Category: chronic pain

This is one of my favourite quotes by entrepreneur Naveen Jain:

“Making money is like having an orgasm: you would never get it if you focus on it. It has to be a byproduct of the things you really enjoy doing.” — Naveen Jain

The same applies to chronic pain relief.

If you’ve tried everything but you’re still in pain, you may now try nothing.

With love, Angelos

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Question: My pain decreased by 80% and the anxiety does not debilitate me anymore. But how do I get to complete healing? What’s the magical advice that I’m missing?

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A lot of people get stuck at 80, 90, or 99% of pain relief because of their perfectionism and striving towards complete healing.

That was me—super obsessed with the “absolute healing techniques”.

Wanting badly to get to heal completely may be exactly what’s stopping you healing completely.

For me, the answer was seeing 80% as 100%.

Until one day I got to 100%.

However, I never became conscious of the journey from 80 to 100%.

I just let go of my perfectionism and obsessiveness.

The “magical advice” you’re looking for is “let go of the desire for complete healing”.

With love, Angelos

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Question: As a teenager, I had a long-term relationship with a guy I was deeply attached to.

When he broke up with me, he said he wanted it cold turkey—to never see or speak to each other ever again. And he stuck to this—16 years ago our breakup was the last conversation I ever had with him.

I’ve written about this a couple of times, done meditations, etc. I would love to run into him again and have a conversation, to get some closure, to apologise for some of the things I did, and ideally would love to get an apology from him too.

In reality, we don’t live in the same state, don’t share any friends, and have zero contact—the chances of us running into each other are basically none. I have to find a way to live with this.

The problem is, I keep dreaming about him! The dreams are variations on the same theme—he gets in touch to discuss things and wants to be friends. This will never happen in real life but the frequent dreams indicate my subconscious is refusing to accept it! How can I get my subconscious to move on?

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Letting go of a past love is similar to letting go of emotions or pain.

The more you want your pain to go away, the more pain grows inside.

The more you try to stop thinking about him, the more you end up thinking or dreaming about him.

Question: I’ve tried every treatment and therapy there is. I try to maintain a positive outlook and focus on relief by meditating, stretching, and low impact exercise. Why am I still in pain?

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You may think that you have tried everything but I bet there is something you have tried yet: doing nothing!

The problem could be that you’re trying too hard.

The more you do to get pain relief, the more you tell your unconscious that there is a problem.

Don’t say pain—call it a sensation instead.

The words we use affect how we feel.

If you start calling it a sensation, it will end up being a sensation in the end.

Everyone can handle a few sensations here and there! 🙄

(I didn’t mean that! What a filthy mind! hehe)

With love, Angelos

One of the reasons for your chronic pain is that you may not have learned to accept or express your emotions.

As with all new skills, this can take time.

Question: I was taught not to cry or be emotionally expressive as a child. My parents (and their parents too) put a high value on not showing emotion. Now, there are a lot of times where I feel like a good cry would be really cathartic, but I can’t cry. I’ve talked to my therapist—we agree that it’s ok for me to cry but I can’t get it to happen. I’m also not emotionally expressive in happy situations and it drives my husband nuts! What should I do?

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There is no rush to do what you haven’t been taught or allowed to do for years.

Seeing it is already HUGE progress for you.

Sharing this concern is a big step on its own.

Why not allow it to happen naturally—the same way you learn to do something new?

Techniques for chronic pain don’t work. OK, to be precise, only one works—the one that I call “the subtle art of not giving a f*** about pain”.

Question: I’m using this technique for chronic pain that I found in a famous book but it’s not working for me.

How do I train my brain to do all these things that I could do before? I can’t walk, sit down, stand in one place, have sex. You see my predicament—I’m very limited!

What’s the deal here? How do I make this work for me? Am I just not getting the hang of it or am I missing something?