One of our support group facilitators at the Lupus Foundation of Florida has a particularly resistant case of lupus along with other complications. Even when her health is horrible, she will say, "At least my eyelashes don't hurt." Jon Kabat-Zinn says it another way in Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain, and Illness. "If you are breathing, there is more right with you than there is wrong."
When one part of you is in pain, all parts of you suffer. The more you think about the pain, the more it consumes you. We can step back and do a mental scan of our body and note what parts do not hurt at that moment, and like that facilitator, observe that "At least my eyelashes don't hurt."
In the chronic disease self managment workshops that I facilitate, we teach patients to use distraction when they have pain. Of course, distraction should never be used if you have chest pain! Examples of distraction are counting backwards by threes starting at one thousand, trying to remember all the words of an old song, or anything that engages the mind. I disovered that no matter how much my wrists and fingers hurt, I did not notice the pain as long as I was playing the piano. The mind cannot think of two things at the same time. What would work as a distraction for you?
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