Fear Of Pain

Good morning,

I was wide awake studying very early this morning.  Afterwards, I was looking for my daily prayer outline to make some changes and came across this article from Be In Health.  It is a short three part article dealing with the fear of pain.  I thought the section on migraines is beneficial to those who suffer with migraines. The medical profession almost always treats migraines with drugs. 

In a past life I had a manager’s job with great responsibility.  With it came constant headaches, neck pain, back pain going down my legs, itching, trouble sleeping, etc.  I was a mess until I started to identify the root cause.  Fear was the root cause.  God tells us not to worry in Matthew 6:34.  Obey Him and the symptoms go away.

Understand that we live in world that man has labeled as stress and anxiety.  God has labeled it worry (Matthew 6:34).  Merriam-Webster defines worry as fear.  

Fear of Pain – Part  1

Over 4,000 fears have been named. That list includes fear of disability, fear of pain, and fear of suffering. Most people are not aware that the fear of pain can produce pain. You can also accelerate pain levels by thinking about it. Your body responds to your thoughts. Pain is not an emotional expression from your soul, nor is it a spiritual expression. Pain is a physiological expression, a physical reality. There could be a spirit of pain influencing the fear of pain in your thoughts. In the Bible, stress is called fear or being anxious. Remember, fear, anxiety, and stress are synonymous terms.

The Bible says, in the last days, men's hearts shall fail them because of fear.

Luke 21:26 Men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things which are coming on the earth: for the powers of heaven shall be shaken.

Stress and fear directly affect the hypothalamus, both immediately and long-term. This is the mind-body connection. We are designed with the ability for 'fight or flight'. The fight or flight ability is the alarm stage our body responds to when subjected to fear or stress. If the stress is not resolved, our body moves into the resistance stage. Physical symptoms begin to develop in this stage due to the long-term effects of fear, anxiety and stress. The symptoms can include pain. The hypothalamus responds to the continual influence of the fear or anxiety in the mind, which overloads the body's resources.  Eventually, the body is depleted of its ability to repair and restore itself from the stress. If not resolved, this depletion develops into the exhaustion stage. The body is exhausted from attempting to repair itself and the mind is not sending thoughts to promote healing and restoration. God has created your body to heal itself. Your body is able to repair and renew itself on a regular basis, but it does not think for itself.  It is designed to respond to the mind. Your body responds to your thoughts.

The question becomes, which god are you listening to? If your body is moving from the alarm stage, which we have all experienced, to the resistance stage and eventually to the exhaustion stage, then you are not listening to the God who created you.

The Bible says, God has not given you the spirit of fear.

2 Timothy 1:7 For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

 Fear and stress directly affect nervous impulses. Pain is a result of flaring dendrites. Pain can be a psychogenic (originating in the mind) symptom of the fear of pain.  But not all pain is psychogenic, which is pain created by the process of the mind.  Pain can be organic.

There are various degrees of pain. If you cut your finger, that pain is not psychogenic. That is organic. There is a reason for it. Pain comes also from inflammation. Migraine headaches come from vasodilatation of the blood vessels in the cranial region as a result of the over-secretion of histamine and the under-secretion of serotonin, which is a vasoconstrictor. That is all it is.

In this case, a migraine is a psychogenic (originating in the mind) pain but it produces a real pain. The root is psychogenic because it is rooted in conflict with yourself over issues you are in conflict with. (You are angry with yourself because of the conflict you feel.) That causes an under-secretion of serotonin and an over-secretion of histamine because one can have a combination of fear and self-hatred. Fear and self-hatred are two spiritual dynamics that can produce a migraine. To get rid of migraines, you have to get rid of fear and get rid of self-rejection, self-hatred and guilt. It is as simple as that. Anyone who has had migraines becomes afraid of them because the pain is debilitating.

Fear of Pain - Part 2

Matthew 6:25 "Therefore I say unto you, take no thought." The key word is thought. Fear projected into the future involves thought. You can be programmed to fear. Your body will respond when you cross the parameters of the territorial rights of what that particular fear represents. When you are subjected to one of your stressors too long or you come in contact with that forbidden item, your heart starts to race, especially in the allergic reactions. When you are exposed to it, there it is, growling at you saying, "I am here, what are you going to do with me?" "Oh no!" You panic and your mind remembers the reaction from last time.

Your mind may remember anaphylaxis (hypersensitivity); it may remember catatonia (stupor); it may remember brain fog; it may remember prickling of skin; it may remember pain; it may remember blotches; it may remember burning of the skin, and the fatigue. All of a sudden you are bombarded with what that thing represents to you physiologically. As your respiratory rate increases, the cardiac muscles start to expand and contract and you start to breathe harder. You go from the fear into the panic stage, you start to breathe harder and harder, you start to lose your breath, then you start looking for your oxygen because you cannot catch your breath.

What your doctor may not have told you is that you may have just stepped across the threshold into something called hyperventilation; rapid breathing. You are not aware of it because you are preoccupied with your stressor and the reactions. Fear and more fear.  Like begets like.  Now you are focused on the reality of your reactions. The carbon dioxide in your lungs is not being exhaled like it needs to be. The oxygen is not getting into your lungs because that is what happens in hyperventilation.

At this point, low-grade carbon dioxide poisoning begins, which is what oxygen starvation is. When your bloodstream picks up the blood of your lungs, it also wants the oxygen but there is none. The first part of the body to receive oxygen is the brain. The brain says, "Get the oxygen" but there is no oxygen there. When you do not have oxygen for your brain cells, you have fuzziness of thinking, you have disorientation, you feel confused, you feel like you are losing your mind, you feel like you are going crazy, you cannot think right. You start to lose it, you feel faint, and you think you are going to pass out. You are looking for oxygen and all of a sudden - panic moves in. That is an allergic reaction. When you get the oxygen, you take a breath. But what took your oxygen away from you in the first place? Fear. Fear is a triggering force in the mind-body connection. 

When that particular fear, or what it has put into your mind long-term, sets into motion a wide range of neurological and hormonal reactions, then it is fight or flight. God created us with that fight or flight as part of our creation in a basic stage. The devil takes the fear originated in the alarm stage and perverts it into a long-term anxiety; the resistance stage. This is how he has programmed us with a fallacy. He is a liar, a deceiver. His name, Satan, means deceiver. He is a master of deception, manipulation and control. He manipulates your response by deceiving you with a lie about the level of danger he wants you to think you have been exposed to.

Fear of Pain - Part 3

Even when the danger of the fear is gone and the battle is over, yet in the resistance stage, you are still geared up for fight or flight. When that happens, your bloodstream is filled with hormones - all sent by your hypothalamus to fight the enemy. The beginning of reversing it is when you start to take your peace. But because you take your peace and you have knowledge, it does not mean the reaction stops instantly. It takes a while for the body to respond.

The devil takes advantage of your ignorance if you are not aware of this and fills you with thoughts of doubt and unbelief. If you are applying these principles and the symptoms do not go away instantly, you may go right into more fear, unbelief and doubt, which accelerates more of the same. When you know the truth, you can be at peace while you are confidently waiting for your body to respond. If you do not fight this one, it will control you the rest of your life. 

An allergic reaction does not last forever when you are not fighting it. When you start to take your peace back and you say, "Wait a minute. I have been taught better than this. This does not harm my body." You can still be having the reaction or the feeling or the exhaustion or the sickness or the burning or the fuzziness - there are a wide range of manifestations - but the moment you take your peace back in your heart before God, your bloodstream is still filled with those neurotransmitters that have been secreted upstream and are still coursing through your system. It takes awhile for your bloodstream to clear. When you take your peace in your mind and in your heart, your hypothalamus will accept it and redirect your body to respond to your peace. 

Isaiah 26:3 Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on thee: because he trusteth in thee.

You take your peace back in your spirit and your soul, even though your body is still reacting. Fear is still there, unbelief is still there. 

Remember that God will honor you in your choice to stand in peace and the hypothalamus will shut down the secreting of this hormone, but the bloodstream is still filled with it. It takes awhile for the bloodstream to finish pumping these hormones and the receptor cells to stop reacting to it until finally the reactions stop. That is the manifestation of your victory.

As you learn to fight this enemy, your mind is renewed so each time you face that stressor you no longer react like before because programming is broken. That is what happens when people take back their life. One day they are allergic to a hundred different things and a few months down the road they are allergic to none of it. The spiritual dynamics changed. They are free from that enemy. 

The battle is when you are in the situation. Scripture says when you have done all, stand. When you have gained the knowledge, you have to apply it.

What is causing your problem has a root to it. There is a spiritual bondage, a cause and effect. Some people grasp it faster than others and sometimes there are things in people's lives that just need to be dealt with before it can be removed.

There is a battle for your life. This is not mind over matter.  This is not a science. This is life.

There is an invisible enemy out there that has been controlling mankind for many, many hundreds of years. But he can be defeated and when he is, God gets the glory. The enemy gets dethroned in the heavens and we get lifted up above him and it is to the glory of God. This gives us a place of trusting God and believing in Him. God is greater than evil.

When you are in the face of evil, when you are fighting your battle, you do not know you are victorious until you look around afterwards and you say, "Well, I won." When you are in the battle, you do not feel very free.  Jesus said, "If you continue in my word...you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free"  John 8:32.