Sam Hamm penned the script to Tim Burton's first Batman movie many years ago and I will never forget one particular line as immortalized by Jack Nicholson, hamming it up to perfection as the Joker as he complained about the Caped Crusader’s interference in his elaborately planned and now-ruined dastardly deed. Glaring with his best demented smile in full force, Nicholson intoned, 'I have given a name to my pain...'

Now of course Batman never caused me much pain (there were the Joel Schumacher Batman movies, but that's not the kind of pain I'm thinking of), but the concept of giving a name to pain is a powerful one.

I spent several years debilitated by intense chronic pain. There were a few basic distinctions that allowed me to begin to control my pain and eventually help me arrive at the place where I am now, a place of being pain-free. One of those distinctions was the understanding that I could change my subjective experience of pain. I could do things that would allow me to experience the pain differently and, with trial and error, I learned that some of these ways were more or less useful for me; depending on how I thought of it exactly, my pain was more or less intense. And eventually, I found a way for the pain to tell me everything it needed to tell me with no suffering at all on my part.

So, just like Jack as the Joker, I've given a name to my pain and that was the beginning of a process that eventually gave me my life back. I wonder, what things in your own life might you find can be different if you decide now to experience them differently and change the way you represent them to yourself? We'll never know until you find out...

We'll talk more about this as time goes on.

Be Well,

Michael Perez

Labels: Batman, Jack Nicholson, pain management, transformation