Scott Sonnon: Born to Fail - Made to Succeed

The Gift of Pain: Last to Arrive - First to Go

I lived in a straight-jacket of agony for much of my childhood and young adulthood, due to a joint disease doctors called osteochondrosis. As a coach of many thousands of athletes over the years, I’ve had the distinct displeasure of discovering how many people endure daily chronic and aches… unnecessarily.

After an injury, some medical physicians have no further idea what to suggest other than prescribing pain-killers, anti-inflammatories, ice and rest. Some physicians only ever treat the pain, and then when no longer treatable, prescribe drugs which dull your awareness of the pain.

But pain isn’t the problem. Pain is just your bodily voice demanding help. And like a hungry baby, the more that it goes unheard, the louder the cry for help. Dulling the pain - without addressing the underlying issue - is quite literally no different than giving a baby a teaspoon of whiskey in order to stop it from wailing in starvation (a “remedy” once actually prescribed by physicians!)

Pain is the last to arrive on the scene of an emergency. There are many small points of tension, dullness, and other non-painful sensations which happen which precede pain… but we often ignore these little “fidgeting” events. In acute trauma, we’re also not given any of these warnings. We’re just given the painful signal of damage.

But pain isn’t the injury. Pain is the signal. Treating the pain isn’t the point. Oh sure, I have nothing against taking pain-killers when wrapped in a straight jacket of agony, having personally experienced herniated discs and many broken bones. But the actual issue must be treated, not just the symptoms.

This goes much deeper than the pain, since the pain can be “referred”. In other words, what hurts could be somewhere else in the body in some cases far from the actual injury. For example, a cervical disc herniation between c4-c5 can cause ice-cold shoulder, burning hot elbow pain, deep aching wrist pain like a bracelet, even numbness in the pointer and index finger.

Some medical doctors are very quick to call “voodoo” on chiropractors, therapists and bodyworkers because they have subject matter expertise outside the scope of their medical training. But that’s like anything else: when any technology is sufficiently advanced in comparison to your knowledge base it appears to be “magic.” There are quacks, don’t get me wrong. Some people aren’t even safe hugging trees, much less humans.

If you’re facing a perpetual pain or ache, you do not need to just live with it. Please listen. You just haven’t found the right health care professionals yet! Just keep faith and keep your mind and heart open to possibilities and people you haven’t yet considered.

We know an enormous amount about the human body. We’ve developed amazing cures in medicine. But we only know a small percentage of what is actually going on in a human, and even then that knowledge is fragmented and competitive with each other. Even in the National Institute of Medical Health - “the Mecca of Medical Study” - there isn’t sufficient synergistic cooperation.

Although your physician cleared you for exercise, I strongly encourage you to find an alternative, such as another physical therapist, chiropractor or bodyworker.

If you’re being cleared and are still facing these issues, then it’s not healed yet. A good health care pro will be able to specifically identify it and help you heal it once and for all. It’s ridiculous that you haven’t been adequately helped, and frankly it’s been irritating me at how often I am getting these sad stories of good people living in unnecessary pain.

Just because the pain abolishes doesn’t mean that you’re finished healing. Actually, you may not have even begun healing yet. Pain is the last to appear and the first to go. It’s the body’s desperate signal that something is wrong. It’s a good sign, because pain only appears when you can do something about it.

If an exercise can help you remove the pain, it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re helping the situation. You’ve just removed the “inconvenience” of the bodily message. For instance, if you have a herniated cervical disc, pulling the head down and forward may temporarily alleviate the neck pain, but ultimately, it may “squirt” out the disc more. Or if you live with shoulder pain, and performing kettlebell presses or snatches makes the pain temporarily disappear, it’s no better than taking a pain-pill: the situation remains unresolved, but lifting the kettlebell changed the pattern of tension just enough to relieve the discomfort… for a short duration.

You can find a good health care pro, I promise. Call up a few in the book and consult with them about the issue on the phone asking them if they’re familiar with potential root issues of such symptoms, and if they’ve had success helping people fully recover from these type of issues.

You do not need to just live with the pain. You do not need to be in fear of doing something that may suddenly bring back the pain. You can heal. I promise that you can find someone that can actually help you. Just keep faith and keep looking.

Flow Thyself™,