To the Doctors Who Couldn’t “Fix” Me, Thank You!

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Pain made itself at home in my body sometime in my forties.

Those who are quick to blame my trail and ultra running practice as “too much” and, therefore, the cause of my pain should note that my pain began years before I even knew there was such a thing as an Ultramarathon.

I used to be embarrassed to admit that I suffer from chronic, unexplainable pain in my body.

Every doctor I visited (starting two decades ago) gave me a diagnosis from the point of view of their narrow specialty. It was the classic hammer-and-nail analogy.

The Orthopedic told me I have a crooked spine. The Neurologist told me my nerves were being pinched. The Psychologist told me I was too stressed. The GI doctor told me the problem was with my microbiome. The Endocrinologist told me I had adrenal fatigue. Even the athletic store clerk had an opinion. Of course, I wasn’t wearing the right shoes.

At some point, it dawned on me that if no one could agree on the source of my problem, perhaps none of them had the answer!

It’s an evident truth of our times that many of us live with some degree of mysterious physical pain. Like me, we go from doctor to doctor, MRI to CAT scans, and ultimately are left with an amorphous diagnosis—one we’re unsure what to do with.

I’m no doctor, and every one of us has to do our own work, but I am about to share with you the result of fifteen years of deliberate work to move forward from that place of pain and confusion.

Like any expansion or growth, I had to begin by letting go of something.

That something precious was the belief that there was a definite solution to my problem and that finding that answer would “fix” me. If only I could discover that elusive solution, I’d be as good as new.

It was easier to hold on to this belief than to accept that I may have a complex and dynamic condition that cannot be fixed for now or ever. Giving up that belief felt like losing, despairing, and allowing the possibility of a future I simply couldn’t accept.

Releasing the belief in a “fix” and genuinely accepting my circumstances felt like the death of a part of me I desperately wanted to hold on to. The part of me that’s invincible, unstoppable, and somehow forever young.

But more was holding me back from letting go of the “fix.”

Working with my Coach, I realized that I was equating acceptance with approval or, worse, with blame for the condition. There are rare and enlightened human beings who are not deeply wounded by being blamed. Still, most of us will do anything not to find ourselves as perpetrators of a negative situation.

Slowly but fundamentally, I learned that acceptance and blame don’t have to go together.

I can accept a situation fully and not be to blame for it. I can also accept people, behaviors, and conditions and not approve of them. And most importantly,  I can be in a state of complete acceptance and not assume surrender, defeat, or helplessness.

This state has a name, and that’s Radical Acceptance.

In life, radical acceptance is the release hatch to move forward. When Radical Acceptance is in the driver’s seat, Radical Responsibility always rides shotgun. To take full responsibility for a situation is to begin seeing ourselves as part of the solution rather than the problem. It’s recognizing that we may or may not be to blame for the situation, but we can be responsible for our response to it.

Literally, becoming response-able.

Accepting there was no “fix” for my problem opened my mind to look at the whole pain situation differently. I let go of the search for the one holy grail and instead asked myself what small changes I could make in my six life domains (emotionally, mentally, physically, spiritually, relationally, and professionally) so that I could live with just 10% more ease.

Over time, that 10% has grown to much more. The pain is still there, but the framework of my life is so fundamentally different than 15 years ago that the pain does not hold me back.

Where in your life are you not allowing Radical Acceptance to unlock the door to finding bespoke and creative solutions to a problem?

And if you want to know the specific tiny steps that were the beginning of my journey, from being someone who sometimes could barely walk without pain to becoming an average but happy Ultramarathoner, send me an email, and I’ll share those with you.