When you are in chronic pain life becomes very heavy. You evolve into a lifestyle that is just surviving. You are just trying to keep your head above water dealing with a significant amount of stress. Additionally, you are carrying a heavy pain burden. You may have forgotten what it is like to live your life with deep joy and excitement about the possibilities. I would suggest an exercise that I have personally found helpful.
- Find a quiet time and place where you can just think and possibly go into a meditative state. Think back to a time of your life when you were the happiest.
- Then visually take yourself back there, trying to remember every possible detail about that era of your life. Remember:
- Dreams/ goals
- Attitudes
- Friends
- Activities
- Feelings and emotions around specific events
- Spend as much time as you can with this exercise and repeat it a few times
- Once you have really internalized that joyous period of your life then sit down again and fully experience your present life
- Compare it visually to the era of your life when you were the happiest
- Note the gap between then and now
- Make a commitment to get that vision back
- Write it down in as much detail about the kind of life you want to regain.
- Don’t worry about creating a specific plan right now.
- Then visually take yourself back there, trying to remember every possible detail about that era of your life. Remember: