You receive hundreds maybe even thousands of negative thoughts regarding your pain everyday. Almost everyone that you discuss your pain with will leave a negative imprint in your mind. TV programmes, the radio, newspapers and magazines also have the same negative impact about pain in your mind
For instance;
- You meet a friend in the street, or maybe for coffee and after exchanging the usual pleasantries the conversation invariably turns to “Well, how are you then? How’s your bad knee (or back etc)?” You most probably will answer with something along the lines of “Well you know, I mustn’t grumble, but it’s been playing up just recently.” And your friend will respond with something like “Well what can you expect at your age, you do have arthritis after all, there’s not much anyone can do for you, is there?”
In the process of this very quick and short conversation your mind has received 2 negative thoughts about your pain.
i.) You are reaffirming to yourself that you have pain and you just have to put up with it, which tells your mind that this is something you will have for a very long time.
ii.) Your friend has told your mind that you shouldn’t expect anything else other than pain because you have a condition that will give you pain for the rest of your life.
2. You go to see your GP or specialist about your ailment and he/she tells you that you have had all the tests available and you are on the ‘normal/standard’ treatments and there really is nothing more that he/she can do for you. He/she tells you that what you have is incurable and will likely get worse with age and despite the fact that you live in constant pain, all he/she can do is give you painkillers and maybe put you on the waiting list for physio.
This dialogue gives you only one negative thought but ‘boy oh boy’ what a humungous negative image it conjures up in your mind. Your doctor, esteemed medical expert, is telling you in no uncertain terms that you have ‘had your chips’ there really is no hope left so there’s no point in trying. You are absolutely fated to live out the rest of your life in agony which will progressively get worse and worse. What an image of doom and gloom. And of course, how could you not believe it, a man of medicine has told you this so ergo it must be true.
These are just 2 examples of the negative thoughts that pass through your mind everyday. If you hadn’t thought about it before you probably wouldn’t even have realised that you were thinking negatively. But even though these thoughts pass in out of your mind very quickly they have a huge impact on your perception of pain and that’s just 2 thoughts, multiply that by the average of 54,000 negative thoughts a day (60,000 x 90%) and you can see the ‘damage’ that is being done to you by these encounters.
The next installment will be posted within days.
