There is No Backstage Pass for Chronic Pain

By: Kathleen Gramzay Monday September 17, 2018 comments

With over 27 million albums sold and countless tours, Lady Gaga’s voice has thrilled fans worldwide.  She’s now using it to talk about a very personal and widely-shared issue, chronic pain.  Lady Gaga is challenged with fibromyalgia and PTSD.  Singer Selena Gomez recently revealed her life-saving kidney transplant to increase awareness of lupus, an autoimmune condition shared by Toni Braxton, Nick Cannon, Seal,  and Kristen Johnston to name a few.

Other celebs deal with chronic back pain as a result of injuries – George Clooney, Bono, and Paula Abdul. Melody Griffith’s neck injury led her down the path of publicized opioid addiction and finally successful rehab.

Millions of people without their notoriety suffer daily right along with them.   While non-celebrity humans might not have the specific stress triggers that come from international touring, we all have personal stress tipping points that push the capacity of our bodies and minds to handle it.

Chronic pain is real and it has multiple components: physical, mental, emotional, and behavioral.  What happens to us, how we feel about it, how we process it or block it out, and the steps we take as a result are all part of the continual feedback loop that either supports health or degenerates it.

The first step of understanding is to acknowledge that there is no separating physical health from mental health from emotional health.  It’s all One Health.

For in that understanding lies our ability to turn the lens from a judgment of acceptability to focus in on the innate intelligence of the body/mind for self-healing when all aspects of our being are included.   We can then more effectively use the tools of science to support the restoration of optimum health and well-being.