{"id":942,"date":"2018-05-15T10:51:17","date_gmt":"2018-05-15T09:51:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.radicallyopen.test\/?p=942"},"modified":"2018-05-15T10:51:17","modified_gmt":"2018-05-15T09:51:17","slug":"pushing-through-pain-aka-too-much-impulse-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/pushing-through-pain-aka-too-much-impulse-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Through Pain: aka Too Much Impulse Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am in yoga class and have just been silently congratulating myself on my amazing Crow pose (resting my knees on my upper arms, feet up, with just my palms touching the ground).\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking how awesome I have become at this posture and really feel secure in it\u2026 and then, I fall. \u00a0Epic failure style. My nose plants into the wood floor and blood starts spewing on my mat and the ground. I barely react, other than to take my towel and hold it to my nose until the blood flow lets up.<\/p>\n

Neither girl practicing next to me says anything, so I think, \u201cOh it can\u2019t be that bad.\u201d \u00a0I return to my yoga practice, while little drops of blood fall onto my mat.\u00a0 When I finish class, I realize that not only is my nose still bleeding, but now it\u2019s throbbing.<\/p>\n

Finally the girl next to me looks over and says, \u201cYour nose looks really swollen, I think you need ice.\u201d<\/p>\n

I say, \u201cOh it\u2019ll be fine, I only live a mile away.\u201d<\/p>\n

I walk out to my car and casually look at myself in the mirror\u2026 OMG, my nose is twice it\u2019s normal size and all red.\u00a0 I think it\u2019s broken.\u00a0 The doctor I go to see confirms it\u2019s broken and I silently question why the hell didn\u2019t I leave class when I got hurt?<\/p>\n

From a Radcally Open DBT perspective, this is a case of too much impulse control.\u00a0 For us overcontrolled (OC) leaning people, we have a biological predisposition to be able to exert superior control on our impulses and expressions.\u00a0 Most OC folks spend their life controlling their reactions– facially, bodily, and emotionally.\u00a0 So naturally for OCs it also makes sense to control pain expressions.<\/p>\n

As I reflected on how this shows up for me besides the yoga room, I realized I have pain issues all over my body: TMJ pain, sciatica, and a heart condition. I\u2019ve been pushing through pain and discomfort most of my life. This yoga incident was no different.\u00a0 I\u2019ve gotten so good at ignoring signs that something was wrong that I have made a habit out of it.<\/p>\n

No doubt I\u2019ve heard from many of my clients that they live through constant pain issues and function relatively normal lives.\u00a0\u00a0 So this concept is not new, but what is disturbing is when we have gotten so used to pain, that we don\u2019t listen to it when it is serious.<\/p>\n

I have a friend who popped his ACL and still managed to play a whole softball game, albeit poorly, but he finished.\u00a0 And a client who dislocated a shoulder on vacation and didn\u2019t bother going to the hospital until she returned home from her trip.\u00a0 Another colleague I know got cat scratch fever and almost lost a finger because she didn\u2019t want to seem like a wuss by going to the doctor for such a \u201csmall\u201d injury.<\/p>\n

The line we OC\u2019s tell ourselves is \u201cIt\u2019s not that bad, I can take it.\u201d\u00a0 For the most part it\u2019s true, and so the cycle continues.\u00a0 A former military client of mine once said, \u201cI can take ten minutes of literally anything.\u201d\u00a0 We constantly push through pain issues, when we should really stop and ask ourselves, \u201cWhy?\u201d<\/p>\n

When we have learned that a way to cope with a pain is to act like nothing is wrong, and go about our lives as if no one knows, the only person we are hurting is ourselves.\u00a0 Emotional and physical pain lets us know something need attention.\u00a0 It\u2019s important to take care of ourselves.\u00a0 Many overcontrolled leaning people would never think to let another person suffer the way we let ourselves. Yet we don\u2019t change the way we treat ourselves.<\/p>\n

Another interesting observation about this experience is that I noticed I wanted to blame others in the class for not taking care of me.\u00a0 How dare they not stop what they were doing and attend to me!!\u00a0 My inner probation officer just joined the case.<\/p>\n

It would be easy for me to say that they \u201cshould\u201d have helped, and maybe if you were in my class you would have, but that doesn\u2019t allow me to take responsibility for my own needs.\u00a0 In the end, I am the one that is the feeler of the pain, not them. I am the one that decided I was \u201cstrong enough\u201d to make it through. I am the one that has to live with my broken nose.<\/p>\n

Yes we would all like to have people that take care of us, and need friends and family that do, but we have to watch our own problematic patterns that masquerade as independence and blame.\u00a0 By persisting in behaviors that hurt, we make ourselves prisoners of our own pain.<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"About the Author: Hope Arnold, LCSW, MA<\/em><\/h2>\n
Hope Arnold is the owner of RO DBT Denver and co-developer of the RO DBT App. \u00a0She specializes in treatment of OCPD, chronic depression and anxiety and female autism.<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am in yoga class and have just been silently congratulating myself on my amazing Crow pose (resting my knees on my upper arms, feet up, with just my palms touching the ground).\u00a0 I\u2019m thinking how awesome I have become at this posture and really feel secure in it\u2026 and then, I fall. \u00a0Epic failure […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":943,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=942"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/942\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/943"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.radicallyopen.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}