Wounds
This is Western Coffee—notes on building the creative body. Last time: Signal. The whole series is here. Please share this email; you can sign up free below.
This is the fifth installment in a discussion of emotional factors in chronic pain. Here are the first, second, third, and fourth parts.
I hate thinking about stressful stuff, and will go to almost any lengths to avoid doing so—without realizing that’s what I’m doing. We’re not even talking tip of the iceberg; I’m burying the whole thing.
This has been an important insight of the last decade or so, and a surprising one given how obsessive I sometimes feel about that very same stressful stuff. It’s almost like I have two modes: fixated and oblivious. Fixating is a problem because it interferes with the normal unfolding of life. Oblivion seems nice, by comparison—until I realize that the conflict I’ve turned a blind mind to is showing up elsewhere. Usually the elsewhere is a ligament, a tendon, a muscle, or a joint, but it might also be my digestive system or my immune responses or my heart or—well, if it’s connected to the brain, it’s a candidate.
A therapist of mine once described to me the “big three” stressors: work, relationship, status of domicile. To these I will add health, though of course health depends a lot on those other things.
Here’s where I stand on those, and given the upheaval of the last few years I’ll bet you can relate: Since 2020 I’ve paused a prosperous career as an innovator in newsrooms to pursue a more lucrative and stable line of work (lol), writing a novel; ended a major relationship and started a new one whose rewards and demands are both significant; spent two years in court against my landlord, Emperor Palpatine; and tested my body like never before as a newcomer to endurance athletic competition.
I’ve made it a habit to name all this to myself repeatedly. That list is my first resort when a new body glitch shows up, and often just reviewing all the things that might be generating uncomfortable feelings that won’t quite break through to the surface is enough to stir me to recognition and abate the symptom. But I was still surprised this week when I decided to turn the time over, as we used to say in the Mormon Church, to whatever parts of my psyche might feel unheard. “Why is my right hamstring still hurting?” I asked, pen poised over my morning notebook. “What am I missing?”
The answer is kind of awkward to share, but it also struck me as a great illustration of what we’re talking about here. Launching in like a PTA gadfly on a countdown clock, my brain gave me a testy “thank you” for the chance to speak, finally. Then it told me something that took my conscious, everyday self by complete surprise: that it’s worried about being cool. You got made fun of a lot as a kid, Michael, my brain said. The places you’ve found validation in the more recent past are largely dormant—see the career pause—and some of your relationships have shifted significantly in recent years or dropped away.
It’s kind of a fair point, I reflected as I got up to make breakfast. I had a terrible time fitting in as a kid, in ways I know left some scars. In fact, my career in newsrooms was the first period in my life when I had sustained, across-the-board validation from the people around me—the first time I felt completely sure of my place. That experience was what gave me the confidence to strike out on my own and take a risk. But it was also staunching a wound, and when I went solo I wasn’t conscientious about continuing that care. At the same time, “coolness” is a social idea, and my social life really has changed—in some ways it has narrowed—over the last few years. Things I used to be able to rely on in reflections from other people are now sometimes my own responsibility, and I haven’t always thought to flip over the switch.
But even without solving the problem, after that conversation with myself, over the weekend, I went three days without any pain in my hamstring. Since then it’s flickered a bit, like a lightbulb, but I sense at least the beginning of the end. All that from just asking, and making time and space for the answer. I can’t recommend it enough.
Kindly send me your thoughts, questions, and provocations: dmichaelowen@gmail.com. And say hi on Instagram, or let’s Peloton together: @leggy_blond.