wrong!
Changing
the Pattern
Once a person is addicted to pain,
breaking the habit takes great moral courage, and would almost certainly
require some outer support, the personal kind. The unconscious craving
for the kind of original stresses and hurts one had… has driven this poor soul to
make decisions that are based on one’s own need, and unconscious at that,
rather than the wisdom required for any satisfactory decision in life.
Unfortunately, emotional pain addicts do not usually have particularly supportive relationships. They somehow gravitate towards companions who will become a source of pain. They go back to the scene of the crime so to speak. They are always recapitulating something, and they might know what it is but don’t work with it. Most are unconscious of where it comes from.
Knowledgeable friends, coaches and
counselors are good sources of help. It is important that the support
people understand the inherent difficulty of withdrawal from pain
addiction.
If psychotherapy is used, it is
helpful that the therapist be familiar with the chemistry of reward systems and
pain and pleasure, and how that touches on pain addiction and addictions
in general.
Dynamic interventions seem to be
the most effective approaches; they might include Gestalt therapy, the
Intense-Feeling Process, and Bioenergetics.
Unfortunately, there’s still no
organization for Pain-ists Anonymous. Non-organized people must just
start caring about what too many of us suffer from. They would best
help…if they know the topic from every angle and are still in good shape
according to themselves and others.
Acknowledgment, encouragement,
patience, and nurturance are the essential tools. Anger, criticism and
incurring guilt never helped the pain addict. It actually does the
opposite.
Overcoming emotional pain addiction
requires patience and time. To the pain addict, a pain-free life
is totally unfamiliar. There are common reports of a frightening void
that yearns to be filled when the pain is no longer supreme. It is exactly
like a baby in a crib with its needs supposedly met but still it
cries out…but silently. So now the goal is to replace stress with
relaxation, chaotic relationships with supportive ones, and self-deprivation
with self-nurturance.
Armand Dimele says it might
take around six months to allow the human body/mind to function
without the need for constant pain. The work, however, is not as difficult as
it may seem, because positive changes can be experienced all the
way. “Life is filled with color instead of grayness, joy instead of
dullness. Grace replaces tension, and a person’s natural beauty unfolds, in some
cases for the very first time.”
One of the therapies been used for
defusing pain addiction… is Gestalt Therapy. But Mindfulness Meditation, done
under the knowledgeable guidance, is also indicated.
And so please don’t forget, if you
want a skilled compassionate phone coach, who is mindful of the pain behind our
lives and all addictions, please contact me at Averayugen@mail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment