Q: Dear Todd, what if you are in so much physical discomfort and have been for years and the only thing that seems like it will end this discomfort is death. How do you reconcile that? Take comfort in knowing that your discomfort will end when you die?
TODD ANSWERS: That is unfortunately just life sometimes. You can try to find comfort in some possible tomorrow, but you can also find it in the here and now. Hope lies in the future, and hope is wonderful and powerful, and essential to life. But right now you can turn your pain into a meditation. There are proven meditation methods for reducing the sensation of pain in the body. Even novice meditators can have painful dental operations performed without any medicine for the pain.
And the strangest and most ironic part of all is that a huge percentage of what causes most chronic pain is the stress and tension we create and hold in our bodies as a response to our initial cause of pain. So the more you can accept and make peace with the pain, the less tension and tightness there will be in the body. This can help the body become looser simply by observing pain and discomfort without anger or judgment.
As for your treatment options and the best course of action, you will have to trust the experts and your heart. But I hope this helps you transform how you experience and relate to your pain.
