Chapter 9 - Elixer Returned

Coincidence Speaks

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Happy Friday ladies and gents!

With so many straight up awesome people publishing incredibly powerful work all over the internets, let alone Substack, it’s so easy for quality stuff to be eclipsed by the sheer volume of human (and AI😮) noise out there. With that in mind, I want to highlight two pieces of very human writing that have leapt out at me from the void.

The first one is

Kimberly Warner

’s entire memoir, which just came to a bittersweet conclusion this past Sunday. As someone new to Substack, reading it has been inspiring as I release my own work into the wild. She sets the bar high! Can’t wait to see what she does next.

I also came across this piece by

Ben Wakeman

and it moved me. Yes, italicized probably means tears were shed. He doesn’t know this, but the direct effect was that my kids got the benefit of their dad in a heightened state of presence and gratitude for the next several hours.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned over 43 years, it’s that tears of joy and grief come from the same well. And that well is sacred. So from here on out, I am going to be very conscious about sharing the work that I find moving to that italicized degree.

We now return to the latest chapter of Coincidence Speaks. Please head this way to start at the beginning.↩️

Chapter 9 finds Paul determined to honor a sacred promise…

Chapter 9

Elixer Returned

Living out his own worst nightmare, mired in a lightless pit of anguished desperation, Paul had been given far more than he’d ever bargained for.

Paul had prayed for deliverance. For amputation. For someone or something to cut the burning pain out from him. To surgically remove the problem. For someone else to fix him.

What he had been offered instead was a rope. Direct, personalized guidance in the form of perfectly timed knowledge as to how he might learn to make the climb himself. Not what he wanted, but exactly what he needed, when and only when his entire life and its resonant belief systems had been razed to the ground. In the ashes remaining he’d found the emergent potential of a greater interconnectedness—the massive spiraling web of life in which he now found himself an integral part.

And now that he’d made it back out into the light of day, Paul couldn’t wait to share what he’d learned. To honor his promise. To shine a light and throw his own rope toward his fellow family of RSD sufferers and say, “Guys! I made it out!! Full recovery IS possible. Here’s how—here’s what I learned; here’s what I did,” his heart centered in a fierce desire to help others crawl out of the same pit of unspeakable desperation.

He reached out to the RSD specialist’s office again, following up with an email, eager to share how he’d fully recovered and to open a dialogue around the things he’d learned that had worked for him, positive that some of what he’d applied would be helpful to other patients with intractable pain.

But as the days passed there was radio silence.

“Unfortunately that’s not all that surprising,” Clara told him. “You’re just one patient of the countless they see every day, and there is more than enough to keep them busy.”

Paul assumed that because he’d been formally diagnosed by well-credentialed medical professionals and had documented the pathway to his own recovery, that not only did he have all the answers, but that he would be accepted as a viable source of information when he tried to share them. With an unwavering conviction birthed through direct experience, he had unearthed his capital A Answer, and was certain it would apply universally to everyone else.

“Everyone has the same basic anatomy and neurophysiology,” he mused, still a little impressed with his new capacity for basic anatomical terminology. “Don’t we all have a malleable and neuroplastic brain and nervous system? And aren’t these the things that really act as the main determinant of our everyday experience?”

Paul was convinced that everyone had their own innate capacity for inner sensory imagination. That it was a basic human ability anyone could unlock. He knew it firsthand, because when he’d started out, he himself couldn’t “see” anything except the back of his own eyelids, and the only world he knew was the outer one. He knew beyond a doubt that inner senses could be relearned with a little time and practice.

What Paul didn’t know then, was that everyone has their own demons, their own individual context, their own stories of who and what they are—their own personal Gordian knot of genetic history and compounding events that both contribute to and filter their exact experience of their present moment. Their own unique triggers and stressors. In the face of so much human variety, building a bridge for communication takes thoughtful and empowering empathy. It takes compassion.

If the medical community wasn’t interested, Paul would try a different tack. He would return to the same internet message boards where he’d once searched high and low for a cure, for any kind of hope, for just one person who’d made it through and fully recovered.

He remembered it all too well—the sense of pure hopelessness, of powerlessness, of anguished despair. As the old memories flooded back in, a groaning twinge in his foot arose from the depths while the related feelings passed through him. Almost like a ghostly afterimage of RSD.

“How fascinating—just thinking about it is enough to bring faint echoes of the pain up again.”

Back then, all he’d wanted was to find someone who’d been cured of the vicious, mysterious disease. Now, he could be that person for someone else.

Nearly giddy with excitement, he logged on one evening to craft his first post.

“I had RSD, but cured myself! I ignored everything doctors and supposed ‘experts’ told me to do, got off the pharmaceutical merry go round, the nerve blocks, the spinal cord stimulator in your butt, all of it—and guess what? This whole disease is in the brain and nervous system—literally in our heads! And that means we all have the ability to rewire ourselves—all you have to do is listen to what your body says, and take the steps over time to recognize and resolve your own trigger sources of stress!”

Brimming with eagerness, Paul hadn’t stopped to think about the many people there who had been battling the God-awful disease for decades. Where the pain signal would be so totally ingrained, where they would be so mired in the compounding side effects of pain and insomnia and drugs, that they wouldn’t have had even a partial break for years on end. Where just making it through one day was its own Hero’s Journey. Where the chronic pain loop had become so well-established that just to question its very nature would be interpreted as a threat by the nervous system itself.

His attempt to help went over like a lead balloon. On the other side of the computer screen portal, one RSD sufferer after another logged in:

“I hate when my own doctors don’t believe me and accuse me of being psychosomatic. I can’t believe what I’m reading here!”

“Is this some kind of awful sick joke?”

“This is mentally a very damaging post. My stress levels are going through the roof thanks to you—my blood is boiling and I have been having awful pain flareups for days.”

Paul was mortified.

“But… but… I’m one of you!” he sputtered back through the screen, heart dropping, shocked to the core at his own naïveté, incredulous tears of appalled disbelief dripping salt down keyboard cracks. Horrified, he realized that his post had come off much less like a sincere effort to help, and more like a bulldozing egoic crusade.  

“What did you possibly expect, Paul, you idiot?” he berated himself. “You know that ANYTHING perceived as threatening will also be inflammatory, which WILL result in an elevated pain response.”

His own realizations were being demonstrated in real time by real people in real pain, and he was aghast by what he’d so unwittingly catalyzed. Instead of connecting through mutual experience and offering a thoughtful sharing of a different perspective, he was further polarizing people into shock and outrage, which was creating more inflammation. More pain. More suffering. 

No one wanted to hear that their chronic pain was in their head, whether subconsciously or otherwise, no matter how true Paul had found it to be with regards to how the autonomic nervous system actually worked.

The moment he recognized his gross insensitivity he apologized profusely. The initial vitriol from the people experiencing pain flares slowly died down, and the prevailing response from the last few remaining, less inflamed membership was:

“You got lucky. There is NO cure for RSD, only remission. We wish you well with your remission, but keep in mind that RSD is an incurable disease. It could come back at any time.”

Paul stared in disbelief. “They don’t believe me.”

Not only that, but the mortal fear of RSD returning at any time was a crucial factor in perpetuating its pain signal. He felt like screaming at the irony, the injustice of it all.

Surprising the heck out of himself, that’s exactly what happened. A wave of pent-up emotion came erupting up and out, and he flailed through impotent tears at the impassive computer screen with the wild abandon of a child tantrum. The frustration and regret and shame he’d held within for hurting others through his own ignorance came pouring out, the visceral emotions contorting his body like something out of The Exorcist.

The sudden outburst ended just as quickly as it began, and he collapsed against the back of the chair, empty.

This was no pain flare; on the contrary, it felt paradoxically good to feel and express his frustration, and especially to recognize and release the deep sense of shame beneath it. It was… liberating. His original intent to help had been true, after all—so he forgave himself the misstep and reframed the unfortunate outcome as a learning experience, as battle-hardened wisdom for the future. 

Everything changed the moment he stopped condemning himself for his perceived mistake, and just let the related emotions through instead. And in the newly fertile void of emptiness, of equanimity, came a spontaneous realization for his journal, one he knew was true: 

“Yes—the truth will build bridges, but it will also burn the old ones down. No one wants to be told their truth. Everyone must discover their own for themselves in their own good time.”

New neural pathways could be seeded and cultivated all day long, but the existing ones needed to be churned up and composted before anything else could take root. It wasn’t his job to “save” anyone—only to share his recovery experience with as much clarity and compassion as possible, planting seeds and trusting that they might germinate with just the right person at just the right time.

In the meantime he would continue to record his personal revelations in his journal. Maybe one day they, in turn, would sprout into something worth sharing when the time was ripe.

He logged off the internet and vowed not to return until he’d learned to better honor and be more empathic towards others. To meet people right where they are.

Paul had work to do.

End Chapter 9

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Next Chapter➡️

Chapter 10 - Unfinished Business will post Friday, April 12th. Thanks for being here in interactive real time! Comments and feedback always welcome.

In gratitude,

E.T. Allen