The Pain of Self-Cherishing

The Pain Of Self-Cherishing

In dealing with pain, whether it is physical pain, emotional pain or mental pain, there are two big traps to contend with, either of which can greatly increase our experience of pain into deep suffering.

The first of these is "getting stuck in the story". The second is taking on the victim mentality. 

"Getting stuck in the story" is basically paying too much attention to the CONTENT of whatever it is you are feeling pain from, any conversation from others, or the inside of your head, rather than paying more attention to whether your mind is simply busy or not. We are so content oriented that we barely notice context; in this case, the state of our mind: quiet, busy, agitated or confused. This happens because we become so enmeshed with our ego identity as a character in the story, OUR story, and this can distract us from the very rich wisdom and true meaning of almost any situation in our lives.

Taking on the victim mentality may be more familiar to you.  In taking on the victim mentality, you move from simply having events happen in your life, to identifying so strongly with these events that they practically define you and, ultimately, control you.

The common element with both of these traps is that you over-identify with your ego, getting alternately caught up in the story line of your life, and your starring role in it, or becoming a victim of the events in your life. 

Buddhists call over-identificstion with the ego "self-cherishing". At first, this may sound confusing. Isn't it GOOD to cherish who we are, and our own innate goodness and decency. Of course, and Buddhism strongly supports this viewpoint. "Self-cherishing" here means being so identified with our ego that we lose contact with our greater Self, or Higher Self, if you will. The ego self is not a fact, set in stone. It is not an obvious set of information about who we are, the facts of our lives, but a CONSTRUCT, a creation of our minds, and one of MANY possible selves we might have created as our ego identity. Thus, it is both more fictional and more fluid than we tend to believe. This is actually good news because, while the idea of one's self being fictional may fly in the face of how we see ourselves, and may even seem insane, it also frees us up to create ourselves anew. The fluid Self is one that is continually being recreated and updated, like excellent software.

Now let's look at how all of this actually plays out in our lives. 

You're driving, and have a rear-end car accident, while stopped at a traffic light. You go to the emergency room, get checked out, and go home. You're pretty shaken up, and you feel sore, especially your low back. You take some Tylenol, and pjut some heat on your low back, and go to bed. It is hard to sleep well, and you wake up very sore, so you take the day off from work, and make an appointment to see the chiropractor your spouse has used in the past. The chiropractor takes some x-rays, but these seem normal, so the doctor has you go for an MRI study of the low back. Meanwhile, he starts to treat you with spinal manipulation and heat and electrotherapy. You get only mild relief, but you feel hopeful things will get better soon. 

You get the MRI done, all the while finding it painful to lay still for so long while the test is being peformed. Your chiropractor gets the results, and tells you that you have a disc herniation at L5/S1, explaining that this is the cause of your back pain. The MRI also shows disc degeneration and something the doctor calls spinal stenosis. He says this is causing nerves to be "pinched", and this can cause pain or numbness in the legs. Over time, it can lead to surgery, but he is going to do everything he can to avoid that, through conservative treatment. 

If you are a determined, resilient character, this would be good news. You know that there are some problems in the low back, and that a disc which is damaged may be the cause of your pain, or may not be. If you are this sort of person, you will continue treating with the chiropractor, ask him for more input as to how to best manage the pain and get stronger, look for rehabilitative exercise to become more actively involved in therapy, rather than becoming a passive partner, and perhaps get a second opinion, or seek out other forms of treatment that might hasten a positive outcome. If you are this character, in my experience, you are the most likely patient to get great results, and any doctor treating you will see you as an ideal patient, compliant, responsible for your health and ready to do whatever it takes to get results.

If, on the other hand, you are a more depressed, burdened or passive character, this same MRI news will be a disaster! Your mind will latch on to terms like disc herniation, pinched nerve, stenosis and especially surgery, taking these bits of information and running off with them, to worry over endlessly. "Oh my God! I have a herniated disc, and stenosis! I may need surgery! Maybe more than one over time, and these things only get worse, never better! I need some medication, and an appointment with a neurosurgeon." You may be given exercises to strengthen your body and reduce the pain level, but you will find the first time you try them, they hurt, so you stop the exercises forever, saying "they only make the pain worse". You may run from doctor to doctor, or treat with the same chiropractor endlessly, even if you are not getting any better.  You find yourself not sleeping well, possibly getting medication for insomnia, and becoming more depressed. "If only this had not happened to me, my life would be fine. I'd be happy! I feel like my life is going off the road." Before you know it, you've got your spouse worried sick over you, carefully attending to you, helping you out of bed, in and out of the car, and driving you to all of your doctor's appointments, and commiserating with you, as do all of your friends. You find it becomes the main conversation at any social gathering, and everyone has someone you "have to" see for treatment. 

Needless to say, if you are this character, you rarely get good treatment outcomes, you are unlikely to exercise, lose weight or face directly the depression that is starting to strangle the life out of you. You need pain medication, not Prozac! These patients never get better, and have found a great excuse for why. In fact, their whole identity gets caught up in their back problem, and every personal issue is pushed into the background, safely out of sight and mind. 

The fact is, if two people are in exactly the same car accident, and one person is like the first patient in this example, and the other is like the second patient, the first one will get good results, and move on with their life, even if they get some back pain at times, and it reminds them to double up on doing their stretching exercises. The second one will become chronically entrenched in their pain, and may well collect new symptoms and adjunctive problems- knee pain, neck pain, insomnia. And they will never suspect that the biggest problem of all was themselves! The accident will never be seen as a wake up call, to view their own life more closely, and to take action to change that life. 

Why would anyone make those changes, when they get so much power and attention through their medical problem? And being a medical problem, it is immediately valid and factual to all who hear the tale of woe, not to be confronted or questioned. That is so much nicer than dealing with, or even mentioning out loud, one's personal issues and struggles. 

Our culture militates against this sort of self-reflection and meaning-seeking mind set. And our medical culture feeds the problem, by focusing on patients as passive rather than active members of a team, as the person being "treated", rather than someone responsible for their health and lifestyle choices. Add to this the feeding frenzy of medical practitioners who treat symptoms rather than the whole patient, including their psychological make up, and often prefer to treat, not the patient, but the insurance company paying for every treatment, test and chargeable piece of medical equipment, and you have a system that encourages being sick!

This example using a car accident can be applied to divorce, a family death, war zones, the loss of a job, and any emotional challenge life brings. The point is, one can be more mindful of how one is reacting, and take inventory internally, or simply react mindlessly, out of habit, or from a position of being under siege from life. How you react will have everything to do with how attached you are to the ego, how self-cherishing you are. Even a depressive person, who is usually quite passive and victimized by life in their own mind, can, by detaching from the story line and ego more, move forward without suffering so much, however slowly they may move. Their character may not change much at all, but they can soften the edges of character to allow for new experience, even being less victimized in general. When they do, they will find that the pain has almost miraculously softened along with their character, possibly even becoming a friend- always there, but not that hard to make room for.