HOW YOUR VALUES GUIDE THE WAY YOU MOVE

In my twenty years of practicing as a physical therapist that mostly deals with people experiencing ongoing pain and injuries, it amazes me to witness how much pain and the ways we move are dictated by who we are within and the things our heart and mind value the most.

In the Bible verse Matthew 6:21: “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” I am also sure other philosophical or religious thoughts would concur with the internal heart and soul as our beacon of action.

But when it comes to chronic persisting pain, these core values can become much more evident, especially if you have a value that may be rooted in fear or anxiety.

For example, I have worked with patients who keep running miles upon miles, or they play consecutive rounds of golf and get injured along the way. If they are overdoing it on the chip trail or on the golf greens, it makes sense that injuries can occur. As a physical therapist, I may try to give these patients exercises or do some kind of intervention to get the body moving better. But why is it that these patients keep coming back with continued injuries and sometimes even worse pain than before?

Sometimes, at a deeper level, after I talk more with these patients, I learn that their father died of a heart attack when they were a child, and the patient fears that they will suffer the same consequence, so they are determined to make sure their heart is functioning at a high capacity. But, instead of their heart suffering from any repercussions, they end up overloading their physical body to the point that they repeatedly injure themselves. Easy to fix, right? Not so much, because many times when the patient has an inherent value that they need to exercise to not face the same results as their father, they can easily ingrain a habit that they need to keep pushing forward. So until that person understands how that perspective or value is driving their whole body to overdo it, I firmly believe their results will be hampered.

This same chain reaction can occur with different value sets of how you view your own body and how you use it. It should make sense for someone who is obsessed with the way they aesthetically look, that they will do anything to make sure their body fulfills its expectations, even to the point of pain and injury. Same goes for those with major anxiety about succeeding at their desk job, who will find themselves sitting behind their laptop for hours upon hours, well past their colleagues. It should not be surprising that their neck hurts much more than those who are able to set boundaries, turn off from their work and have a better life balance. How can I then just treat their neck pain if the patient will not change their values and behavior that make them sit there for fifteen hours days behind their laptop screen, hunched over in their cubicle or desk?

So, the take-home message is, for those who are dealing with ongoing pain and wondering why it won’t go away or keeps coming back, start thinking about what your real motive is, where your values really line up, and how they are influencing how your body is working and the excessive stresses it may be experiencing as a result of where your heart and treasure lie. Don’t be surprised that might be your turning point to finding a way out of the pain you have been dealing with for way too long.