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In the Arrow Sutra, the Buddha talked about two arrows. The first arrow which pierces you contains any number of the unavoidable difficulties in life. This could be chronic pain, which I’ll be talking about today, or stress, or grief. Life is suffering, the Buddha tells us, and what causes suffering is attachment, which brings us to the second arrow. The second arrow is our own inner reaction to the first arrow, whatever difficulty we’re experiencing. Worry. Fear. Anger. Self-blame or self-criticism, the old “woulda, coulda, shoulda” that runs through our minds. That’s the second arrow and it causes more suffering than the first.
If we stub our toe, which is admittedly a small, but often extremely annoying difficulty, it hurts. It’s the hopping around afterwards blaming ourselves for not seeing the chair, or the table, or whatever we ran our foot into. We call ourselves klutzy; we blame a lack of perioperception; we might even call ourselves worse things than a klutz, and we blame ourselves for stubbing our toe. That’s what hurts worse than the initial injury.
Even when the difficulties are larger, such as ongoing, relentless chronic pain, it’s often the second arrow, how we relate to the pain, that makes it hurt worse. Now, I want to stop for a moment and say that I’m not talking about just thinking about your pain differently as if I were asking you to follow some sort of cognitive behavioral change. Instead, I invite you to see the stories you’ve told yourself and the stories you’ve been told in the second arrow.
Let me broaden the lens a bit. Many natural environments have the capacity to restore themselves when they become ecologically out of balance. This happens when the damage hasn’t gone past a tipping point, when humans get out of the way, rather than actively try to help in well-meaning, but misguided ways, and when all stressors are removed. Let’s think about this for a moment.
There is a tipping point with pain. Each person’s tipping point is going to be different, and depending on a person’s neurotype, the sensory issues associated with pain will be different as well. If the tipping point hasn’t been reached, then restoration without much intervention is possible. For too many of us, though, we passed that tipping point a long time ago.
Wild Spirit Storytelling invites us to know where we are. I am experiencing pain, and I have passed my tipping point.
The next step? Remove all stressors if at all possible. Now, I fully acknowledge that this may not be possible, and for those in certain communities that are being actively harmed right now, it may be impossible. But remove as many stressors as you can. This may mean seeking medical care, if possible, again understanding that this may not be the best course of action for many. It may mean exploring other treatments or options if possible. It might mean taking time off, withdrawing to focus on you and your care, and what makes your internal ecosystem flourish. (Like cuddling with your pet or watching a favorite television show with your best comfort food.)
According to ecosystem restoration, the wild will begin to restore itself. I would be a fool if I told you that you would automatically heal from your chronic pain. It is much too complicated an issue and our mind-body-gut connections are much to complex to fix them with a single blog post. We can, however, work toward that restoration.
We remove the second arrow.
Examine your stories. The ones you were told, the ones you internalized, and the ones you’re currently creating about yourself. This is how we begin to create restoration. This is how we learn from the wild and how ecosystems restore themselves so that we can apply this to ourselves.
The most important thing is that we don’t blame ourselves. A natural environment that’s out of balance doesn’t blame itself for getting that way. And those who work in biology and ecology don’t blame the area either. They understand that it was often external, man-made forces that caused an ecosystem to get out of balance and the same thing holds true with us. Body theology means understanding that we are not inherently bad or wrong for being in pain, but that it indicates that something is out of balance and though we may not be able to completely remove the pain, there are things we can do that will help.
