Here is a blog on Chronic Pain, the Opioid Crisis, and Disconnection – Getting into Healthy Relationship:
Chronic Pain, the Opioid Crisis, and Disconnection – Getting into Healthy Relationship Again:
“Each of us have three sacred relationships in this world: one with the Higher Power of our understanding, one with ourselves, and one with others. When these first two relationships are askew, the third cannot emerge in a healthy way and, therefore, society cannot thrive.
Yet, as human animals we must have connection. Connection is a basic human need. If we cannot feel connected to a Higher Power, we cannot feel connection within ourselves. If we are unable to build and maintain a healthy relationship with ourselves, our inner life, then we cannot build healthy relationships with others. If we cannot feel connected to others in a healthy way, because of our deep need for connection, we will find another way – even if it is an unhealthy one – to make a connection. Codependency, greed, bullying, domestic violence, and other abuses rise to the surface and become our replacement connections in the absence of healthy connections.
At the root of the chaos and angst of chronic pain and the opioid crisis is an acute case of feeling disconnected from Higher Power energy. When we lose our conscious contact with Source energy, we lose connection to ourselves, our souls. When we lose these first two, we find it extremely difficult if not impossible to interact with society in a healthy way.
When we no longer walk the earth with our bare feet, but walk insulated from it, we are disconnected.
When we have forgotten what it feels like to sink our hands into the soil and feel the energy of the earth, we are disconnected.
When our children have no concept of what it is like to see their food grow from a seed planted in the ground, be nourished into fruit by the soil, sun, and rain – they are experiencing disconnection.
When we look to the radio or TV to determine what the weather is and will be for the day, instead of using our innate ability to step out into the day, smell the air, search the sky for clues and come to our own informed decision about it – we are disconnected.
When 9 million people in Great Britain are found by a Red Cross study to suffer from loneliness – we are disconnected.
We have forgotten the value of each person to another. When we shut out, ignore, or otherwise shun the elderly, the single adult, and the disabled, we have lost the sacred knowledge that everyone brings a treasure trove of gifts to the world. We have lost our humility and our true sense of our place in the world.
When our workplace has become so impersonal that people wake up in the morning and must force themselves to get out and work tirelessly to earn a living, but are keenly aware that they have no real job security – we are disconnected.
When we have wars over which religion is the ‘right’ religion, we are disconnected.
A society is based on service to three key relationships.
Our current society is not set up for us to succeed at the three relationships fundamental to humans:
– Relationship to a Higher Power
– Relationship to self
– Relationship to others
We must know that our foundation begins with our relationship to a Power greater and more loving than ourselves.
We then must be in right and healthy relationship with ourselves.
From the two relationships above, we can then be in a healthy relationship with other.
So – service to Higher Power, service to self, and service to others – these are the root of the thriving individual and civilization.
We know all too well that the current health care system is broken and outdated. The patients’ voices, and in many cases their best interests, have been squeezed out. They have become victims of the system instead of empowered stakeholders in it.
A system that naturally brings each person who is in the system into a healthy relationship with their Higher Power, themselves, and with others – this is a framework from which we can advance and begin to address such ills as rampant chronic pain and addiction in our current society. I propose we nurture a system of society where each person in it has an equal understanding and commitment to insuring their three relationships are healthy ones. Each person is an equal stakeholder in the system.
I have outlined a place to begin an honest, open conversation. We can build from here.”
– Excerpt from “Chapter Two: The Scope of the Problem” in the upcoming book “The Way Through; Crack the Code to Chronic Pain & Discover a Thriving Life”
