Are We Choosing to Hold Onto the Pain?

If I’m in the car, I’m listening to Dave Ramsey. I really enjoy hearing the callers, shaking my head at the stupid ones and celebrating with the ones that have made smart choices to find their way to debt freedom. Recently, I caught the episode where he interviewed Max Lucado  about his new book “You’ll Get Through This“. Max said something in the interview that really stood out to me and made me wonder if we sometimes choose to hold onto the pain. Or, rather, we choose not to make choices that could improve the pain.

“You’ll Get Through This” is about getting through tough times, and that’s something that those of us with Fibromyalgia and other chronic illnesses question all the time.

How the heck do we get through this?

Why this is happening?

What is the point?

“There’s a mentality that prefers the devil you know over the devil you don’t. You get down into a difficult circumstance and you hate it, but you know IT…. and so you prefer to stay in the problem, rather than move into solution. Because moving into a solution requires a whole new batch of energy”

None of us when we are sick want to believe that we are choosing to hold onto the pain or the illness, that we even have a choice. And certainly, I’m not saying that all we have to do is choose and we will be suddenly healthy. However, looking at my life and choices, and changes, I believe that we do to a certain extent hold onto our illness as a bit of a crutch sometimes.

It sucks to be sick but to make a big change like a huge diet overhaul, emptying your house of chemicals or learning how to make things from scratch instead of eating processed foods, that’s a lot of work and it’s just EASIER to stay right where we are.

I believe we can choose to release the pain rather than holding onto it so tightly that it makes us hurt worse.

getting through tough times

There are steps we can take to help loosen our grip on pain and illness, so that we can start to improve.

1 . Avoid your stressors – Stress increases pain. It’s as simple as that. While we can’t avoid every possible stressor, we can limit our exposures to stressful people, we can limit our exposures to toxic chemicals, and even limit our intake of unhealthy foods.

2 . Avoid setting blame – Don’t try to find someone or something to blame for your illness. You are not to blame. Others are not to blame, even if others bring you stress.

3. Listen to your inner voice – When you feel uncomfortable about something, or even hesitant, that is your inner voice trying to tell you it’s not a good idea. Often, that inner voice is telling you what you should do. It’s up to you to listen and act on what you hear.

4. Make a list of what you can change – You can only control you. Don’t worry about others, you can’t change them. Focus only on what you can personally change in your life. Then set out to start making those changes one by one.

5. Give it time – you won’t see the fruits of your labor immediately, it will take time to see improvements. Be patient. Give any change at least 30 days, usually you’ll need longer.

One last thing from the Dave Ramsey interview, you have to choose to give up your Hope. No one can take that away from you. What are the things in your life that no one can take away from you? I’ll be grabbing a copy of this book to read, I can always use a little extra inspiration to get through the trying times.