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Chronic Pain in the Age of Identity - A simple mistake with dire consequences

The underlying cause of chronic pain is neural pathway dysfunction in the brain. No this does not mean that the pain is “in your head.” Your pain is very real but it is not actually due to a structural cause. Instead, the brain learns to predict and produce pain based on specific triggers.

Unfortunately a few of these triggers are almost impossible to avoid if you are living in a state of ego identification. This means that no matter what treatments you have, you are more than likely going to remain in pain if this isn’t addressed. It also means that if this is addressed, you could reduce pain and suffering almost instantly.

Ego is a loaded term and there’s really 5 components. The one we are going to talk about here are ego functions. These are ways that living beings interact with the environment to nourish and protect their physical bodies. These functions evolved from single celled organisms and now serve as a boundary program between our body and the world.

There’s nothing wrong with these functions. In fact, when they are working in their natural function, they are quite useful. The problem becomes when these functions attach themselves to our self-awareness. This is a mental process known as ego identification.

Self-awareness is the mental process of splitting thinking into two parts. This creates a narrator and commentator, where it feels like there is one stream of thoughts representing events and a mini-me in the head noticing and commenting on them in real time. This is the constant self-referential speaking that we do to ourselves when the default mode network in our brains is active.

When in a state of ego identification, our self awareness or thinking is mistaken for a physical body. Our ego functions then respond to threats as though it were a real body by creating fight, flight, and freeze responses. These responses in the body then confirm there is something wrong.

Worse yet, when we are constantly in this state of thinking without knowing it, we can’t recognize the thoughts and feelings clearly because we mistake them to be one and the same with us. This trains the brain to predict pain and symptoms when we are experiencing challenging emotions, thoughts, or physical sensations.

This entire process is bad enough as it is, but the way our society is set up in the current age can make it a whole lot worse.

Everything these days is with respect to identity. People create an image of who they wish to be online. They take jobs and then label themselves according to that job. For example, I am a lawyer.

Then we have gender identity, chronic pain identity, and countless others.

The one thing they all have in common is that they are mentally constructed. They are simply mental labels and a collection of thoughts about them. They strengthen the ego by supporting the idea that we are all separate rather than one.

Business training books tell you to imagine an identity you want to become, then ask yourself how would I behave if I wanted to be X identity?

Yes this might get you to your goals. But chances are you were trying to achieve that goal to satisfy the lack produced by the sense of separateness they comes from ego identification.

Then what?

Then your job, your gender identity, your favorite hobby, or whatever else you have taken as your mental construction of “you” is then at risk whenever the construct is challenged.

For example. You are a lawyer. You hate it. But you told yourself you would become a lawyer so you could have a “good job.”

Now every time you work, it hurts. You blame your chair even though countless others sit in worse chairs with no pain... Time to call your own B.S. and get to the root cause.

For help breaking through the pain-identity trap, apply for group coaching.

00:00 - Intro
00:24 - The problem of identity and ego functions
01:07 - Ego identification causes physical symptoms?
02:00 - What do we mean by identity?
02:18 - What is the "achievement identity?"
02:47 - Example - Musician
03:25 - Threats to Identity - Crisis and/or injury
04:20 - Ego identification symptoms loop
05:13 - "Chronic pain" identity
06:02 - Who's to blame?
06:36 - Solutions to feel better
06:45 - Solution 1 - Normalize ego functions
07:19 - Solution 2 - See the illusion of "self"
08:10 - Solution 3 - Let thought become secondary
08:43 - Solution 4 - Recognize judgment and criticism
09:15 - Sign up for group coaching!