Shut Up Banana, I’m in Control
My battle with chronic pain has led me to try anything and everything for help. Acupuncture, elimination diets, massage therapy, physical therapy, mental therapy, pharmaceutical medications, herbal medications, CBD, melatonin, corticosteroids, you name it — none of them have solved the problem. Several of them even made the pain much, much worse. I’m looking at you acupuncture.
A while back, getting no luck from the real world, I turned to my Google Play Store for help, downloading every meditation and self-help app that looked like it had any worth. I am terrible at meditation and found most of them really difficult to tolerate, but one app called Curable showed some promise. It gave me some good tricks for managing pain and certainly provided me more help than any of the other apps I downloaded. For a few months I religiously adhered to its lessons plans.
One of Curable’s first lessons was to give my pain a goofy name. The idea was that when my pain would come on, I should speak to it, and if the name was ridiculous, it would allow me to not take the pain so seriously. Curable suggested I call it “Banana” and say things to it like “hey Banana, I know you’re acting up right now but you’re not me, so just chill out and go away.” When the pain wouldn’t chill out, Curable wanted me to tell the rest of my body “ don’t worry. I know Banana is really annoying, but soon he’ll be gone and it’s going to be ok.”
The premise was so ridiculous it actually worked a little. It didn’t make the pain go away, but it gave me some comic relief, which was a much-needed distraction. After a couple of weeks though, the banana schtick was getting old. Without any change to my pain levels, I started losing patience with Banana. I wanted to murder Banana. Now when Banana came around I started shouting “WELL F%&$* YOU BANANA! JUST SHUT THE F%$@ UP AND GO AWAY BECAUSE I’M GONNA DESTOY YOU!” That seemed to help a little bit. It also helped people practice their social distancing.
Eventually I gave up on naming my pain and had all but forgotten about Banana until yesterday, when I bumped into my spiritual advisor Maria Menounos. She meets with me regularly through the Mobile Gas Pump TV down the street. Maria always has such positive advice to give me while I’m pumping gas for my truck, and yesterday she told me that I need to combat negative thoughts by giving them a name. She says that she calls her negative stream of consciousness Bianca, and when Bianca comes around she tells her to just go away. Not now Bianca, Maria’s busy. Bianca sounds like a real pain in the neck.
As weird as this naming thing sounds, it’s not a half bad idea. Giving your chronic pain a name can help you separate it from yourself. By detaching yourself from the pain and the negative emotions that come with it, you can see that it’s not you that’s negative, it’s Bianca, and she needs to cut the crap. Maybe Banana was just the wrong name for my problem. Because really, how can you be mad at a banana? Since yelling at my pain gave me more stress relief than trying to calmly talk to it, maybe I should try this again, only this time give my pain a really annoying name… like Chad.
According to Ranker, Chad is the most annoying name in the world. I’ll buy that. Let’s try that on for size, shall we? Oh shit, here comes Chad. I know you don’t want to start with me today Chad. Back the eff off Chad! Just back the — what’s that? Oh really now, really? Oh it’s like that, is it Chad? Is it? WELL YOU CAN JUST SHUT THE F$%&* UP CHAD! I do not have time for your BULLSHIT today. Ooh, Chad, you’re a dead man.
Sorry, got carried away there. Okay. Chad might work. Maybe it’s time to give this “name my pain” thing a reboot. My apologies to anyone named Chad. I’m just using the internet as my guide.
Originally published at https://wanderingmattlarson.com on April 28, 2021.
