ICRAVE Coping With Pain

Have greater relaxation and an ability to live more effectively so that the pain doesn’t completely erode the quality of your life.

  • the best way to do that is not to run from the symptoms or the discomfort  (even if that is the first impulse)

Don’t distract yourself from it but rather counter-intuitively move into it

  • Ask it “what do you have to teach me?”
  • “What can I learn by just listening to the pain?”

Re-source: Relief

We have a lot of thought towards pain that are inaccurate just like our thoughts about anything else we do, eat, etc. (our memories)

Let go of your thoughts of the pain and just experience the pain

  • Then it changes and opens up in some ways.
  • Your body is kind of listening when you move into mental states that are more receptive, accepting, and present
    • The body is listening and then the relaxation does often follow
  • Ride the waves of pain when there is no easier solution
  • Given that we have to face a certain amount of pain and discomfort, Is there maps that will guide us through that landscape so that we can live with a quality of life that is reasonable, optimistic or growing. 

Pain often becomes greater when you pay attention to it

  • Often it becomes a hurdle when fear is attached to it
    • Elements of being stuck in this sort of thinking
      • “If I get closer to the pain, it will hurt more” (this is just a thought)
      • “This pain is always going to be here with me”

craving and resource from “Mindfulness Meditation in everyday life” by John Cabet Zinn