Feeling stuck?
The psychological nature of chronic pain
Over the last few years, I have become very curious about the psychological nature of chronic pain and have begun to incorporate this area into my coaching practice. My work lies in the field of women’s health so I work with the likes of period pain, chronic PMS, PMDD and the whole range of physical and emotional symptoms that can often present around the menstrual cycle. But this article can be applied to chronic pain and suffering of all sorts.
Learning about chronic pain from both my training and also my own personal lived experience, I began to ask questions like: why is it that we can read all the books on women’s health in the world but still struggle? Why do some people find it so emotionally difficult to make lifestyle changes for the benefit of their health? And why can there still be suffering when we make lots of changes and get help? Is there something deeper underneath the physical pain? Hidden stuff we haven’t explored yet?
Relationships and relational dynamics
I have come to see health and recovery as a non-linear thing. It is a process, an encounter, an engagement. And one big area that has a huge role to play in our health and wellbeing is our relationships. Our relationships with both ourselves and with others. Because relationships involve more than one party and because they are not fixed, I refer to the term relational dynamics too when bringing this into work with clients. They are complex, living, ever-moving energies between people that determine how the relationship is experienced by those involved. One area that plays a major role in our relationships is loyalty.
Hidden loyalties: what are they?
We all know what loyalty is in our everyday relationships. It is the feeling of strong support, commitment or allegiance towards another. It is a kind of pull in favour of another. We can have loyalty towards people, places, things, beliefs, religions, groups, movements, institutions, and so on. Most of us are aware of our loyalties if we were to sit down and write them out. Who we are loyal to and why. They are a normal force that helps us to feel connected and contribute to our human need for belonging.
We have healthy loyalties that benefit us. But we can also have loyalties that don’t serve us and these are the loyalties I would like to address in this article: our hidden loyalties. These can block or prevent our recovery and therefore be harmful.
How hidden loyalties can block recovery
A lot of the ways we relate lie in the subconscious, out of awareness or perhaps they are just patterns and ways of relating that are there for a long time, comfortable in their grooves, and know no better. It is not normal to be always reflecting on how we relate and what we are loyal to. Why should we? But herein lies the problem. There may be certain loyalties we relationally hold and act out that are not helpful and that we are unaware of.
For example, if I were to be the child of someone who suffered great hardship and oppression in a war-torn country and era, on a subconscious level, any loyalties I hold to my parents could play a role in preventing me from being happier and healthier than those ancestors who suffered and came before me. If an ancestor endured great suffering of some nature, staying in our own suffering from a place of loyalty can keep us close to them and serve as a merging kind of “love.”
And so, the same can be said for chronic pain, period pain, chronic PMS or any hardship connected to “being female.” It might be helpful to ask ourselves if we know of any ancestors or other family members who suffered in relation to their womb story. Could we perhaps be stuck in a relational loyalty to them on an invisible level? Or, could we stay loyal to generations and groups of women at large who suffered within an entire nation?
These types of hidden loyalties show up in different ways. They can present as resistance to embarking on a recovery journey, skepticism, lack of hope, or something else that then serves our “staying close to other". On that deep subconscious level, it could be an uncomfortable thing and almost dishonourable to live a healthier, happier and freer life if our loved ancestors were unable to.
Does one person’s suffering meet another’s needs?
Another way these hidden loyalties can present is that our suffering in an indirect way can serve the needs of another. When it comes to chronic pain, this can be questioned as: is my chronic pain in some weird way serving someone else’s need? Or is it serving an unmet need within myself? Could someone I love be benefiting in some hidden and invisible way from me staying stuck?
Rose’s story: an example of hidden loyalty
Rose suffered for years with chronic pain. She tried everything but nothing really worked to get rid of her pain completely. Her mother was her primary carer all her life. As an adult, she didn’t need care any more except for when her chronic pain emerged. Her mother was an excellent and very caring carer. The problem however was that Rose’s mother’s own self-worth and identity was tied up in her own role as a caretaker of others. On a subconscious and emotional level, Rose’s difficulty with embracing recovery lay in the fact that she was loyal to her mother’s needs. Even though she hated her pain and didn’t want to be stuck in it any more, it meant that she was able to continue in the ‘patient’ role with her mother and receive her mother’s love that way. And her mother would have her own needs met around her identity and self-worth being entangled in her role of mother and carer. She was able to be “needed.”
Further support
If this is a topic you would like to explore for yourself, learn more about or need some support with, I can help you with that. Book a free consultation with me here.
Lisa de Jong is a health and wellbeing coach specialising in women’s health, menstrual cycle awareness, nervous system regulation, embodiment and relationships. Read more about Lisa here. Sign up to her newsletter here and her online courses here.