THE MINDFUL FAMILY: Mindful Acceptance of Discomfort
By Charlton Hall, MMFT, LMFT-I
America is a heavily-medicated society. We’ve been taught that we should pop a pill at the first sign of pain or discomfort. This heavy reliance on medication has led to a multi-billion dollar pharmaceutical industry. Unfortunately, one of the side effects of this ‘throw a pill at it’ mentality is the creation of a multi-billion dollar addiction treatment industry as well.
Studies have shown that the most effective non-pharmaceutical way to manage pain and discomfort is meditation.
If you have difficulties with chronic pain or discomfort, remember that your attitudes and beliefs about pain will have a lot of influence on the sensations you will experience. Woman to Mother by Vanjie Bergum reminds us that in our culture here in the United States, “pain means something is wrong, pain means punishment, pain should be avoided or taken away.”
Our fear sense is awakened when we feel pain. We’re unconsciously afraid that we have suffered an injury of some sort. If you suffer from chronic discomfort, and can learn to focus on the meaning behind the pain instead of the pain itself, you can feel some power and control over it. Once you have accepted that the pain is not harmful in itself, you become more able to participate in the activities of day-to-day living without fear or stress. Meditation can help achieve and sustain this level of control.
Of course, you should consult with your doctor first to make sure that there isn’t something critical going on that would require medical attention. Once you’re sure that the source of the pain is something that cannot be treated medically, you can proceed with the techniques of the Mindful Acceptance of Discomfort.
A Body Scan is a meditation for a specific purpose. The idea of the Body Scan is to concentrate your attention in specific areas, a little at a time. You would do the Body Scan just as you do a regular Mindful Meditation, except that instead of focusing on your breathing, you concentrate on specific body areas. Start at your toes and work your way up one side of the body and down the other.
To begin the Mindful Acceptance of Discomfort, do a Body Scan meditation, focusing on where you are experiencing the discomfort. Be as specific as possible. When you have located your areas of discomfort, focus on the idea of ‘Going Inside the Discomfort.’
Our automatic reaction to discomfort is to tense up and to try to fight it. When ‘going inside the discomfort,’ we let go of any resistance to the discomfort, and welcome it in order to make peace with it. Instead of trying to fight it, cultivate an attitude of curiosity and acceptance. What is the discomfort trying to teach me? What can I learn from it? If I accept it, will it cease to be discomfort? How can I change myself to be more accepting of the presence of the discomfort?
Concentrate on these questions as you scan your whole body, identifying and describing where you find discomfort. Acceptance of the discomfort allows you to let go of fighting it. As your acceptance grows, you may find that the discomfort diminishes.
Charlton Hall is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapy Intern and the Director of the Mindful Ecotherapy Organization