Hope For Healing
Rainbows are such a beautiful sign of hope. It is my mission to give you hope that you can heal, experience less pain, grow stronger and have the energy to do whatever brings you the most joy. Discovering the root cause of your pain or symptoms sometimes requires dedicated detective work. So I’m going to tell you a story about my experience with temporomandibular joint (TMJ) pain.
After I had gum surgery years ago to fix some receding gums on the right side of my mouth, I had throbbing pain behind my right ear, around and down toward the back of my neck. A few weeks later, after my gums had healed, I felt the same pain start throbbing again, in the same place.
I went to my doctor because I was concerned that maybe my gums didn’t heal correctly or there was some infection in the back of my mouth. My doctor found nothing wrong and told me to take pain medication as needed whenever the TMJ pain occurred. Since then, for years, I have had random occurrences of that same pain, in the same place.
When I became a health coach, my first thought was that maybe some food was causing inflammation in that area to flare up and be painful. So I kept a food journal for months and found no pattern. What I finally discovered was the only thing that consistently seemed to trigger it was when I was stressed, tired and overwhelmed. Whenever the TMJ pain would flare up, I would be sure to get extra sleep and that always helped.
I now know that stress, trauma and repressed emotions can cause a change in the nerve pathways in the brain which can cause chronic physical pain and symptoms. There is no coincidence that the pain always appeared in the exact same area where it hurt after my surgery and that sleeping helped make the pain go away. If we are injured and experience pain in a certain area, we are more likely to develop chronic pain in that same area because the neurological pattern of pain and nerve sensitization has already been established and the brain remembers it. Sleeping helped me because I put my body, brain and nervous system in a position to rest and repair and feel safe and calm.
My TMJ pain flared up earlier this week. So when the throbbing dull ache began, I stopped what I was doing and became mindful and aware of what was going on around me and what thoughts were swirling around in my mind. I thought about what the pain was telling me and right away, a few things popped up that I was feeling anxious about and also some things that I was putting extra pressure on myself to complete.
After dinner was done and the kitchen was cleaned, I sat down at my computer to journal my emotions. I asked myself where the pain was coming from and I started typing “I’m scared of… I’m nervous about… I am putting pressure on myself to do all of this now…”
All of these subconscious underlying fears and pressures came up. I was busy keeping up with life and not acknowledging the accumulation of my emotions. I cried and typed and released my emotions. I deleted the document and then did a calming tapping meditation. I encouraged myself that I didn’t need to be afraid, I didn’t need to put all of that unnecessary pressure on myself and I could surrender what I could not control. And the pain went away.
Mindfulness, awareness, acknowledgement, emotional processing and self-compassion are all powerful tools that can help you to reprocess pain signals in order to reduce or eliminate chronic pain and symptoms. Journaling can move emotional energy out from our subconscious to our conscious mind so that our nervous system feels safe to heal.
The more you put your emotions into words and bring them out into the light, the less pain will be stored in your body. Miracles happen when light shines in the darkness and our truths are revealed, expressed and released.