Carrying Pain, Not Fighting It
Every athlete knows pain—physical, emotional, or both. The instinct is to fight it: push it away, distract yourself, tell yourself it shouldn’t be there.
But fighting pain often makes it worse. The energy spent resisting leaves less for performance.
The paradox of resistance
When you tell yourself, “I shouldn’t hurt, I shouldn’t be anxious,” you double the load. Now you’re not just running with fatigue—you’re also running with frustration that fatigue is there.
ACT offers a radical shift: notice the urge to resist. Make space for the discomfort. Carry it instead of battling it. Pain becomes something you bring along for the ride, not a dictator of your choices.
Schema insights
Schema therapy helps explain why pain feels intolerable. If your schema is “defectiveness,” you might read pain as proof you’re broken. If it’s “unrelenting standards,” you interpret slowing down as failure. Recognising these stories loosens their grip.
What the brain is actually doing
Pain isn’t just in the muscles—it’s in how the brain interprets signals. Attention changes the experience. When you shift from judging pain (“this is bad”) to observing it (“this is sensation”), the nervous system is less likely to spiral into alarm. That lowers suffering, even if the physical sensation stays.
A practical reframe
Next time pain shows up in training or competition, try this:
- Notice. “Here’s discomfort. My body is speaking.”
- Name. “This is my old story telling me I’ll fail if I slow down.”
- Choose. “I’ll carry this pain while still acting with persistence.”
Carrying pain doesn’t mean loving it. It means you let it come along without steering the wheel. That’s freedom. That’s performance.
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