The 2% Theory

I came up with this idea I call “the 2% theory” sometime last year and it has helped to shift my mindset. It goes like this...
I am sure you have tried A LOT of things to help with chronic pain ~ medications, physiotherapy, diets, acupuncture, chiropractor, massage therapy, specialists, tests and imaging…. And perhaps, like in our case, none of them seemed to relieve the pain.
BUT when you get to the point of acceptance, to the point of realizing that you might have pain for a while and there might not be one thing that takes the pain away 100%, then it is worth looking back and re-evaluating all the things you tried.
Maybe none of them “fixed” the pain but are there any that helped a bit? Even 2%? Maybe they didn’t help with pain but they helped with sleep, digestion, or mood.
When we came to the end of our rope, feeling like we had tried almost everything, we felt defeated, we grieved, and then we started to re-evaluate all the things we had already tried to see whether it was worth doing any of them again. While none of them had “fixed” the pain, there were some that seemed to help a little.
We re-introduced magnesium, an anti-depressant, chiropractor, PT, and mind-body techniques. As we incorporated these things into our daughter's regular routine, she started noticing some shifts and was feeling a little better.
It is easy to write things off because they don’t “fix” the problem. But if they help the problem, even 2%, then it might be worth continuing to do. If you can find 5 things that help 2% then you might start to feel 10% better!
And I have found that once our daughter was able to feel a little better (even 10%) then her body became more responsive to medications and treatments that never helped in the first place.
I guess that kind of echoes the idea of baby steps. Do something small and regularly and soon you are much closer to where you want to be. What practices do you find help, even 2%?
~ Carla
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