PAIN IS NOT THE DISEASE, PAIN IS THE DOCTOR
- Madhukar Dama
- 5 hours ago
- 12 min read
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INTRODUCTION: WHY YOU'VE BEEN WRONG ABOUT PAIN ALL YOUR LIFE
Pain is the only doctor you don’t pay, yet it tries to save your life every single day.
It never lies.
It never delays.
It tells the truth louder and louder until you either listen—or collapse.
But here’s the tragedy:
You were trained to fear pain, silence pain, hate pain.
Every system around you—schools, pharma, even most doctors—taught you that pain is bad, and painlessness is health.
This is the greatest medical, biological, and psychological misunderstanding of our time.
Pain is not the disease.
Pain is the doctor.
And most of you are killing the doctor while feeding the disease.
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PART 1: WHAT EXACTLY IS PAIN?
Pain is a protective sensory response—a signal from your body to your brain saying:
> “Something is wrong. Act now before it’s too late.”
It is not your enemy.
It is your diagnostic alarm, healing guide, safety guard, and last resort communicator.
Medically, pain arises from:
Nociceptors: special nerves that detect injury
Neurotransmitters: like Substance P, glutamate, and prostaglandins
Pathways: spinal cord → thalamus → somatosensory cortex
Perception: brain interprets signals and labels it “pain”
So pain isn’t “in your head.” It’s processed in your brain, but triggered by real damage—physical, chemical, emotional, or neurological.
To suppress pain without resolving its cause is like removing a fire alarm while your house burns.
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PART 2: THE FULL MAP — ALL TYPES OF PAIN
Let’s destroy the oversimplified idea that pain is just injury or soreness.
Pain is multi-dimensional, and here’s the full list simplified:
1. NOCICEPTIVE PAIN
From tissue damage (e.g. sprains, burns, cuts)
– Somatic: Skin, bones, muscles
– Visceral: Organs like intestines, gallbladder, uterus
2. NEUROPATHIC PAIN
From nerve damage (e.g. diabetic neuropathy, shingles, sciatica)
Feels electric, stabbing, burning.
3. INFLAMMATORY PAIN
From autoimmune attack (e.g. rheumatoid arthritis, lupus)
The body confuses self for enemy.
4. PHANTOM PAIN
Pain in amputated limbs or removed organs.
Proof that pain is in the nervous system, not just the body.
5. PSYCHOGENIC PAIN
Emotional pain manifesting physically.
Tight chest, sore neck, stomach cramps from stress.
6. CHRONIC PAIN SYNDROME
Pain without visible damage (e.g. fibromyalgia, CRPS)
Linked to brain rewiring and trauma memory.
7. REFERRED PAIN
Pain felt in a different area than its source.
E.g. Heart attack → left arm pain. Liver disease → right shoulder.
8. METABOLIC & DEFICIENCY PAIN
From nutritional shortfalls:
– Vitamin D → bone aches
– B12 → nerve pain
– Magnesium → cramps
– Iron → headaches
9. HORMONAL PAIN
From imbalanced estrogen, thyroid, cortisol:
– Period pain, endometriosis, PCOS, menopause pain
– Thyroid → widespread fatigue and soreness
10. PAIN FROM MODERN INTERVENTIONS
– Post-surgical pain
– Rebound pain from overused painkillers
– Implant inflammation
– Vaccine-related joint pain
– Dental nerve damage
11. EXISTENTIAL OR SPIRITUAL PAIN
– Felt as emptiness, disconnection, pointlessness
– Converts into real fatigue, muscle knots, headaches, sleep disruption
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PART 3: THE WORST LIE — THAT PAIN IS THE PROBLEM
Most people treat pain like a malfunction.
But pain is the function.
> If pain goes silent without healing, your body gets destroyed silently.
Examples:
Back pain masked → Disc rupture
Toothache ignored → Root infection
Migraine suppressed → Brain inflammation
Period pain numbed → Endometriosis grows
Grief swallowed → Chest pain becomes heart disease
Pain is not a malfunction. Pain is your body begging you to change something.
If you shut it up, you're murdering the messenger.
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PART 4: SCIENCE CONFIRMS—PAINLESS PEOPLE DIE YOUNG
There is a rare condition called Congenital Insensitivity to Pain (CIP).
These people feel no pain from birth.
Sounds great? It’s horrifying.
They chew their tongues off.
They walk on broken legs.
They die young from untreated infections.
Because pain is what teaches us to stop, rest, protect, repair.
Without it, we self-destruct.
Pain is nature’s primary survival tool.
Not punishment—prevention.
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PART 5: HOW PAIN IS YOUR PERSONAL HEALING GPS
Pain is not random.
It’s specific, patterned, and purposeful.
Let’s decode it for the average person:
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PART 6: EVERYDAY TRIGGERS THAT INFLICT PAIN
> “You don’t just get pain.
You earn it—through repetition of the wrong habits.”
Here are 50+ pain-creating habits:
Sitting all day
Lack of movement
No sunlight → Vitamin D pain
Blue light → Migraine
Screen addiction → Eye strain, neck pain
Junk food → Joint pain
Soft drinks → Bone pain
Constipation → Abdominal cramps
Porn/masturbation → Pelvic soreness
Emotional suppression → Chest tightness
Not crying → Migraine
No touch/intimacy → Skin hypersensitivity
Loud noise → Earache, anxiety
Synthetic perfume → Sinus inflammation
Antibiotics → Gut lining pain
Heels → Knee/back pain
Hair dye → Hormonal jaw pain
Night shift jobs → Body-wide pain
Your pain is often the bill your body sends you for your lifestyle.
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PART 7: PAIN IS STORED TRAUMA
Unresolved emotional events don’t vanish.
They reside in the tissues, especially fascia, muscles, and gut.
Anger → Liver heat → Headaches
Grief → Lung constriction → Chest pain
Fear → Kidney depletion → Lower back pain
Shame → Gut collapse → Cramps, acidity
Your childhood wounds scream through your adult body.
That’s why some pain doesn’t show in scans.
It’s in your biography, not your biology.
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PART 8: PAIN DURING HEALING
Some pain is healing in progress, not a new disease:
Fasting → Headaches from detox
Stretching → Muscle micro-tears
Deep tissue massage → Bruise-like soreness
Grief release → Chest soreness
First sunlight exposure → Tingling skin
> Pain doesn’t always mean damage. Sometimes it means cleansing.
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PART 9: HOW TO UNDERSTAND YOUR PAIN — A SIMPLE DECODER
Ask these 5 questions every time you feel pain:
1. Where exactly is the pain? (Local vs widespread)
2. What happened before it began? (Food, emotion, injury?)
3. What am I avoiding in life right now?
4. What pattern keeps repeating with this pain?
5. What have I done to actually fix the cause, not mute the symptom?
If you ask these every time, you’ll discover that your pain is a genius communicator.
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PART 10: WHEN SHOULD YOU ACT FAST?
Not all pain is safe to watch.
Some need urgent attention:
Sudden chest pain + breathlessness
Vomiting with severe abdominal pain
Weakness + severe headache
High fever with neck pain
Unexplained pain in children
Pain after trauma or surgery
Even then, pain is a blessing.
It’s how you knew something is wrong at all.
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CONCLUSION: PAIN IS NOT YOUR ENEMY. IT’S THE LAST LIVING PROOF THAT YOUR BODY CARES.
If your body is still sending pain,
It hasn’t given up on you.
Pain is that desperate teacher whose class you skipped.
Pain is that red light on your dashboard.
Pain is that final friend still trying to tell you:
“Don’t numb me. Decode me. I am trying to save you.”
If you kill the pain without learning its message,
You are killing the only doctor that works 24/7, free of cost, with no lies.
Pain is not the disease.
Pain is the doctor.
Listen to it—before it gets replaced by a real one who charges in blood.
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A HUGE HEALING DIALOGUE
“AVOIDING PAIN IS LOVE”: A FAMILY MEETS THE TRUTH
Setting: A humble mud house on the edge of a forest in Karnataka. The family of five arrives: Raghav (52, father), Meena (47, mother), Prisha (22, daughter with PCOD), Arjun (19, son with chronic neck pain), and Dadi (75, diabetic, bedbound). They have come to meet Madhukar, a quiet man known for helping people heal without hospitals.
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Raghav (father):
We’ve always done our best to protect each other from pain, sir.
Especially the children. We never let them struggle or suffer. That’s love, isn’t it?
Madhukar:
If that were true, you wouldn’t be here.
Tell me, when your body gets a wound, what do you do?
Meena (mother):
We clean it. Apply medicine. Bandage it.
Madhukar:
Do you block the pain?
Raghav:
No… I suppose the pain is natural.
Madhukar:
It’s not just natural. It’s necessary.
Because pain is the body’s cry for attention.
Avoiding it is like ignoring your child’s scream.
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Prisha (daughter, whispers):
But mummy always said, “Don’t cry.”
Even during periods, if I cried, she’d say, “Be strong, ignore it.”
Now I’m scared to feel anything.
Madhukar (gently):
You were trained to suppress pain.
So your pain learned to scream louder—through your ovaries, through your mood swings, through missed cycles.
Because you wouldn’t listen otherwise.
Meena:
I thought I was protecting her.
Madhukar:
No. You were protecting yourself—from her pain.
So that you didn’t have to feel your own.
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Arjun (son, agitated):
I get neck pain every day. I try to distract myself with music, phone, games…
Dad says, “Don’t overthink. Just take a combiflam.”
I obeyed. Still hurting.
Madhukar:
Pain is a professor. You dropped out of its class.
It’s still trying to teach you.
That neck pain is not just physical.
It’s posture, yes—but also pressure. Expectations. Shame. Your phone isn’t entertainment. It’s escape.
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Dadi (trembling):
They love me so much, I never had to walk.
They do everything. They say, “Dadi, just rest.”
Now I can’t even stand. My legs are like dead wood.
Madhukar (kneels beside her):
They loved you into disability.
The body dies when it isn’t used.
Movement is not punishment. It is survival.
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Raghav (tears in eyes):
We really thought love meant comfort.
That if we can protect each other from discomfort, we are doing right.
Now everything hurts.
My back. My sleep. My guilt.
Madhukar:
Love is not comfort.
Love is truth.
Love is saying: “I see your pain. I won’t hide it. I won’t drug it. I’ll sit with you through it. I’ll help you find the root.”
That’s love.
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Meena (softly):
How do we begin?
Madhukar:
One by one.
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DAY 1: PAIN IS INVITED TO SPEAK
No painkillers.
Each person writes down every pain they feel.
Each pain is given a voice.
Prisha writes:
“I am the pain in your womb. I am the child you refused to feel. I’m not your enemy. I’m your unborn truth.”
Arjun writes:
“I am your neck. I carry the weight of unspoken dreams.”
Meena writes:
“I am your headaches. I am the silence after every argument you swallowed.”
Raghav writes:
“I am your back. I bend so others never break. But I’m cracking now.”
Dadi writes:
“I am your legs. I died the day you stopped trusting me.”
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DAY 3: THE FAMILY AGREES TO STOP SAYING:
“Don’t cry”
“You’ll be fine”
“Ignore it”
“Why are you being so sensitive?”
“Just take something and move on”
They replace it with:
“Where does it hurt?”
“Let’s listen”
“What is this trying to tell us?”
“You don’t have to hide it anymore.”
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DAY 10: FACING THE SOURCE
Raghav realizes his back pain started the day he gave up his dream to be a musician and took a corporate desk job.
Meena sees her thyroid symptoms worsened every time she suppressed her anger to keep peace.
Arjun confesses he’s addicted to porn and can’t feel joy anymore.
Prisha starts tracking how her periods respond to food, sleep, emotions.
Dadi begins walking barefoot in sunlight for 10 minutes daily.
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DAY 30: A NEW DEFINITION OF LOVE
They now believe:
Love is not hiding pain—it is helping each other decode it.
Love is asking: "What are you truly feeling?" not "How can I fix you?"
Love is not solving someone’s pain but staying beside them as they feel it.
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EPILOGUE: DIALOGUE WITH PAIN ITSELF
At sunrise, the family sits silently.
A quiet wind blows.
A voice emerges—not from the sky, but from within.
PAIN:
"You cursed me.
You numbed me.
You blamed me.
But I never left you.
Because I am the part of you that still wants to live.
Now that you’ve stopped running,
We can finally walk—together—toward healing.”
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3-MONTH FOLLOW-UP: THE FAMILY IN TRANSITION
Setting: A modest but peaceful home. No TV blaring. No hospital files scattered. No tablets lying on the dining table. Everyone sits on the floor after a home-cooked meal.
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Raghav (father):
I walk barefoot in the morning now. My back still aches, but it's different—it doesn't scare me anymore.
It reminds me to sit upright, to take breaks, to sing again. I’ve picked up my old tanpura. Even pain listens when I play.
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Meena (mother):
I’ve stopped hiding every ache. I talk to Prisha and Arjun about my worries instead of bottling them.
I cry now. And when I cry, my headaches melt without a single pill.
I don't chase comfort anymore. I seek clarity.
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Prisha (daughter):
I’ve started tracking everything—what I eat, when I feel bloated, when my mood shifts.
I stopped junk completely. I rest during my period without shame. I’ve not skipped a cycle in two months.
For the first time, I feel like my body is not punishing me. It's partnering with me.
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Arjun (son):
I still get neck pain, but now I stretch, move, and speak about what’s bothering me.
I deleted the porn apps. I didn’t realize how numb I had become.
Now, even the pain feels warmer—like a friend waking me up instead of a monster chasing me.
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Dadi (grandmother):
They made me walk again. At first I cried. Then I laughed.
I sun my feet. I eat simple. I don’t wait for the compounder.
I wait for sunrise.
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Madhukar (voiceover):
Healing does not always mean pain disappears.
It means pain no longer controls you.
It becomes your feedback, your guide, your oldest teacher.
And now, your friend.
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12-MONTH FOLLOW-UP: THE FAMILY THAT WALKS TOGETHER
Setting: The same house. Lush garden. Morning sun. A small handmade bench.
They no longer visit doctors. They no longer call pain a curse.
They have transformed their kitchen, their beds, their schedules, their words, and most of all, their responses.
They hold each other—not to comfort, but to witness.
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Raghav now guides other office workers on stretching, breaks, and posture.
Meena gives talks to neighborhood women about thyroid, emotions, and menstrual honesty.
Prisha grows herbs and writes a blog titled “What My Period Was Trying to Tell Me.”
Arjun mentors school kids on digital addiction and bodily awareness.
Dadi leads laughter circles in the colony garden.
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They still feel pain.
But they don’t run.
They walk toward it.
Because they finally know:
> Pain is not the disease.
Pain is the doctor.
And listening is the cure.
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PAIN IS NOT THE DISEASE. PAIN IS THE DOCTOR.
A Charles Bukowski–style monologue that slaps harder than medicine.
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they came crawling in
like good citizens—
wrinkled prescription slips
stuffed in wallets next to expired love,
mother, father, two kids, and a grandma
who hadn’t stood in a year.
said they loved each other too much
to let anyone suffer.
what a joke.
the girl bled from her uterus every month
like a warzone under silence.
but mom said “shhhh, be strong, be normal.”
they called that love.
the boy’s spine was tighter
than his jaw full of unsaid things.
he numbed it with reels,
snapped neck at screens,
called it “distraction” —
dad called it “growing up.”
they called that love too.
dad sat like a stone
with a back that ached
from forty years of sitting on dreams
and calling it “responsibility.”
mom’s smile was an exorcism.
every nod a swallowed sob.
her head throbbed from
every emotion she never showed.
they said,
“Pain is weakness leaving the body.”
but in truth, it was
Truth leaving the body.
they thought love meant
“don’t cry, don’t scream, take this pill.”
“I’ll carry your bag, I’ll carry your silence,
but never your truth.”
they thought
hiding pain was compassion.
until pain stopped whispering.
and started roaring.
knees cracked.
necks screamed.
guts turned to gravel.
hearts raced without running.
minds fuzzed without drugs.
they came to the hermit
with their pain.
he handed them a mirror.
not medicine.
“look,” he said,
“at your swollen gut,
your numb genitals,
your bent spine,
your glued mouth.
this isn’t disease.
this is betrayal of signals.
this is pain knocking at a locked door
with a megaphone.”
they wept.
not because they hurt.
but because they knew now—
they had made pain the enemy.
like shooting the dog
who barked at the thief.
the old lady, the one they called “bedbound,”
started walking.
barefoot.
because someone finally told her
that comfort is not love—
movement is.
the daughter touched her own belly and cried
for the first time in public.
the son turned off his phone
and listened to silence for ten minutes.
he shook. then breathed.
the father stood on grass
with tears that had aged decades.
and the mother cried in the kitchen,
not because she was weak,
but because she finally
wasn’t faking strength.
they had all thought
pain was to be avoided.
like rain, like rot, like dirt.
but pain was not decay.
pain was the thunder before collapse.
the fire alarm before ash.
the whistle of the body screaming:
“I still care. Can you hear me?”
and when they listened,
the pain didn’t leave.
it softened.
it instructed.
it held them steady like a father should,
and like their fathers never did.
and suddenly,
the house wasn’t full of patients anymore.
it was full of people who could feel again.
people who had renamed love:
not “I’ll protect you from pain”
but
“I’ll hold you as you face it.”
and that,
was the only cure
they ever needed.
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