Everything changes, that much is for certain, and so it’s the same with pain. Your mind and body does it best to adapt to pain. Pain is an alarm, and it’s hard to ignore when it’s directly linked to survival.
But what happens when your pain is constantly changing back and forth, and you struggle with adapting to it?
Firstly you probably feel like you can’t trust your body. You are also likely to frequently be in a hyper aware state, because your pain is always changing, you become fixated on those changes.
This hyper aware state ( possibly being in a sympathetic activation) is generally felt by being unable to relax, with your muscles all over your body becoming tense. Usually this will be smooth muscles surrounding your organs, rather than your skeletal muscles controlling your limbs etc.
Similar to your body, your mind can’t relax either. It’s always on the ready to react to pain, watching out for anything that could cause you pain, it becomes riddled with anxiety and worry about pain. You might start to subconsciously anticipate the pain with every action, movement or incident.
Your breathing is also hampered by this hyper aware state, you start to shallow breathe because subconsciously you can’t enter a relaxed deep breath state.
All this drains you of energy, you are on high alert, everything in your body is on high alert, and without true relaxation, you are wasting energy every day being on alert.
After years of this behaviour, you adapt to being on high alert, it might require slightly less energy, but you still don’t recover, because the majority of your energy is still tied up in being alert.
At this point it now feels normal to be on high alert, random pain is normalised, but relaxation isn’t normalised, so you stay stuck in the loop of pain and tiredness.
The problem is, the pain is real, you can’t ignore it. One solution starts with trying to recognise the pain and label it, is it a new pain or something you’ve already experienced. This can be hard to quantify, our pain fluctuates wildly and can move from place to place, as new pain wrestles with our attention.
We can only focus on one pain at a time, and this is why when one pain subsides, another takes its place. Many of us with chronic illness have a body riddled with pain signals, whether this pain is a faulty alert or not, it requires investigation, which requires time and money. One investigation might be inconclusive, but that doesn’t completely rule it out, you have to be patient unfortunately.
All you can do in the meantime, is pace your actions when the pain comes, and act accordingly with the pain’s severity. You need to have the awareness that wrestling with this pain every day, is draining you. You’re fighting a losing battle, it’s like trying to drown out a car alarm with your shouting, in this analogy, your voice will break before the car’s battery drains fully.
Distraction is usually our method of choice, this is essentially putting your awareness into a task instead of being consumed with the pain. It can work sometimes, and it has it’s uses, but after years of distracting yourself, your life is unlikely to progress how you want it to. It’s a double edged sword, in that it solves the immediate problem with having to deal with pain, but it just adds more pain later in the realm of life dissatisfaction.
It’s not an easy problem to solve, especially when you have very little energy to confront your health symptoms. We probably all know the common techniques that are wildly advised ;
- mindfulness/meditation, deep breathing
- pacing activities
- not blaming yourself
- seeking support from people that care about you or institutions
- light movement
- progressive muscle relaxation
- taking yourself out of stressful situations
- changing your bad habits
- eating a healthy diet
- having a positive attitude
- writing and talking about your struggles
- controlling your posture
- taking small steps towards goals
- taking your focus to the external instead of internal
- getting fresh air
- avoiding mould, contaminants and pollutants
You can find all this advice on many articles and guides all over the internet, and you’re probably tired of being told them( Just do yoga!). You can do all these things and still struggle, changing your perspective and life in this situation is hard. All you can really do is keep trying, hopefully you’ll reach a watershed moment, where all your efforts finally bear fruit. Sometimes this feels like you’re just wandering around in a dust storm, with no direction, no vision. Lost and alone, and riddled with pain and tiredness. Taking steps forward seem futile, because you’re just going around in circles, tiring yourself out.
I’ve felt like this for years. Ultimately the alternatives are to just stop moving, and give up, or to wait for someone else to come save you. I think it’s wise to at least stop every now and again, and take the pressure of trying to find your way. The desert of pain and suffering isn’t an enjoyable place to be though, so to me, at least for now, it still makes sense to attempt to escape it, and ask for help from anyone you can.
It’s such a struggle