It is difficult knowing how to live as this “new” person with pain or an illness. Perhaps the life roles and skills that once defined you are too difficult to perform. You may feel embarrassed when asked by others what you do for a living, for you no are able to work. 

I remember thinking that my past was “perfect”—I were perfect—before my injuries. I clung to the desire of a pain-free life and the  false reality that my life, and my Self, would be perfect once I conquered and rid of pain. My all-or-nothing attitude amplified despair  and increasingly, I perceived pain as threatening my very existence as a human being. I resented feeling conquered by pain and rejected pain more. Does this represent you at all?

Rejecting pain may unknowingly create a pattern of rejecting your body and yourself. Over-identifying with self-perceptions based on limitations can inhibit you from seeing your abilities. Pain is a part of your life for the moment, and maybe forever, but it is not who you are as a human being.

The exercises below are to help start perceiving pain as separate from who you are as a person.