The Agony Of Mighty Mouse
‘I’m Just like Mighty Mouse’
This is how a patient described herself in terms of her intent to push through all things pain.
For many, it is a shared perspective in persistent pain that can keep people stuck in a painful pattern.
Discerning pain and understanding that having healthy alternatives to our default patterns can be a real game changer. Here are some suggestions presented in this case.
Your Story
Thank you for sharing your story with me today.
What came across was your evident awareness of the origin of your pain and the traits developed to cope with a life that dictated the necessity to focus on continued survival.
These traits understandably form out of the coping strategies employed by a child unconscious of the consequences of such long-term use of basic survival instincts.
That’s how they invisibly become the traits which build up the blocks to form an identity of adulthood.
No Long-Term Perspective
It doesn't make any sense to the unconscious processing of childhood to consider regulating those behaviours as if they worked in moments of survival.
They can’t be such a wrong choice, and if repeated enough, they become woven into the fabric of an individual with the potential to detonate somewhere in life when overuse of those traits leads to exhaustion.
Wherever and however they manifest in life depends on many things, and your body has found the best contextual way to attempt to slow you down from those amplified survival behaviours that allowed you safety in the past.
Providers of Safety
They may also have provided you with consistent moments of safety throughout your adult life and in themselves are not bad traits.
They do, however, need handling with sensitivity.
Even though we identify with them as strengths, they must have alternate sides representing vulnerability to hold that definition.
That vulnerability appears when the organism that is us becomes overloaded with something stressful in life that we consider to matter to us.
As the threat of losing connection to that or control over it appears, the desperate attempts to maintain contact or control with what we identify with and need to feel safe triggers our downfall.
Spiralling Out Of Control
Overthinking how to get that control is the mechanism you may have used to great success in the past, but currently, it shuts you down whenever potential overload appears.
Communicating to your system as you did to me that no apparent danger exists is vital, but it cannot come through more thoughts, doing or knowing.
That is why, despite all the learning and doing you've done, it has yet to give you what you hoped it would and left you feeling unfulfilled through your efforts.
When the effort of trying comes through the filter of ‘needing to fix’, it is always destined to fail.
A State Of ‘Being’ And Not ‘Doing’
The state of being and allowing yourself to feel a sense of vulnerability allows the mind a pause in its effort to take over the reins of recovery.
Using the breath to create moments of non-reaction, non-resistance, and non-judgement is the catalyst to explore small moments of not knowing what to do but being ok at that moment with that feeling.
Thoughts do inevitably pop up to quickly coax you back into the familiar but exhaustive fix-it mode, as that is where it has always felt safe for you to live.
Creating small spaces to feel that sense of calm you have today is also safe.
Thirty Calm Seconds
Thirty seconds was all we shared, but you and I felt the calmness together.
That moment didn't mean we would never again feel physical pain or unpleasant emotions.
We saw how to design a moment of calm feeling by pausing our thoughts and focusing on our breath.
It dovetailed with noticing where the calmness appeared in our bodies, and without trying, the busy interrupting mind wandered quietly into the background to enjoy its well-earned rest whilst our bodies and breath held the responsibility for keeping us both safe.
Effortless
How much energy did it take to do that?
How much effort did it take?
How nice did it feel?
Could you be compassionate enough with yourself to repeat similar moments and sprinkle them into your day?
That’s all it takes to make a start, and this builds a foundation of being in a calm state on which you can explore other situations, both recognisable and unrecognisable, that currently seem to be triggers of the migraines.
With time, you can apply that state of the cam before, during and after moments of pain, the anxiety or prediction of either and move gently through these surges without defaulting to the boom-and-bust reactive patterns of the past.
Don’t Change You
You don't have to change who you are, and why should you?
You are a lovely person, and the Mighty Mouse you identify with who saw herself as having to save the world can now pick and choose when she does it and for whom.
My feeling, and hopefully yours too, is that you turn that commitment to save the world and focus that intention on calmly channelling your incredible energy into releasing yourself from the harsh criticism of having to carry on despite the pain.
It opens up those opportunities to recover and starts to appear through the moments created by pauses in your breath.
Enjoy Your Nervous System
Yes, there is much more to do, but take a little time to process what we did today and enjoy the tiny moments you outline for you and your nervous system to enjoy together.
You lead the way for me today, so why now lead the way for yourself?
There is a sense of responsibility for yourself that you may find a challenge to accept and question whether you can do it.
Again, that’s the mind wanting to keep you where you've stayed for so long, just like that familiar car parking spot.
Fear often keeps us from even seeing the beauty of what lies beyond its boundaries.
Still, you can at least peep beyond yours, and you may even feel like moving through both your pain and vulnerability to the paradise they may have kept you from seeing so far.
Here is a link to the physiological sigh technique we enjoyed together.
Keep taking those moments through moments it creates to appreciate how mighty you are without having to prove it to anyone.
What’s next?
Take Your First Step to Recovery.
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