After thinking about going to therapy for a year, I finally got the courage to reach out and ask for help. I've been going to therapy for chronic pain for the past month now and I'm getting impatient about the progress I'm making. Logically, I know it will take a lot of time and I need to be patient but I just have this sense I'm doing it wrong.
I try to practice the mindfulness and grounding exercises everyday but the pain is still there. I've been teary after doing mindfulness today and finding the pain still present. I feel silly for being upset knowing that we're only putting down the foundation in therapy and haven't even started the work of addressing how I've been holding onto past trauma in my body.
I'm having doubts about putting all my hopes into therapy, physio and changing my life style if the pain is always going to be there. Sorry to get emotional, it's just one of those days where coping with chronic pain is more overwhelming than others. I want to keep putting in the work to get better but it's so on days when my mental health and fatigue won't allow me to. I wanted to cheer myself up and see how other people are putting in the work into recovery and to hear about their journey.
Do you struggle with recovery too? How are the people who have been in therapy long term doing? And the people starting out like me? What do you do when fatigue/mental health is getting you down? Any tips for becoming more consistent with physio, sleep hygiene and eating right with fatigue?
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MoonOracle
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It is a process to become stoic in the thick of a fibro flare or generalized fibro constant ick feeling. Some things work better for others. Be patient and carry on, you will slowly see that there are things that don’t help one day but do help on other days. Learning the tools for all the options out there is best, it gives you a data bank of things to pull from. Eventually you will know your pain and what tool you will need automatically.
The hardest to overcome is the nagging pain and feeling hopeless that’ll ever improve. Antidepressants may help but it’s also about implementing a mindset. If you dwell, it will feel worse than it is and you can spike all sorts of responses in your body that will lead to more pain perception. Thus perpetuating the evil cycle. I have constant pain, but I know that on my dull pain days, I consider it a normal me feeling. On heavy days, I know what tools to use.
Some therapies in how to compartmentalize the pain or the feelings nagging you about the pain, can be useful. Though some therapists may disagree with me but the carry on mentality is the goal for the days the tools just don’t work. PTSD and some regression therapies can trigger a higher emotional response to a physical pain feeling. Thus having other tools like physio/exercises to help increase happy chemicals in the body can decrease the perception. All therapies and methods should be tried to see what works for you under your gp’s guidance. The knowledge of what does and doesn’t can empower you.
Everyone will be different in how they react and progress with therapy sessions.
However, after going thru therapy /counselling sessions over the years - I have learned that part of managing the pain is accepting that I have a chronic pain condition that is not likely to ever go away. I am still on pain every day - but the difference is I now have various tools and techniques that can help me cope with living with pain
Sorry to hear you are having problems. I have sought so many alternative therapies, because no one would believe i was ill, and i didnt know what was wrong with me.The more i stress and worry thevworse pain is. The weather and barrometric pressure makes it worse. So that may not be helping at the moment.
I have had so many cbt courses to deal with my past and help sleep, i could run my own course.
Its only finding out about fibro that ive been able to put things in perspective and realise the only person suffering for holding on to the past is me.
Listening to relaxation recordings helps with sleep. Use of relaxing essential oils is very helpful. You can get electric diffusers if you dont like candles. If you like crystal therapy , amethyst is good to put under the pillow.
Weighted blankets work wonders especially spasms. Tens machine or a cyclosage bed.
The more stressed you are the less it will work. Lieing in a quiet dark room, weighted blanket ( hard in heat i know) difuser with lavender oiil or lavender oil on a pillow switch off your mind and work your way down your body relaxing each part. There are so many different free exercises on line you will find 1 for you.. good luck.
Always found mindfullness and meditation made my pain levels worse so I wouldn't expect it to lower them, you are supposed to be paying attention to different feelings in your body and obviously pain is probably the biggest one. It does go someway to teaching your body/mind to not run from the pain, to learn to sit with it rather fight it. But it takes a long time. I found it didn't seem to help at all at the time, if anything it made things worse. I gave up doing it, but a year later I realized my attitude to pain had improved greatly and I put that down to the methodologies I was taught in mindfulness about how we hold pain in our bodies and I still use mindfulness of breathing if I feel panicky.
I went to see a pain specialist at our local hospital and found that to be a complete waste of time. The first thing she told us all was to stop taking painkillers and other other medication relating to fibromyalgia. Well I am sorry but it is ok for these people to say that because they are not sat there in pain 24 hours of every day. I then went to see a counsellor for about 18 months. Went through all the traumars of my life and had a good cry week after week. But 5 years on I don't feel any different. I just wish someone would find a cure for this awful thing we are all going through day in and day out.
I have had two types of pain management, the first advised me to go on long walks and do more exercise, difficult when suffering widespread arthritis as well as lupus and fibro.!
The second one was with a different hospital and a very different approach. It was a small group session, about seven or eight men and women with all types of pain. She explained about the pain receptors and talked about stress and other problems aggravating the causes of extreme or chronic pain.
She did not lecture or dismiss concerns or fears. After about ten minutes we all had a go on the different apparatuses, as we were in the hospital physiotherapy department.
We had our giggles and enjoyed trying the equipment even if we were not good at much! There were six, hour long, weekly sessions and I wish it had gone on for longer as I had felt the benefit from the exercises and the social aspect of the group.
I feel talking to others really helps, as on this forum. But actually going for a short stroll or cup of coffee with a small social group is a real distraction. We have been indoors for so long I think we have forgotten how to feel well when in the good company of others.
If you can manage a crafting group or swimming or even a park run group, confidence rises, anxiety drops and pain recedes even for a short time. I really do advocate distraction when doing nice things with friends.
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LIVING WITH CHRONIC PAIN, ANXIETY AND DEPRESSION
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