Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    The Light at the Center of Pain
    The Light at the Center of Pain
    The Light at the Center of Pain
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    The Light at the Center of Pain

    By Sarah Anne Shockley

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Messages of hope and renewal for people in chronic pain: a collection of essays on living with pain based popular posts from The Pain Companion blog. The Light at the Center of Pain offers compassion, solace, and practical advice taken from first-hand experience: Responding to pain's demands without becoming its emotional hostage, staying in the heart of the self that pain can't touch, and finding a center of peace, even in the midst of pain.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSarah Anne Shockley
    Release dateApr 20, 2017
    ISBN9781947057012
    The Light at the Center of Pain
    Author

    Sarah Anne Shockley

    A native of Connecticut, Sarah Anne Shockley is a multiple award winning producer and director of educational films, including Dancing From the Inside Out, a highly acclaimed documentary on disabled dance. She has traveled extensively for business and pleasure. She holds an MBA in International Marketing and has worked in high-tech management, as a corporate trainer, and teaching undergraduate and graduate business administration. As the result of a work related injury in the Fall of 2007, Sarah contracted Thoracic Outlet Syndrome (TOS) and has lived with debilitating nerve pain since then. She is a regular columnist for Pain News Network, and currently resides in the San Francisco Bay Area with her son. 

    Read more from Sarah Anne Shockley

    Related to The Light at the Center of Pain

    Related ebooks

    Personal Growth For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      The Old And The Beautiful

      Mar 24, 2020

      The Old And The Beautiful
      4 min read

    • Article

      Last Words

      Aug 19, 2019

      Last Words
      10 min read

    • Article

      Truth And Clarity

      Aug 10, 2019

      Bird Therapy, by Joe Harkness, Unbound, hardcover, 2019, 304 pages, $18.60. Few birders’ stories are as profound and moving as that of Joe Harkness. In 2013, he attempted to take his own life. His healing process involved counselling and mindfulness

      3 min read

    • Article

      Species on the Move: How Climate Change Is Re-Making Ecosystems

      Jun 6, 2023

      Human-caused climate change is redistributing species across the globe, re-ordering ecological communities, and even driving genetic changes in some populations. We need to better understand these changes, and to adapt biodiversity conservation strat

      7 min read

    • Article

      The Nectar of Rest

      Nov 5, 2020

      When I think about rest, my breath slows and my nervous system settles. I feel my belly relax and the edges of my eyes soften. Something deep inside of me becomes heavier and more grounded. Internally, there is a realignment from wherever I have been

      7 min read

    • Article

      Voicing Our Fears

      Aug 30, 2019

      Voicing Our Fears
      10 min read

    • Article

      Glennon Doyle On New Beginnings

      Jan 5, 2022

      The moment I met my wife, Abby, my entire being said: There She Is. It was like the voice that was becoming clearer and louder ever since I got sober 15 years earlier had finally shouted. When I met Abby, it was just weeks before Love Warrior – my me

      4 min read

    • Article

      These 'Wanderers' Are Heading For The End Of The World

      Jul 6, 2019

      Chuck Wendig's massive new novel imagines a plague of sleepwalkers — unresponsive people endlessly walking to an unknown destination as a fearful, hate-ridden country tears itself apart around them.

      3 min read

    • Article

      ‘It’s Not About The Pain’

      Jul 23, 2023

      ‘It’s Not About The Pain’
      4 min read

    • Article

      How to Belong

      Aug 1, 2019

      How to Belong
      2 min read

    • Article

      Healing The Scars Of History

      Jan 24, 2023

      Healing The Scars Of History
      13 min read

    • Article

      Viewpoint

      Nov 23, 2021

      It did me a power of good to read ‘Time to let go?’ (December edition). You see, I felt happy most of the time… but then I would let my mind wander and think of all the things that troubled me: people I have wronged and those that have wronged me. I

      2 min read

    • Article

      Simply Satisfying

      Mar 23, 2021

      Simply Satisfying
      3 min read

    • Article

      The Trouble with Yoga

      Oct 1, 2018

      The Trouble with Yoga
      4 min read

    • Article

      Good Grief

      Mar 24, 2022

      Good Grief
      4 min read

    • Article

      Child Care

      Feb 6, 2019

      Child Care
      7 min read

    • Article

      At the Performance Café

      Jul 7, 2021

      Years ago I was at a festival in England. I’d been to that festival before, so I knew plenty of the venues. Thousands of people camped in a big field – actually a racehorse course – and the venue-tents were all about a one kilometre walk away. I knew

      2 min read

    • Article

      Perfect Imperfection

      Apr 22, 2018

      Perfect Imperfection
      4 min read

    • Article

      Viva Las Vagus

      Dec 10, 2021

      Viva Las Vagus
      2 min read

    • Article

      The Food Of Paradise

      Oct 5, 2021

      The Food Of Paradise
      9 min read

    • Article

      Stream Of Tears

      May 18, 2021

      Stream Of Tears
      2 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for The Light at the Center of Pain

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      The Light at the Center of Pain - Sarah Anne Shockley

      Introduction

      This book is a collection of essays based on popular posts from The Pain Companion Blog.

      The writings are both philosophical and practical in nature–musings, meditations, and advice on living with chronic pain–how it takes over life, how it changes us, how we can better live in response to its demands, and how we can avoid becoming its emotional hostages, and, instead, find a path of greater well being.

      I hope you will find emotional solace and understanding here, as well as useful practical support.

      I wish you well on your journey through and beyond pain.

      1

      Life on Planet Pain

      Living with chronic pain is like living on another planet with a completely different atmosphere.

      Other pains can usually be pointed to or clearly described. They are polite enough to stay within certain physical or emotional confines, and have a reasonable shelf life.

      Chronic pain, on the other hand simply refuses to leave, and often roams around the body wherever it pleases.

      To add insult to injury, instead of remaining confined within the physical body, chronic pain sort of oozes out of its original borders and takes over more and more of the territory of our every day experience, eventually seeping through and soaking into the entire fabric of our existence.

      Pain Becomes the House We Live In

      What was originally on the inside, now feels like its taken over the outside too, as if we are within it, instead of it within us. At that point, pain isn't just here or there, it's everywhere.

      It's really very strange and challenging to explain to others who haven't had the experience. It's like nothing else. Sometimes it feels like an unwanted house guest who never leaves, but eventually it feels like the house itself.

      We're surrounded by a field of pain and everything we see, do, hear, express, or receive must pass through the ever-present fog of the pain zone. I think this might be the most difficult thing for others to understand.

      Pain is no longer just one aspect of our experience of life, our lives now take place completely immersed within it.

      Too Late For A Band-Aid

      I think this is one reason it's so hard to find treatments and modalities that actually work for chronic pain. Chronic pain is a complex syndrome which has become interwoven with the entire self and the whole body and the whole nervous system.

      Almost everything that is offered to heal and to relieve it is just way too small, or too specialized, or too directed to a single aspect of this all-encompassing thing, called chronic pain.

      It's sort of like calling in the plumber to fix the leak in the kitchen sink when the whole house has just fallen off a cliff.

      The well-meaning plumber focuses on the kitchen sink and says, here, let's change the washers or whatever and we’re living in this disaster of a house that needs all kinds of different and simultaneous attentions and the plumber just can't see past the broken faucet.

      Or something like that.

      Looking For The Door That Lets Pain Out

      I'm looking for the door that let's the pain out, as on a spaceship. You open the hatch and everything is sucked right out - the whole atmosphere of planet pain–and then you get to close the door and start over.

      But I suspect that the door I'm looking for doesn't open out like that, it opens in.

      2

      You Can’t Be in Pain That Long…Can You?

      Those of us in chronic pain often have to live with others' inability to accept what's happening with us.

      People who aren't in pain often wonder why we aren't better yet. How can anyone be in pain that long, they ask? It's just not possible.

      Except that we can, and we are, unfortunately. It's real. It's physical. It's tiring, and it demands the utmost of our inner fortitude and emotional stamina to keep going and not sink into a blob of misery on a regular basis.

      While we're doing our best to manage our ongoing pain day in and day out, people around us are moving on with their lives. They're moving forward while we, seemingly, are staying in the same place. This can lead to misunderstandings and frustrations on both sides of the experience.

      We become frustrated with our pain, with our physical condition, and with ourselves for not healing faster. Others become frustrated with us as well, because we aren’t available in the same manner that we used to be. We can’t participate or contribute in the ways others are accustomed to us doing, and this can lead to them imagining that we’re just not trying hard enough.

      Everyone's Got An Idea

      We hear, sometimes overtly and sometimes very subtly, that we're probably not doing enough, or we're just not doing the right things. This is often from very well-meaning people, but still...the helpful advice seems to be so often about what we're not doing.

      We have been told any number of things about why we're still in pain:

      •maybe we aren't really working at healing ourselves

      •maybe we simply have to try yet another therapy or supplement or magic wand

      •maybe we want to stay in pain (ouch!)

      •maybe our pain is emotionally based (which usually translates into maybe it's not real), or another version:

      •maybe it's all in our heads (I'm never sure what that really is supposed to mean. Pain is pain. If someone were cooking up their physical or emotional pain in their head, then they must be in a lot of pain already at some level to have to do that.)

      Pain Turns the World

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1