The psychologist Carl Jung said that “What you resist not only persists, but will grow in size.” So when you’re trying to avoid, ignore or shove down an experience or emotion, thinking that if you do, it will go away you are actually making it grow. It becomes your reality. This is especially true with pain. 

Meditation and self compassion help with pain in 5 different ways.

1- It helps you pay attention to your pain--find out what it actually feels like in your body instead of trying NOT to feel it.  Once you do that, you can easily recognize when your body is NOT in pain. You can then maximize the not painful moments. Build on them. Become the good moments instead of the bad ones. Do something with the good ones instead of wasting them away.

2- Pain is three parts:  

sensory (toe throbbing because I stubbed it)

emotional (I yelp and feel stupid) 

cognitive (now I can't wear my favorite shoes or walk as fast which means I wont' get enough stuff done and my whole day is ruined). 

Meditation helps separate these three aspects of pain and helps us realize the lies we tell ourselves about the pain. i.e. the unneeded suffering we cause ourselves.

3- Studies show that a willingness to turn toward our pain actually helps it heal faster. Self compassion is a great tool for turning toward pain. 

4- Mediation shrinks your lizard brain--your amygdala- the one that causes the fight or flight response. When we shrink this part of our brain we can more easily regulate our emotions and think for ourselves instead of letting the lizard brain do it for us. This is key to controlling suffering and also controlling how we will respond to our pain.

5- Studies show that the anticipation of pain decreases when practicing meditation and self compassion. This is a big one for chronic pain. You know the pain will happen...but meditation can help you decrease your suffering because the anticipation of the pain will decrease.