As a life-long survivor of severe bipolar disorder, I’ve learned to navigate the shoals of mental illness with some degree of dexterity. I protect my mental health the way I’d guard a fragile child or animal: vociferously, and with constant attention. I try never to look the other way, lest depression or mania sneak up on me and sideline my careful recovery.

So, it’s with a great deal of consternation that I realize an interloper with harmful intentions has appeared on the scene. It’s not the mood swings I was expecting, but something altogether new to me: chronic physical pain.

It started in August last year, when an Uber driver ran a red light and struck my car, totaling both vehicles. Not long after the accident, I began experiencing pain in my neck and right shoulder. I didn’t give it much heed at first, thinking I must have over-exerted myself, or maybe the stress of buying a new car was getting to me. But as the pain grew worse and refused to yield to over-the-counter meds or ice and heat applications, I finally became concerned and saw my doctor.

That was the beginning of what has turned out to be a six-month-and-counting odyssey of medical management: physical therapy, trigger point injections, multiple MRIs, an epidural, Botox shots in my neck, etc. Not a week goes by without a doctor’s appointment; not a day goes by without physical pain. And the end is nowhere in sight, which further disturbs me. As my therapist once sagely said, “People can stand anything—so long as it’s time-limited.”

But what troubles me the most is that the pain has really begun to affect my mood. When I’m not agitated and anxious about how much I’m hurting, I’m depressed about my prognosis. This is completely unacceptable. I’ve worked too hard in my bipolar recovery to reach a state of relative composure and balance. I refuse to be knocked off my equilibrium.

So I’m turning to mental health tools to help me cope with my physical pain and the emotions that accompany it. Mindfulness meditation has proven to be such a great resource for dealing with my mental illness, so I’m researching its other uses. In particular, I’ve sought out the teachings of Jon Kabat-Zinn, widely regarded as the leading practitioner of pain relief through mindfulness-based stress reduction.

What I’ve gleaned so far from Kabat-Zinn’s teachings is this: I need to change my relationship with my pain. Rather than fighting against it, I need to accept its continuing presence in my life.

But—and it’s a very big but—I don’t want a relationship with my pain. Pain is exhibiting all the bad qualities of my many other red-flagged relationships. It doesn’t show any concern or empathy for my needs. It’s loudly and selfishly assertive. It tries to control every aspect of my life. Pain, I’m beginning to recognize, is a predatory narcissist. I shouldn’t embrace it, my instincts tell me—I should run for the hills.

Acceptance feels miles and miles away at the moment, especially since I’m beginning to recognize that underlying my physical discomfort is a deep, churning well of anger—at the Uber driver, at the sudden vicissitudes of fate, even at my doctors for not making the pain go away. Apparently, this is far from uncommon. As one study found, “Anger stands out as one of the most salient emotional correlates of pain, even though past research has been largely confined to the study of depression and anxiety.” Pain 61(2):p 165-175, May 1995.

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Anger, of course, is manifestly incompatible with acceptance; nor does it further my physical recovery. According to the Mayo Clinic, “Among people with chronic pain, high levels of anger or irritability are often associated with greater muscle tension and pain severity.”

So my stiff and aching neck is not the only part of me that needs to soften. I need to find ways to soothe my anger, because it’s serving neither my mental nor physical health. Anger completely denies self-responsibility; it precludes me from taking ownership of my own feelings and not blaming other people for them. Anger puts me in a victim state, which is definitely not what I want to inhabit. And it gives me nowhere to grow.

Self-responsibility, on the other hand, is a portal to self-compassion—and that’s what I really need right now. I need to feel empathy for my body and all that it’s having to go through. I need to love myself through the pain.

This is all the more important because, no doubt, this is just the beginning of my relationship with chronic pain. It’s an ongoing journey—and an inescapable one, as I continue to age and my body parts wear out with greater and more inexplicable frequency. Learning to have compassion for that struggle and accepting pain as an integral part of my physical existence may be the threshold of a deeper and much-needed wisdom. As the Buddhist philosophy so eloquently promises: “Pain is inevitable; suffering is not.”