Increasing Your Focus Is the Cheat Code to a Pain-Free Life

When you chase your misery it breeds focus and solutions

Tiffany Ryder

Aug 28, 2024

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Most people try to ignore discomfort.

They’re convinced that there’s no way to improve their health. They’ve accepted that ‘not feeling good’ is really as good as it gets and thank God there’s a ‘pill for every ill’ to at least take the edge off.

What counts as ‘adequate’ physical, mental and emotional functioning is far below any standards they might have imagined acceptable as a kid, but that’s just how it is. Because, you know, getting old sucks, right?

They struggle to ever feel ‘good enough’ to finally lose those last 20lbs or achieve their financial goals. They can’t really enjoy their family or their job or find the wherewithal to become exceptional in any way. They stay stuck in a cycle of feeling crappy and trying to ignore their pain or numb it (unsuccessfully most of the time) and then stay pissed off at themselves for ‘not having it together’

It’s a vicious cycle.

The biggest cheat code to actually feeling great I accidentally figured out was to abandon the notion of escaping pain and increase my focus on discomfort.

This shift has allowed me to succeed in ways that I never imagined and saves me thousands of dollars and countless hours every year. Here’s how I do it.

A short story about the power of focus

My shoulder has been freaking killing me all summer.

It started like any other annoying pain (and as a 40-something year old former dancer I’ve gotten used to feeling a little like garbage just getting out of bed in the morning), but this was more than my normal.

Progressively, I started noticing that my shoulder and arm would start to ache throughout the day - every day. When I sat at my desk. When I picked up my gym bag. When I stood in line at the grocery store. When I laid down and closed my eyes at night.

As a clinician, my first response to any perceived minor ailment or physical discomfort is to just sort of… notice it, decide if there’s something unusual or alarming about the situation, and then wait and see if it resolves or gets worse over time.

So, true to form, when this pain started, I ignored it.

It persisted. And once I realized that it wasn’t a one-off annoyance that was likely to spontaneously resolve. I turned my attention to the obvious possible causes. I evaluated my work station. Was my chair too high? Maybe it was too low? I bought a new keyboard, a shorter one, and a new ergonomic, trackball mouse.

When that didn’t work, I moved on to analyzing my workouts and started doing things like using that lumbar pillow that came with the couch.

It was still there.

Maybe I’m stressed and just need a massage - so I booked one. I stretched, ‘foam rolled’ and went to yoga (which a hate). Still miserable.

My random interventions were failing and my pain escalated.

Musculoskeletal pain (as we call it in the biz) can sometimes be the result of a sort of BS cycle that goes something like this -

You do something weird, and then it hurts some part of your body, then you try to make adjustments to make it better - and by moving your body in other weird ways it often does make the original thing better but then hurts other parts.

(So if you’ve ever had an injury or sprained an ankle and then developed hip/leg pain on your opposite side- you know what I mean.)

I figured maybe I was just in one of these cycles and a topical pain solution would help correct whatever compensation mechanism I’d set off and then I could move on with my life.

And since topical solutions (like ice/medicine) are way less risky than things you take by mouth as a rule, it was a no-brainer to start there - menthol, camphor, lidocaine patches, methyl salicylate (which is just aspirin) and CBD oil all helped for limited amounts of time - but nothing brought lasting relief.

Now for most non-medical, non-me humans, the next logical step would be to buy a big bottle of pain meds from somewhere like Sam’s club and numb the pain every 4-6 hours, until it became unbearable or you start vomiting blood or turning yellow.

But I’m ridiculously stubborn and I’ve seen too much.

The truth about masking symptoms

Masking symptoms almost always delays a diagnosis or the implementation of a solution while also creating more stress on other body symptoms. I wasn’t going down that path.

So my options were:

Give in & take the fist full of pills 3-4x a day in an effort to numb the pain, while (likely) still feeling miserable, not solving the root problem or figuring out what was going on.
Involve primary care (always a good option especially for non-clinical folks) but also carries with it the risks of overtesting and overtreatment in the form of pills, injectable/oral steroids, physical therapy, MRIs… especially if the doctor/NP/PA really sucks.
Continue obsessing over what the hell changed in my life that could be causing my shoulder pain and do something about it.

I chose option 3.

I always choose option 3,

Until option 2 seems necessary of course, but I couldn’t bring myself to step on the medical rollercoaster yet.

Then I remembered - I have a process for this.

I bit the bullet and took ONE afternoon off. I grabbed a pen and paper. Here’s what I wrote:

Timeline of when my symptoms started. When they worsened.
Dates of recent travel.
I mapped out all of the changes in my work environment, sleep, workouts & diet.

And as I looked down at my notebook, there it was clear as day - the cause of my Hurt-Girl Summer.

Three things had changed in the weeks that preceded my pain.

I bought a bike and started riding it for an hour after work everyday.
I started a writing challenge - waking up an hour early 7 days a week to write.
I committed to temporarily working exclusively from my home office so I’d be around during what I’ve started calling Teenage Girl Summer.

Not to bore you - I’ll make this quick, but all 3 of these changes led to me sitting in a slumped forward position for hours everyday. My back hunched over stretching out my rhomboids and putting my shoulder in crappy alignment when typing, using the mouse, when I was writing, doing anything… was what was precipitating my intense rotator cuff pain.

Boom.

And within a few days of stretching my chest and doing exercises to activate my back muscles my little friend “Misery” had packed up and gone home.

You don’t need more relief from your ailments, you need a process and more focus.

When I look at my ability to diagnose my own medical problems (as well as those of my patients) AND solve them, it’s impressive.

I’m not the smartest clinician, or the most talented. And I’m also not the most well-read or the most experienced.

But my refusal to accept ‘good enough’ or settle for some BS bandaid solution that isn’t really a solution instead of going through the process of figuring out ‘WHY’ something is happening, is enough to get me 10x the returns of people way smarter than me.

This level of intensity and focus is a decision.

What if you took a moment to dig deeper

(in addition to, or instead of jumping right to the ‘numbing’ as a first reaction)?

It’s a choice that you can make every. single. time. you are faced with the option of numbing discomfort or addressing it.

Examples are everywhere.

My head hurts. 3 Ibuprofen down the hatch or do I consider if I could be dehydrated, sleep-deprived, premenstrual or something else?
I’m constipated. Ok take some Miralax, but also, do I ask myself what could be causing this? Is it happening more frequently than before or have I had too much booze, too few veggies, not enough water, started a new medication? Is it pattern and perhaps something more ominous that should be checked out?
My knee hurts. Am I wearing new shoes or walking a different route than usual? Are there weird other things happening like I feel sweaty and sort of unwell or is my knee oddly red and swollen. Would numbing the pain delay a change in behavior or a life-threatening diagnosis?
I’m sad. Well, am I sad or depressed? Am I treating my bad mood with wine before bed to numb a real issue like problems in my marriage or maybe with my thyroid?

The problem is you think you can escape

But the reality is that often you can’t. And even if you when you can, it isn’t the path to living your best life.

Stop thinking others will care about your wellbeing more than you will. They won’t. No matter how amazing your doctor is or your spouse or your boss. It’s on you to fix yourself. To pay attention to what ails you and to what pains are begging to be silenced.

The world is getting sicker and busier and scarier.

Incentives are often misaligned

The incentive of your employer is to get you feeling good enough to get back to work.
The incentive of your spouse is to have you well-enough to perform the necessary functions in your home.
The incentive of your medical team is to get you healthy enough without saying or doing anything that will result in them losing their job, their medical license or getting sued

Their pursuit of those goals may sometimes conflict with what is best for you.

I’m not saying these people are bad or that they don’t wish you were at your best. I’m simply saying that they aren’t going to focus to the point of obsession and resolve, and that if you want to live your best life - it’s on you to make that happen.