The Value of Discomfort And the Risks of Avoiding it

In my late teens, I coped with my anxiety and angst by disassociating. For seven hours a day I hunched over my desk, or buried my face in a book. After school I would go home and play on the computer for as many hours as I could squeeze in before going to bed. Most of the day was spent with my shoulders forward, my back rolled, and my neck craned backwards so I could see what I was doing. Is it any wonder that I had terrible neck pain and headaches?

Acupuncture helped me tremendously, but the pain didn’t fully go away until I spent less time on the computer. I took up Tai Chi, and the act of getting off a chair and moving was the cure I needed (both for my anxiety and for my physical issues). I probably could have gotten similar results from other forms of exercise, but the Tai Chi and acupuncture combo was what did it for me. Traditional Chinese Medicine had me figured out 2,000 years ago – if you don’t treat the root (my behavior) then the problem never gets better. 

I still struggle with neck pain from time to time, but my relationship with it is much different. If I feel my neck, I know there’s something going on. Most of the time it means I’m spending too much time stationary, or I’m a little stressed and hiking my shoulders. Sometimes it’s more impactful, for instance when I contracted Covid it started with a very pronounced pain in my neck. Since then, if I feel pain in the area I immediately begin working on my immune system – something you wouldn’t think the neck is connected to! (The Tai Yang meridian runs along the neck. It’s our surface-most meridian and the one responsible for protecting us from exogenous disease. My neck hurts because the meridian is fighting off an illness.)

Pain and discomfort are the catalysts that get us moving. People don’t walk into my office because they feel great. They come because something doesn’t feel good. Often, we need to be uncomfortable with where we’re at in order to progress. Without my neck pain, I would never have pursued acupuncture or Tai Chi, and my life would be radically different. 

Unfortunately, our relationship with pain these days is very different. Demanding lifestyles, poor education, and a lack of wellness culture contribute to the meteoric rise of chronic disorders. Nearly 40% of Americans suffer with at least one chronic disease (more than half involves chronic pain). Forty percent, almost half of our population! And when you’re in pain all the time, you want it to stop as quickly as possible. Consequently, prescribing of pain pills increases. But the pain just moves, or the patient is left with an addiction to opioids, or they develop cirrhosis, or... or… or…

We’re so dedicated to the eradication of pain as quickly as possible, but we never really get at the root of it: Our behavior, our lack of education in wellness, the lack of opportunities to do healthy things. The pain we experience is our body letting us know something needs to change, but we’ve developed a way to turn those alarms off. So we keep ignoring it until there aren’t enough drugs or distractions to ignore it any longer.

It’s a pretty bleak picture, but that’s the reality of health in the United States today. The key word being ‘today.’ Thankfully, everything changes. Those behaviors which today are causing pain can be amended. 

Jane Doe is a woman who came to me suffering from bilateral elbow pain. With treatment she improved, but once she stopped doing 4 hours of spin class every other day her elbow pain vanished.

John Doe was on several medications to treat his palpitations. Herbs and acupuncture stabilized the rhythm – and once he addressed the deep fear he was avoiding, the palpitations stopped. 

I ask every patient that walks into my office to carefully examine what they do day to day. I can almost guarantee that whatever issue they’re coming to me for, something they’re doing frequently is contributing to the problem. Nine times out of ten they don’t even realize it, but once they do it’s a eureka moment.

“Oh! So if I sit in the car with one foot on the gas and the other knee up it can contribute to my back pain? Yeah you know that makes sense.”

“Smoothies every morning can be causing my bloating and constipation? But I thought it was supposed to be healthy?”

“You know when I went for a walk at dusk after dinner, I slept so much better. Not what I expected!”

When we’re told that the body has a miraculous ability to heal itself, it does! Once we identify and correct the causative patterns. There’s a lot that can be said about modern society’s war on health; egregious work conditions, food deserts, overreliance on pharmaceuticals, for-profit healthcare, inequity in treatment, ad nauseam. I’ve written about those already. What we can do it be more mindful of our contribution, and change what we can. 

Lao Zi is erroneously credit with the phrase “Watch your thoughts, they become your words; watch your words, they become your actions; watch your actions, they become your habits; watch your habits, they become your character; watch your character, it becomes your destiny.” No one’s sure who said it, but they were a pretty smart cookie. Wellness is not the absence of pain or sickness. Wellness is the choices we make every day to live healthfully and that is our responsibility.