Love yourself, and everything will be just fine!
If only it were that simple, you would say. True, it is not that simple. But simplicity is part of the beauty of the Mindbody connection, and I cannot help invoking it now and again, even though I may be the most complex person on the face of the earth.
So what does self-love have to do with TMS? I would say, a lot. Not only may the lack of self-love be the origin of all your pain symptoms, it may also be at the core of all your other problems too: anxiety, stress, issues at work, issues with your spouse or your friends, and all sorts of other problems we get ourselves into. To understand why this is, we need to understand what happens when we don’t love ourselves enough.
By nature, we are programmed to keep ourselves alive and healthy. We therefore avoid danger, we make it a priority to have a roof over our heads and food to eat, and we tend to put ourselves first, at least in our younger years. Only, to really and truly survive, we have always needed other people. If we think back at the past, being exiled or isolated used to mean certain death (as it would have meant getting eaten by a beast or dying of starvation). This is why our brains still interpret loneliness as a threat to our well-being. A big threat in fact. Even though being on our own isn’t necessarily a death sentence these days, our brain still thinks it is. This is one of the reasons why loneliness is actually lethal, and why people who stay surrounded by their family and friends live longer.
This is also how self-love comes into conflict with our need for approval, connection and to receive love from others. On the one hand, there is our child-like instinct to put ourselves first.On the other hand, there is this need to be accepted, and loved. And to fulfil this latter need, some people go to great lengths, so great in fact, that they forget about putting themselves first.
These types of people are called goodists’or people-pleasers, and a lot of us are guilty of this type of behaviour, especially people who suffer from chronic pain. This kind of behaviour is applauded from a very young age, as adults encourage us to lend a hand and do good for others and praise us when we do so, whereas they never applaud us for playing or practising our favourite sport (I’m generalising here, but you get what I mean). In a nutshell, by the time we are adults, unless we have been taught the importance of self-love, we may start neglecting ourselves. We believe that it’s of the utmost importance to keep our children, partner, boss or colleagues happy, and forget about our own needs. Sometimes, we also panic if a stranger looks at us in disapproval, wondering what is wrong with us - so strong is our craving for approval, that we seek it even from strangers!
Now ask yourself, how many times have you made the excuse that we don’t have time for something personal, like exercise or simply having a coffee with friends, just because were ‘busy’ doing something for someone else? How many times have we overworked ourselves to keep someone happy, so that people won’t reject us, or say nasty things about us? We fear losing people’s approval so much that we forget what we really want. The child in us starts getting frustrated…
And it gets worse than that. Not only do we not treat ourselves to what we deserve (for example, that much-needed weekend break), but we also start getting more and more insecure. People start expecting more from us, they pick up on our insecurity without even knowing it. Eventually, those around us start expecting more and more from us, and start appreciating us less. We actually get even less approval and recognition than we anticipated. The child in us is now about to have a tantrum…
And the tantrum begins. In people with TMS pain, that tantrum can manifest itself in chronic pain. In others, it may manifest as depression and anxiety, while in another, more unlucky bunch of people, it can actually result in serious illness. There may be a time when we’ve been ignoring ourselves so much that pain or illness become the only signals we will listen to. As we get sick of the flu, we now have a very good excuse not to go to work or attend to our duties. You wouldn’t listen any other way, so here’s the flu doing the job for you.
The problem is, most of us don’t even realize that this is what it’s all about. And I admit, there could be multiple triggers to pain and illness. You could really get in contact with a virus, for example, and that’s what causes the flu - only, if you haven’t been loving yourself too much, the virus may manifest itself more severely.
So ask yourself, how much do you really love yourself? How do you feel when you seek others’ approval, or when you fear that others may be doing you a bad turn? If your self-love is strong, then you are not likely to worry so much about what others think about you, and you will be in a more relaxed state of mind, that is conductive to good health. You are also more likely to get love and approval from the right kind of people if your self-love is strong, as people will admire your self-worth and genuinely want to be with you.
If you take some time out for yourself now and again, then you will be in a stronger position to take care of others too, your kids will have a happier parent, your partner a more genuine you. And the child in you calms down and stops throwing that inner tantrum, so perhaps your chronic pain or health will get better too!