You Are Not Complaining

With my private clients, my first question to them is almost always, “How are you feeling,” or “How is your body?” As you can imagine the answer can vary greatly from person to person and day to day. But often when someone has pain somewhere and they tell me about it multiple weeks in a row, they start to apologize.

Even in my group classes when someone informs me of something going on in their body, if they are still bringing it up a few weeks later, they will often apologize. I’ve done this myself when I take classes. No one wants to be seen as a whiner. And none of us wants our body to hurt.

But I can’t preface enough, you are not whining. You are not complaining. I need and want to know what is going in your body. It helps me help you move better. The more feedback the better.

I’m not sure where this apology comes from—a desire to please (thinking any pain or injury makes us less pleasing), a frustration in the discomfort itself that we’d just like to will away, the fact that in our society we are supposed to respond to the question “how are you” with an emphatic “good” no matter how we really feel.

The apology implies if we just stopped complaining, we’d get better. As if it’s our attitude creating the pain. This always get’s tricking. This line of thinking takes the mind-body connection and elevates the mind over the body, but one is not greater or better or stronger than the other. The mind and body need each other. They are two parts of a couple—two individual parts clearly united.

Sure, our attitude, stress, and the way we process a situation can impact our lives. But that mind we tend to elevate is hidden away in a dark skull. It’s got nothing without the signals the body gives it. The body is the part telling us what we feel. We say, “it’s all in our head.” Well, it’s felt in the body first. And, then, yep, everything we experience is in our head, accurate or not. If it’s in your head, it’s your reality. But that reality is based on feedback the body provides the brain.

If you don’t listen to the body when it tells you something repeatedly, it will win. In the end if we ignore what our body tries to tell us our pain or situation generally worsens. Again, our mind can take a challenging situation and look for the bright side. But we can’t will pain away. And while we often take pride in trying to do so, it’s not always helpful. Instead, what we need from the mind is a sense of creativity, curiosity, and exploration. We can fight the pain or we can learn what the body needs and how to ideally unravel pain or work with pain that might have more permanence.

That’s a big ask when our body isn’t operating as optimally as we’d like. And, yes, sometimes living with pain takes a lot of self-talk from the mind (you’re still not whining if you admit to being in pain). Sometimes we do need to push through a difficult situation. But I guess the main message is, it’s a true partnership of body and mind. And it is okay to be annoyed at your partner. So the mind can be frustrated with the body. But we will never solve the underlying issue of we don’t talk about it.

You are not whining when you show up to do the work that will help. You’d be whining if you complained about your situation and made no attempt to improve it. When you show up to class and tell me what you are feeling, you are being part of the solution, not the problem.

So, it’s truly okay to tell me how you feel. It does not mean you’ve caved to the pain. It does not mean you are weak. It does not mean you have brought this upon yourself with negative thoughts. It means you are listening to your body and you’re working on that conversation. It’s a lifelong process I’m still learning myself.

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About the Author: Maggie Downie