Frozen Shoulder and "The Yank"

When you’ve got frozen shoulder you might, after a while, come to appreciate a few “new ways of doing things”. There’s a certain mindfulness that comes of pain. (If only it worked as quickly with thoughts!) Honestly, after mere months of finding that the simplest action – like ripping a paper towel off the rack – causes pain, you quit doing it. You don’t try to yank anything. You don’t attempt to rip the plastic off of a magazine that comes in the mail, yank a towel off the rack, yank the lid off of the Tupperware, yank a car door open – or, for that matter, to slam it shut.

I never thought of myself as a yanker until developing frozen shoulder. I’m a yanker no more.

But there are a couple of funner things that I want to share.

Having frozen shoulder gave me insight about my coffee pot – and maybe yours. For years I’ve kept a red and black checked drying towel sitting on top of the coffee pot so that I could wipe up the spills that come – simply from pouring coffee. I go to a friend’s house and she has the same problem. There seems no way, with a pot built for pouring, to pour without spilling.

Then I started pouring with my left hand.

I have discovered that coffee pots must be universally designed by the left-handed. Try pouring left-handed sometime. You’ll see what I mean.

Another thing I discovered was how to have the “messy hair look.” If you’re a woman, you know what I mean. If you’re a guy, you might need to know that this is the tousled look that appears casual and effortless but that is achieved either through a certain know-how or through total accident. It’s the ponytail that doesn’t look severe. It’s the “hair swept back” that doesn’t look plastered into place. It’s the endearing loose tendril. Some of us, not good with working with hair, are incapable of achieving this look.

Well, just try putting your hair in a clip or a ponytail when you’ve got frozen shoulder. Your arm doesn’t move in the right way for this small task. I like my hair to be off my face, so I continue to try, usually getting the ponytail or clip off to the side. Surprisingly, what I got was “the messy look.”

And, since I mentioned thinking, I will admit that this awareness of what causes pain actually has made me more aware of the thoughts that cause me pain. This is a great thing. But the thoughts haven’t disappeared in the same number of months. I don’t know that they ever disappear. The idea isn’t to get rid of them, but to notice, release, do it again. Anyway, I’ve found my thoughts a little easier to catch. I catch them before they do the yank; before they get a hold of me. A small few of them still seem necessary – as if – if I didn’t worry an issue to death, it would stay alive longer. But most of the thoughts that cause me distress, if not pain, are simply habitual thoughts – old ways of thinking that are clearly unnecessary.

Thoughts “do the yank.” They pull us out of feelings of ease and yank us into feelings of stress.

It occurs to me that awareness tends to come to us in roundabout ways, even when (maybe especially when) we’ve been working at it for a long time.