One of the most meaningful benefits of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is pain management.
Actually, MSBR goes beyond managing or dealing with pain; it gives you the tools to develop a different relationship with your pain, a relationship that keeps your pain from controlling how you live your life.
For over 30 years, Jon Kabat-Zinn, the founder of MBSR, has been offering this program to people who are struggling with pain. In his book, Full Catastrophe Living, Kabat-Zinn reports that at the beginning of the program, participants fill out a questionnaire with over one hundred pain symptoms; they check which symptoms they are experiencing. The average number of symptoms is 22; that is lot of pain symptoms.
At the end of the MBSR program, they fill out the questionnaire again, and people check an average of 14 symptoms, a 36 percent reduction. These are people who have been receiving medical attention from health care providers for a number of years with little or no success in pain reduction.
Ironically, the MBSR program does not focus a lot of attention on the specific symptoms of your pain. MBSR is often done in a group setting. If that group has, say, 15-20 people, it is impossible to spend time on the specific symptoms of each person. Not only is it impossible, but it is also not helpful. Fifteen to twenty people talking together about the details of their pain symptoms would encourage more self-preoccupation with the pain and lengthy discussions about “what’s the matter” instead of figuring out ways to reduce the pain.
So how does MSBR focus on pain symptoms?
Kabat-Zinn says that instead of “discussing symptoms as woes and how to get rid of them, when we do focus on symptoms of one kind or another it is to tune in to the actual experience of the symptoms themselves in those moments when they most dominate the mind and the body. We do this in a particular way, which might be called giving them wise attention” (356).
Notice how Kabat-Zinn describes the symptoms as dominating the mind and the body. When you think of pain, you think of what is happening in the body. This “wise attention” allows you to see that pain is an experience of the mind and the body. You can see this in the language we use to talk about our illnesses. We say, “I have a headache” or “I have a fever.” When the pain is something that we have that doesn’t feel good, the only option is to figure out a way to get rid of it. But what if the pain is not something we have? What if it is a dynamic process that is in our bodies, and if we give attention to that process, we can have a different relationship with it and impact how it unfolds.
Along with the stories we tell about our pain, there are also emotions we have about our symptoms. We may be anxious or fearful about the symptoms. We may be angry or depressed that they are present in our lives. All of these emotions exacerbate the pain that is happening in our bodies.
So how do we give attention to these symptoms, along with the thoughts and emotions that go with them?
MBSR gives you a variety of mindfulness practices that allows you to develop a different relationship with these symptoms. Mindfulness is a particular kind of attention; it is an accepting, nonjudgmental welcoming of what is happening in the present moment. Here is a simple example of what this might look like in practice.
Let’s say that you struggle with chronic headaches. When one of these headaches shows up, most likely you respond by taking some pain medication. You might change the plans for what you were going to do that day and feel sad or angry because you must make those changes. You may wonder how long this headache will last; will it be longer or shorter than the last time?
If you experience a headache in the middle of a mindfulness practice, the first thing you would do is welcome it and accept it. This headache is what is happening in your life right now, so why not give a different kind of attention to it? What do you notice about it? Is it in a particular spot in your head? Does the pain stay the same, or is there some ebb and flow to it?
Next, as you experience the pain that is part of the headache, you may also notice some thoughts as well. It might be thoughts like: I wish this headache would go away. Will I have to live with these headaches for the rest of my life? Why can’t I be like other people and live a pain-free life? Instead of trying to avoid these thoughts or getting caught up in them, let them be there like the physical pain that is part of the headache.
How does this make a difference?
As you do these mindfulness practices consistently and refuse to get caught up in the pain and the thoughts and feelings that go with them, you reach a place where you realize that you are not your headache. This headache is just something that is happening to you right now. Even with the presence of this headache, it doesn’t have to control how you want to live your life in this moment.
My stress reduction specialty page has more information about MSBR and how it can be helpful if you are struggling with chronic pain.