Does Pain Distract Pain?
Lately I find that when I have a migraine, I need only to hit the area of pain with a medium pressure to forget the pain or get it to move to a different area. My favorite pain relief is my stuffed toy that has a solid nose, Stitch. He’s cute enough that I don’t feel annoyed with the situation, and he head bangs me hard enough while triggering silly feelings that relieves the stressful pain. When I don’t have Stitch, I have a small glass bottle that I can control where and how hard I hit or use for pressure on the pain (it’s cold sometimes, which also helps). It’s great that I found these natural ways to relieve pain, but it also gets me to wonder why applying pain relieves pain.
As I looked back on my life, I connected this pain relief to a seizure prevention method I used long ago. When I had seizures multiple times daily, I had a distraction method for when I felt an aura. I used to hum, drum on my body or do whatever I could to distract myself from encouraging the seizure whenever I felt warned. I learned that getting stressed had a way of making the seizure happen faster. Through distraction, my mind wandered away from what was happening, while keeping the right level of awareness, and managed to delay the seizure or, on rare occasions, prevent a seizure. I always felt that I appeared to be a fool as I hummed, drummed or talked gibberish unexpectedly but it was all I could do to give myself some safety.
Today, feeling a migraine can trigger annoyance that worsens the pain. Since my aim is pain relief, I do what I can to stray from that path. It may seem mean to hit myself on the head, but it chases the pain away and makes me believe that it’s gone.
After a life getting my head injured, it can feel wrong to purposely hit my head, but it is my fastest way to relief. This makes me wonder if my seizures were also a form of relief back then. Seizures were more frequent when I was stressed and the after effect would distract me from negative thoughts. Injury would be painful but I felt grateful when I regained consciousness, and I didn’t want to dwell on what I couldn’t control. For the days when I couldn’t grasp the source of my stress, a seizure felt like a renewal button that helped release held up tension.
I may never know the reason why my life is as it is but I’m grateful for the small methods of relief and surges of learning that come my way. For however I appear to others, I’m grateful that not everyone has to experience what I experience and that my body is resilient enough to handle what I’m given.
