How am I going to get through this?

As a doula and childbirth educator, one of the first things that gets taught is the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle.

(If this is your first time hearing about the cycle, then I will give a brief rundown. Fear makes you tense. Tension in your body makes pain…more painful. Then the pain makes you more afraid and you get more tense and it all repeats itself until your hormones get whipped up into a cocktail of Do Not Want.)

We talk a lot about how to stay relaxed and interrupt this cycle. It’s best to break the cycle down into its three parts and figure out the parts you can control.

Fear: My previous post on fear acknowledge the crucial first step: fear is normal and sometimes useful, but it doesn’t need to run the show. Sometimes we don’t even know why we are afraid, which can make it difficult to “solve,” so the best way to address it is accept it.

Pain: Pain in and of itself can be managed, either through medical means or by comfort measures. But wouldn’t it be even better to head it off before it became an issue?

Which leads us to Tension.

What happens when you get tense? Do you feel it in your chest? Your hands? Are you like me, with a tendency to clench your jaw?

Practice scanning your body by closing your eyes, taking a deep breath, and go from your toes to the top of your head. You don’t need to do anything in particular, just notice how each part of your body feels. Tense? Loose? Neutral? What about in pain or numb? Does anything feel heavy or like it’s far away?

Once you’ve gotten in the habit of scanning your body, you can start to see the patterns in where you feel stress. Then you can practice releasing some of that tension- massage, deep breathing, yoga, and many of a Doula’s comfort measures are typical and useful ways to reduce tension. However, don’t be afraid to try something new or even a little odd! Whatever works for you is the right thing to do.

Being better aware of your body gives you a little insight into the Fear-Tension-Pain cycle. You may not know exactly why you are afraid and you may not have as much control as you’d like over the pain, but you CAN be aware of the tension.

And when you’re aware, you can set about changing it, interrupting the cycle.