Winter Taught Me a Better Way to Cope with Chronic Pain
/By Crystal Lindell
We’ve already had our first snowfall here in northern Illinois. Regardless of the official day winter begins next month, snow marks the start of winter for us.
And when you have chronic pain, the season brings with it cursed gifts, offering both a time of guilt-free rest and more days of ache.
During the summer, there’s a guilt that accompanies any days spent inside, even if you’re doing it because your pain is too intense to allow for anything else. Watching TV all day makes me feel like I am personally wasting the warm weather and sunshine.
But that is not the case in winter. Instead, the long nights and cold days allow me to embrace the comfort of staying in, curled up under layers of blankets.
I already have my Christmas tree up, and the warm glow makes being a couch potato seem almost magical.
And since the sky turns midnight blue at 5 pm, it suddenly feels almost natural to go to bed early.
These are things my chronic pain-riddled body enjoys year-round. But in the winter, societal expectations allow me to indulge in the impulse to take full rest days or even rest weeks, without feeling the summertime angst about it.
The change in seasons also brings with it lots of changes in barometric pressure, which means all those cozy evenings come with a downside.
My body always knows when it’s about to snow, or sleet or both. It also feels every temperature change as it happens. Anytime it goes from -10 degrees to 40 and back again, my ribs feel it.
The result is often multiple days spent with the type of excruciating pain that barely even responds to opioid pain medication.
Over the years, I have found that the only treatment that works for those pain flares is to accept them. I can’t stress myself out about it, because it only serves to escalate the pain. So I have to try to stay as calm as possible. My body can’t handle activity under those circumstances.
Which brings me back to those guilt-free rest days that winter supplies in ample amounts. And embracing things instead of trying to fight them.
Growing up in the Midwest, I was often taught that winter was a season to be fought and denied. Just a few months that we all had to endure until the “real” weather came back. Most people here spend the winter complaining, cursing, and just trying to survive.
A few years ago, I took a trip to Montreal, Canada in January, and witnessed an entirely different approach. Despite the fact that the holiday season was well behind us, the city was filled with winter festival activities, ice statues, colorful lights, and just a general sense that the dark and cold days were actually a good thing.
The experience has since shaped my own approach to the coldest months of the year. I do my best to appreciate the gifts that gray days and eternal nights bring. It’s a time for all of us to rest, refocus, and embrace the downtime the cold weather affords us.
Embracing pain has the same effect. When you learn to let it exist, it is paradoxically easier to keep it confined to smaller flare ups.
Weather forecasters predict many of us are in for a particularly harsh winter this year, with more snow and colder temperatures.
But that doesn’t mean it has to be a slog.
When we take the winter season as it is, it can bear its gifts of rest and time. And who among us doesn't need more of both?
