The similarities between toothache and depression

[Dwarniel]

I just had the weirdest insight. I scrolled past a picture on Zizeks instagram, and I saw a quote that went along like this: "If we have a toothache, our tongue keeps going there. We're never unconscious of a wound".

And I just managed to draw parallells between my injuries and the depression i used to struggle with. (I'm still diagnosed with depression but I've learned how to manage it, whilst younger me would be totally overpowered by it for months.)

Haha, I don't even know how to write out this insight but I'll try. 5 years ago I hurt my back really bad during some heavy squats, I fucked up a disk in my lower back and I could not walk for 5 months without immense pain. In the beginning I would literally cry if I tried to walk because the pain was so bad.

I went to a chiropractor that treated me those 5 months, and the first thing he told me was: "You need to stop feeling your pain constantly". And i was like "huh? i don't want to feel my pain, i want it to go away", and then he said: "Humans have this weird tendency of always wanting to "feel" their injury. If a guy has a bad inflammation in his shoulder, you can be damn sure he'll press his shoulder constantly with his fingers just to feel his pain." ...And while this information was super weird, I just had to laugh because I knew I did the exact same thing. It's just like the quote about the tooth in the beginning. My chiropractor went on by saying: "If you constantly trigger your pain, just to feel it, you keep on irritating the injury and you heal so much slower."

Like I said, I could not walk in the beginning without crying because of the pain. But the only thing that heals the injury i had is time and activity. You need to get the blood running through your back. My only wish was to lay in bed to get some relief, but I knew I had to walk to heal faster. So I had an alarm on my phone every 40 minutes, and I would get up and go outside to walk around the house. It was so awful, but it really speeded up my recovery.

I see soooo many parallells between this and depression (or other emotional hurt). If you keep on pressing your fingers into your emotional wound, you're just irritating it and slowing down your healing process. I'm not saying you sould ignore or resist your pain. You need to accept it, but the thing that saves you could hurt. Like my walks around the house. That symbolises working out, going to work, meditation and being with friends. It's super painful when you're really depressed, but it really aids you in the healing process.

It's a distinct difference between feeling your wound in a way that irritates it (spiraling down in bad toughts, feeling like a victim, feeling sorry for yourself++) and letting go of resistance towards it and feeling the wound in a helpful way (let's say meditation or a good old crying session when you've been bottled up). Thinking about it over and over and over and over is just not helpful - But see, that's our automatic response and what we naturally want to do.

idk, i kinda failed in writing this down, but with a little goodwill i think you'll understand where I'm coming from. Maybe this is super obvious, but I just thought I would share, just in case it could be of help in some way

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Dwarniel

[system]

No, there's no fail in your expression in my opinion. It's not possible to see through each other's eyes without swapping ourselves. 

Even though I knew this, I was suffering for 3 hours. This post made me remember and see counter-intuitiveness again. This helped me. Thank you for sharing. 

On 9/20/2019 at 8:23 AM, Dwarniel said:

You need to accept it, but the thing that saves you could hurt.

[Dwarniel]

On 21.9.2019 at 11:50 PM, system said:

Even though I knew this, I was suffering for 3 hours. This post made me remember and see counter-intuitiveness again. This helped me. Thank you for sharing

I'm so happy to hear that ? hugs

[Gili Trawangan]

I do that thing with my bad shoulder all the time, and it still hurts thanks for the reminder!