How to Transform Our Relationship to Pain When Living With Vaginismus

Have you ever looked at your pain closely??

What is pain? How do you react to it?

Is it the pain itself or the belief that it will be painful, which makes you stop moving forward?

Today, we will take a closer look at pain; we’ll identify our reactions to it and how to transform these reactions, which ultimately hold us back from any penetration attempts while living with vaginismus.

But before we get to that, are you new here? Then you’ll have to check out these other helpful blogs that I’ve written to help you overcome your condition.

and of course, you should join our EXCLUSIVE Facebook Community “Yes We Can Cure Vaginismus Together” by clicking here!

Oh and, you can download here your FREE Vaginismus Cure Guide based on my personal experience and research!

So, let’s begin, dear.

I always invite women to my live videos that I host in our Fb community, where we define our bodily sensations with as many details as possible as though they are explaining them to a robot so that whenever they experience any rising emotions, they can identify and deal with their pain points more effectively.

This is what we covered in my most recent post – which you can watch from clicking here– where we described our pain encounters in a safe and open space.

The simple reason why I do this is that we can not transform anything unless we look at it more closely.

So that’s what we’ll do here too, but first, I want to give an example to you from my beautiful laser experience.

I don’t know if you’ve ever heard about laser hair removal technology, (something I adore 😊), but that’s what we are going to talk about, today.

Quick information about me is that I’m a hairy woman. I mean, I used to be but that is not the point. 😊

Some of us may not have had to deal with this issue, but for those of us that have, we are lucky enough to have the technology to deal with it. Laser hair removal burns the root of your hair follicles so that the hair disappears forever.😊

By the way, it is not an easy process; it can get painful, and for me, it was almost unbearable!

So my reaction to the pain was the mixture of screaming and straining while asking the operator to stop.

It took me 3 hours to complete a 40-minute treatment!

It was a very overwhelming experience for all of us; for me, for the operator and for all the staff working in the clinics waiting for me getting out of the room😊

Long story short, I decided to intentionally focus on my pain, rather than react to it automatically.

I learned that the more curious I was around this experience, the easier it was for me to look at it, instead of reacting to it.

Guess what happened! My focus on understanding the sensations around my pain responses helped me overcome my overwhelming reactions!

It was interesting because I was able to see how my natural defense mechanisms against pain, forced me to react against it, without even having had to endure it. This meant that my body felt as though it was under a constant state of attack.

This forced me to feel very alert to any irritation or discomfort.

I decided to look at this intention carefully; what I was telling myself at the moment and how it was impacting my mental state?

In doing so, I learned that I was trying to focus on where the pain might be whenever I could see a hot laser beam traveling across my body.

So, to challenge this, I decided to focus on other sensations during the operation, I focused on the feeling of cooling air instead of the hot laser beam.

Interestingly, I started to “pain” in more detail.

It was like a stinging sensation arising for a second, then turning into goosebumps all over my body, until finally passing away. Have you ever had this feeling?

When I managed to focus on observing the experience, rather than reacting to it, shockingly, the procedure only took 20 minutes, whereas before, it took up to 1 and a half hours!

I was amazed at how my imagination had allowed me to believe something that wasn’t not really happening and realized how powerful my mind was during the operation.

How can we be more observant of what we experience in the midst of chaos?
This is a beautiful question!

My answer is; training our minds to come back to the present moment and learning how to be more open to each experience without labeling them as bad or good. This is the skill set that we can learn as we practice mindfulness.

How can mindfulness help us deal with pain?

Let’s wrap up the steps as we talk about the example above!

#1st Step: Becoming aware of what’s happening in the present moment without judgment

First and foremost, we need to be aware of our habitualized behavior whenever we are about to face pain.

Becoming aware of:

What thought or belief is arising
What emoting is accompanying this thought
With what bodily reactions we give

#2nd Step: Being non-judgmental about our experiences

Being genuinely open to each experience at the very moment without feeling guilty or blaming ourselves is the key to feeling self-confidence.

Without this skill, we might end up feeling sorry for ourselves or feeling disappointed, helpless, or hopeless.

As we practice mindfulness, we are learning to become aware of our judgmental behaviors non-judgmentally at the moment.

#3rd Step: Being open to seeing each experience as a new opportunity and accepting them all

This quality enables us to investigate what there is to see, instead of getting stuck on one experience or sensation such as fear or pain, this can enlarge our capacity to see other experiences too.

So dear, will you try to look at your pain more closely and investigate what more there is to see?

Is your reaction against pain coming from the belief that it will be excruciatingly painful or from your experience in the present moment? When the next time comes, will you be able to define your sensations whenever you encounter pain?

“Go back and take care of yourself. Your body needs you, your perceptions need you, your feeling needs you. The wounded child in you needs you. Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.”

Thich Nhat Hanh

You can download my free vaginismus cure guide from here if you haven’t yet.

If you found this article helpful, then come and join our free online community Yes We Can Cure Vaginismus Together, if you haven’t yet.

I talk more about these topics and in more detail.

Let’s meet there. Let’s grow together.

E-mail: petek@yeswecancure.com