Quote of the Day

"The truth carries a weight that no lie can counterfeit." ~Black Jack Randall, Outlander Series

WWRDJD

I  returned to the vet's office to pick up my cat, Oni from being spayed and this happened:

Vet Tech:  "So Oni has stitches in her belly and you should try to limit her jumping so she doesn't accidentally open anything up.  So if there are places that she likes to jump on, or perch, you should probably shut those areas off."

Me:  (Thinks:  Open concept floor plan.  How do you shut that off? Envisions Oni flying across the living room in slow motion like the replay of your favorite GoT character dying in every conceivable direction and angle.  Oral syringes?  For Three days?  Then I remembered the wise words of Robert Downey Jr. and smiled.)

 Me:  "Sure.  Absolutely."

Pains Me So

How is a skinned knee like an heated argument?  I hope to answer this burning question.

By adulthood most of us have encountered enough skinned knees that we typically know how to successfully treat this wound with a certain degree of skills and knowledge.   We know there will be an injury site and there will be varying degrees of pain and healing, and then in most cases the knee will be returned to its healthy status.

So what happens when I get a skinned up knee?  Well, according to the pain cycle illustration above:

Ouch! Possibly a swear word.  Pain.  Gingerly standing up and gradually putting weight back on the injured side of your body. Guarding.  The area around your knee begins to swell and ache.  Over the next few hours your knee doesn't bend as much as it normally does.  You mentally berate yourself for the poor choice in footwear.....

Most of the time this injury is very minor and very little wound care is needed, but at times you might be required to debride the injury site to help promote healing and keep out infections.  This calls for re-opening the wound, peeling off some of the dead tissue, and putting antiseptic on it--which can be a bit ouchy too FYI.  But all in all, it is assumed most folks will survive this injury without any significant scarring or irreparable damage.


But what if we do not treat that knee properly?  Pain.  Guarding, in this hypothetical case, amounts to a gait change to take weight off the injured knee.  Swelling. Joint restriction.... 
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
If the wound is not properly cleaned and dressed we could potentially have infection and toxicity.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)
Instead of  overcoming this injury, the body is put into a pain cycle and cannot get healthy.  It will spread to other parts of the body by means of compensation, referred pain, lack of mobility, depression, anger, vulnerability.
(See the pain cycle illustration above)

.....Sensing a pattern?

So what happens when our pain is in the form of emotional trauma?

Ouch! Like the knee, our psyche (human mind, soul or spirit) also reacts to painful sensations.  The knee will eventually scab over and the mind will compartmentalize the pain. (A great example of a mind body connection.)  But let's explore emotional pain without a physical mechanism of injury.  What if our pain was due to a disagreement?  Are we as adequately equipped to handle this type of pain?   And if we are, are we really willing to do what is necessary to heal properly?

In the second illustration we can see that PAIN is in the center of this emotional pain cycle.  In my comparison, let's say our parties disagree and the exchange becomes heated.  The initial reaction might be stressful and with that comes tense muscles.  Hurt, frustration, regret, anger or fear could also play parts.  From here the emotional pain might be ignored or buried in hopes of finding a peaceful resolution.  We might mentally replay the disagreement many times to hopefully find clarity or understanding and as we mentally relive the moment, our bodies relive the tension and physical stress we felt during the actual encounter.  Luckily most people are eventually able to look at things rationally and are able to find a mature way of resolving conflict without too much stress or pain.

But what happens when we are unable to handle emotional pain?

Let's revisit that skinned knee.  Sometimes we can find a tolerable level of pain and stick a bandage on it and go.  Then sometimes we see that damn scab and cannot help ourselves--WE MUST PICK THAT SCAB!  We know that it will probably sting, but our OCD tendencies make it impossible to ignore that sore spot.  Other days we might accidentally re-open the wound by barking our shinbone on the coffee table. All of these actions can bring back that dull ache and pain.

Emotional scars are quite similar.  Some days we can look at our lives and understand how we got to this reality.  Other days a song on the radio will send us to places we would rather not be thinking about.  We become guarded.  We vow to never open ourselves up to being vulnerable or hurt again.  Soon we are really examining and re-examining our decisions and feeling the hurt again, the painful memories flow, the anger returns, sadness for our losses, stress becomes physical pain....
(See the FIRST pain cycle illustration above)

Quote of the Day

Pause-ability:  When you are able to stop, breathe, and see all the beautiful possibilities of the moment.   ~ K. Blackwell