The Two Skills You Need for Lasting Chronic Pain Relief (And the Challenges You'll Face)
If you’re trying to heal chronic pain — whether it’s back pain, fibromyalgia, migraines, IBS, or anything else — you’re probably familiar with tools like meditation, journaling, and self-talk.
But healing isn’t just about using tools.
It’s about building two essential skills through those tools:
Welcoming All Emotions
Shifting Perspectives
In this blog, we’re going to cover:
What these two core skills are
Why they are critical for mind-body healing
The major challenges you’ll face when practicing them
The antidotes to those challenges (so you can keep going)
These skills matter because they unlock your internal guiding mechanism — the part of you that knows how to heal, choose the right career, create better relationships, and trust yourself again.
And when we’re not building these skills, the nervous system often creates pain to push us toward doing so.
Let’s get into it.
Welcoming All Emotions
The first skill you must learn is Welcoming All Emotions — and I mean all of them.
You’ve probably heard a lot about the pain-fear cycle in the mind-body healing space.
The idea that "if you fear your symptoms, you’ll stay stuck in pain."
I don’t agree with that.
The problem isn't fear itself.
The problem is our relationship with fear.
Trying not to fear pain — or telling yourself you "shouldn't" feel fear — only creates more repression.
And repression is what fuels chronic symptoms in the first place.
Welcoming emotions means learning how to safely allow fear, anger, shame, sadness, embarrassment, resistance — all the uncomfortable emotions we usually push away — to exist inside of us, without trying to suppress or fix them.
What Welcoming Emotions Actually Looks Like:
Sitting with fear in meditation, noticing where it lives in your body, without needing it to go away.
Writing honestly in your journal about shame or sadness, without trying to turn it into something positive.
Letting resistance to even feeling your emotions be okay too.
The Why:
Welcoming all emotions gives the nervous system exactly what it’s been asking for:
Safety through allowance, not control.
When you truly start welcoming emotions, you begin to access something incredibly powerful — your internal guiding mechanism.
This is your intuition, your deep knowing, the part of you that already knows what you need — in your healing, your relationships, your work, and your life.
If you aren’t willing to feel all emotions, your nervous system will often keep creating pain symptoms to push you back toward this deeper work.
Inside the Pain Relief Community, we focus deeply on helping you master this — step-by-step, without overwhelm.
Shifting Perspectives
Once you can welcome emotions, the next skill is Shifting Perspectives — and it’s just as vital.
Perspective shifting isn’t about fake positivity or pretending everything is perfect.
It’s about intentionally moving your mind toward resilience, optimism, and gratitude, even when things are still hard.
Optimism isn't the same as positivity.
Positivity tries to deny or erase pain.
Optimism says, "Pain is here — and I still believe healing is possible."
Why Shifting Perspectives Matters:
Your mind literally creates the world you experience.
But here’s the thing:
Your mind wasn’t created consciously by you. It was shaped early in life by family, society, and culture — often in ways that make you more fearful, critical, or perfectionistic.
Without realizing it, many people are living in a world created by a mind they didn’t consciously build — a mind that keeps creating stress, fear, dissatisfaction, and symptoms.
By intentionally shifting perspectives, you start to reshape your mind.
You stop living in the default world that pain, fear, and control built — and you start creating a world rooted in choice, trust, and possibility.
This is how you build a life free from chronic pain.
This is how you create better relationships, careers, and health — from the inside out.
Challenges You'll Face
The truth is, practicing these two skills is not easy — especially at the start.
Here’s what you’re likely to experience:
The Challenges of Welcoming Emotions:
Fear of being overwhelmed: Allowing big emotions like fear or anger can feel terrifying at first.
Feeling like you're doing it wrong: Because it doesn’t immediately feel "good" or "calm," you might assume you’re failing.
Resistance stacking: You might notice you’re resisting not just emotions, but your resistance itself — a double layer.
Belief that pain is caused by emotions: If you believe feeling fear will worsen symptoms, you’ll subconsciously block yourself from fully welcoming it.
The Challenges of Shifting Perspectives:
Feeling inaccessible: When you're deep in fear, sadness, or anger, reaching for gratitude or resilience can feel completely out of reach.
Feeling fake or stale: Writing about optimism or gratitude might feel hollow or disconnected.
Perfectionistic pressure: You might judge yourself for "not being positive enough" or "not doing it right."
Feeling like it contradicts welcoming emotions: It can feel paradoxical — how can I welcome all my sadness and choose optimism?
These struggles are normal.
You are not broken.
You are not doing it wrong.
Antidotes to the Challenges
Here’s what will help you move through the rough patches:
ChallengeAntidoteFear of emotional overwhelmSet small, time-limited spaces for practice (10–20 min meditations or journaling sessions). Know it has an end.Feeling like you're failing at welcoming emotionsRemind yourself: the goal isn’t to feel good — it’s to feel everything. Discomfort is part of the process.Struggling to shift perspectivesLet optimism and gratitude feel messy, clunky, and forced at first. That’s normal.Feeling inaccessible or fakeKeep welcoming emotions first. As you get better at feeling fear, shame, sadness — your mind naturally becomes more resilient and optimistic.Feeling like welcoming and shifting contradictUnderstand they actually support each other: The more you welcome emotions, the more resilient and optimistic you naturally become over time.
The early days of practicing these skills are like the first day in the gym, or the first class learning a new language: it feels unnatural, messy, and hard.
But if you stay consistent, it becomes second nature.
If you want personalized support learning how to do this properly — without getting lost or overwhelmed —
you’re welcome to join us inside the Pain Relief Community, where I teach this work step-by-step.
Healing isn’t about controlling your mind or body into submission.
It’s about learning to relate to yourself differently.
It’s about becoming the safe space you’ve always needed.
Welcoming all emotions and shifting your perspectives are the two pillars that allow true healing to unfold — naturally, from the inside out.
You don’t have to be perfect at it.
You just have to keep showing up.
✨ [Click here to join the Pain Relief Community] and start building the foundation for real, lasting relief.