The Role of Self-Compassion in Chronic Pain Recovery
As I’m writing this, I’m on vacation in the Dominican Republic with my wonderful husband. It is a hot, hazy, humid day in this tropical paradise, and I’m riddled with terribly itchy sand fly bites from our first night here, and my tummy is also a bit off. Not food poisoning, but tricky enough for me to feel like I don’t want to be too far from a bathroom.
If you’ve never been bitten by sand flies, I have to tell you it’s pretty miserable. On me, they turn into enormous swollen welts that itch worse than any mosquito bite. I’ve been trying to manage how I attend to the sensations, since the bites themselves aren’t dangerous, but I’m having such an intense allergic reaction that it’s set off my asthma, which makes it a lot harder to stay relaxed and curious.
I’ve been struggling this week with taking care of my body’s needs, and feeling some shame about being a stick-in-the-mud. But as I listen to that shame, I noticed something: the voice telling me I should push through and go to the beach anyway didn’t even feel like my inner voice. It felt like an old, inherited one.