Are You in A Bad Mood Because You Hurt or Do You Hurt Because You’re in a Bad Mood?

One of my students at OU was never in a bad mood.

And I’m not exaggerating.

Whenever I spoke with her, which was fairly often, she had a smile and a positive disposition.

If she didn’t get the result she wanted on a test or a lab practical, her mood didn’t fall. She was ill one time, had a cold, headache, etc. and I asked her if she needed to go home.

“No, I’m okay,” she replied with a large grin.

“How do you do that?” I asked.

“Do what?” she replied.

“How do you smile with a headache?” I asked.

“Oh, well, I figure it’ll go away and why be down about it?” she replied.

Right.

“Why be down” is a choice. She chose her mood.

I’d like to say I can do that routinely but I’d be lying. Sometimes I can boost my mood when I’m hurting but my guess is that whatever mood boost that happens is only perceptible to me.

Ok, truth is, I get a bad case of Grumpitis when I hurt.

And, turns out, Grumpitis makes your pain worse which in turn makes you grumpier.

Is it any wonder that some people can hurt for years?

Western medicine typically focuses on one-third of what makes up the thing we call pain – the physical component. But pain has physical, mental, and emotional inputs.

What we experience as pain is composed of what you think about the pain (mental), what you feel about the pain and then the actual physical injury.

The initial pain from the physical injury often takes a back seat to the mental and emotional elements as time passes.

The less aware you’re of your emotional state while hurting, the more pain you experience.[source]

You might be thinking, “Oh, I’m very aware of what I feel when I hurt!” but, that’s not what I mean.

Maybe you’re worried, frustrated, angry, discouraged, sad whenever the pain shows up or, worse, hangs around.

This is where practicing meditation comes in handy. Meditating helps you develop the observer in you and the ability to focus. You’ll begin noticing more about your state of being. At first, this is tough to do, but with practice, you’ll be able to identify emotions during a painful experience and create some “distance” between you and the emotions.

Once you can do this, you may still hurt but the suffering that often comes with it decreases.

This is because Suffering = Pain x Resistance.

Have you ever had a small stone in your shoe and you’re walking around someplace where you can’t just stop, take off your shoe and get rid of it?

The physical injury is tiny in fact it’s only pressure but the aggravation is high. High aggravation produces high resistance.

And thus, this tiny stone in your shoe becomes a big pain the butt.

Noticing the emotions of the moment reduces resistance. You’re essentially saying to yourself, “Ok, I hurt and is that anger I feel?. Hmm..that’s interesting…why am I feeling this? Why am I angry about this?”

For example, let’s assume you have lower back pain. You’ve had this problem for several years and although things have improved from working with a physical therapist, chiropractor, and your family doctor, you still find situations, positions or certain movements to be painful.

As you squat down to pick up your child, you feel a sharp twinge of pain in your lower back. The twinge is familiar in a kind of “oh, I wish Uncle John wasn’t coming to Thanksgiving dinner” kind of way. You know that later, maybe an hour or maybe tomorrow, your back will hurt much more.

In other words, you know where this is headed.

You’re predicting pain.

At the moment immediately following the twinge, what is the feeling, the emotion you have? Not the twinge itself but the emotion that comes wrapped in the twinge?

For some people, it’s frustration that you have to deal with this again or for others, it might be anger that you still have the problem despite all the money and time you put into solving it.

Am I close?

By not being aware of the feelings and having a way to process them, you actually will hurt more and for a longer time.

Some electric guitar players have a special device, a pedal they step on called a “sustain pedal”. They can pick a string, hit the pedal and the sound goes on and on and on.

That’s kind of what happens with pain and the feelings that come with it. The feelings are like a sustain pedal.

Each time you hurt and experience an emotional resistance, complex neural connections get created in your brain and are actually strengthened, reinforced.  The pain and resistance get “wired” together such that in the future, it becomes easier and easier to hurt, feel angry, hurt more, get frustrated until you do something to break the cycle.

It’s a lot like how habits are formed. The more you do something, the easier it becomes to keep doing it.

The first step in breaking the cycle is redefining your relationship with the pain experience. Work on being an observer, identify the emotions and work on those emotions. When you do this, you are building new neural circuits and the more you do it, the stronger these circuits get.

This doesn’t mean that your pain will suddenly vanish, although it could, and it doesn’t mean you should abandon the things you’re doing to address the physical aspects of the pain.

If you find yourself hurting and in a bad mood, try practicing meditation to build the observer in you and create some distance. Distance decreases resistance which decreases suffering.

And you might then be in a better mood.

Thanks for reading.

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