I am starting this thread because I have been suffering for years now with chronic pain and fatigue issues as well as symptoms of PTSD and dissociation.
I am utterly exhausted by years of trying pretty much all the suggested interventions available for chronic pain and fatigue. My efforts have covered the full spectrum from the conservative (e.g., diet, medication, cognitive-behavior therapy, exercise) to the mainstream alternative (e.g., acupuncture, massage, various body-training techniques such as Alexander), to the more far-out alternative (e.g. various types of energy work, crystals, shamanic healing, etc.).
I am utterly exhausted by four years of psychological and psychiatric interventions. I have been blessed by my luck in working with some good people who know their stuff about trauma and dissociation. I've engaged in really good somatically-based psychotherapy along with the newish addition of EMDR twice per week, and I have an additional weekly visit to a psychiatrist who is...well...trying to help in lots of different ways.
I feel forever caught in a conflicting cycle...in order to help heal my symptoms of pain and fatigue, I have to work on reducing stress. Which means of course (for me), working on trauma processing via connecting my mind and body and releasing what is stuck. Which means, of course, more stress because trauma processing is really, really stressful even when it is done in the gentlest of ways with a kind and trustworthy person. Which means of course as I work on trauma processing, my symptoms of chronic pain and fatigue continue. And so on.
In the meantime, I've lost most of what looked like my life prior to the wild explosion of symptoms. It all just adds up to a f-load of physical and emotional suffering, in spite of my work on radical acceptance and trying (for reasonable lengths of time) just about everything that has been suggested to me.
I. am. really. tired.
My.body.hurts.
My.emotional heart.is.in.shreds.
I would value some discussion on how people with similar issues cope. Not so much on what strategies to try (seriously, I think I have tried everything, and there are some other threads that cover some of this), but more like how do you get yourself through your suffering? How do you find balance between acceptance and fighting?
It seems to me that it is impossible to find a healthcare practitioner of any "flavor" who deeply understands the complexity of the relationship between "medical issues" such as chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and "psychiatric issues" such as PTSD and dissociative disorders. Western medicine continues to separate out issues of mind and body, and those of us who suffer symptoms from both are left to our own devices and best judgments to sort out what to do to help ourselves. It is an overwhelming and exhausting process that I've been working on for years.
Recently, in a last ditch effort to retain my private disability benefits, I had to make an argument that my fibromyalgia/central pain syndrome symptoms are equally or more disabling than my PTSD and DID symptoms. Because...this company limits mental health disability benefits to two years, but not medical disability benefits. Sigh.
Anyway, I started researching again and have been learning a lot of stuff along the way. The other day, I found a really, really good review of research about chronic pain that was published in 2012. It takes a long time before research filters down into the real everyday world, but I thought I'd share a link to the article for anyone brave enough to read scientific/medical writing.
For those who'd rather not wade through it, the takeaways (at least for me), were:
1. all kinds of chronic pain and fatigue issues that are called different things by doctors in different disciplines (e.g., fibromyalgia, TMJ, myofascial pain syndrome, etc.) are linked together by their core generating "spot"--the central nervous system--and ought to all be looked at as a kind of central nervous system syndrome, no matter where the symptoms appear in the body.
2. these syndromes are likely 50% genetically passed down, with the other 50% being the environmental triggers that activate the genes. Among these environmental triggers are stress and trauma.
3. there is a significantly higher percentage of psychiatric disorders present in people who suffer from these central nervous system issues than there are in the rest of the population...BUT this does NOT mean there is a causal effect. The research shows that the medical issues like chronic pain are clearly separable from psychiatric disorders, even though both generally overlap in the central nervous system. So...for all of us who have been told that our physical pain (somatic pain and other symptoms) are caused by our psychiatric disorders...well--that is wrong. There is overlap, but the disorders are different.
4. The medications offered out for sufferers of chronic pain are only effective in about 1/3 of patients. The only thing they know for certain about medications and chronic pain is that any medications considered opiods are not only NOT effective for chronic pain sufferers, but can exacerbate the problems. And other interventions like joint replacements or injections and such are usually not effective either because they are targeting a specific area of pain (like the spine) when really all or at least some of the pain is being generated through the central nervous system/brain.
Here's the link: Central pain mechanisms in chronic pain states – maybe it is all in their head
I am utterly exhausted by years of trying pretty much all the suggested interventions available for chronic pain and fatigue. My efforts have covered the full spectrum from the conservative (e.g., diet, medication, cognitive-behavior therapy, exercise) to the mainstream alternative (e.g., acupuncture, massage, various body-training techniques such as Alexander), to the more far-out alternative (e.g. various types of energy work, crystals, shamanic healing, etc.).
I am utterly exhausted by four years of psychological and psychiatric interventions. I have been blessed by my luck in working with some good people who know their stuff about trauma and dissociation. I've engaged in really good somatically-based psychotherapy along with the newish addition of EMDR twice per week, and I have an additional weekly visit to a psychiatrist who is...well...trying to help in lots of different ways.
I feel forever caught in a conflicting cycle...in order to help heal my symptoms of pain and fatigue, I have to work on reducing stress. Which means of course (for me), working on trauma processing via connecting my mind and body and releasing what is stuck. Which means, of course, more stress because trauma processing is really, really stressful even when it is done in the gentlest of ways with a kind and trustworthy person. Which means of course as I work on trauma processing, my symptoms of chronic pain and fatigue continue. And so on.
In the meantime, I've lost most of what looked like my life prior to the wild explosion of symptoms. It all just adds up to a f-load of physical and emotional suffering, in spite of my work on radical acceptance and trying (for reasonable lengths of time) just about everything that has been suggested to me.
I. am. really. tired.
My.body.hurts.
My.emotional heart.is.in.shreds.
I would value some discussion on how people with similar issues cope. Not so much on what strategies to try (seriously, I think I have tried everything, and there are some other threads that cover some of this), but more like how do you get yourself through your suffering? How do you find balance between acceptance and fighting?
It seems to me that it is impossible to find a healthcare practitioner of any "flavor" who deeply understands the complexity of the relationship between "medical issues" such as chronic pain and chronic fatigue, and "psychiatric issues" such as PTSD and dissociative disorders. Western medicine continues to separate out issues of mind and body, and those of us who suffer symptoms from both are left to our own devices and best judgments to sort out what to do to help ourselves. It is an overwhelming and exhausting process that I've been working on for years.
Recently, in a last ditch effort to retain my private disability benefits, I had to make an argument that my fibromyalgia/central pain syndrome symptoms are equally or more disabling than my PTSD and DID symptoms. Because...this company limits mental health disability benefits to two years, but not medical disability benefits. Sigh.
Anyway, I started researching again and have been learning a lot of stuff along the way. The other day, I found a really, really good review of research about chronic pain that was published in 2012. It takes a long time before research filters down into the real everyday world, but I thought I'd share a link to the article for anyone brave enough to read scientific/medical writing.
For those who'd rather not wade through it, the takeaways (at least for me), were:
1. all kinds of chronic pain and fatigue issues that are called different things by doctors in different disciplines (e.g., fibromyalgia, TMJ, myofascial pain syndrome, etc.) are linked together by their core generating "spot"--the central nervous system--and ought to all be looked at as a kind of central nervous system syndrome, no matter where the symptoms appear in the body.
2. these syndromes are likely 50% genetically passed down, with the other 50% being the environmental triggers that activate the genes. Among these environmental triggers are stress and trauma.
3. there is a significantly higher percentage of psychiatric disorders present in people who suffer from these central nervous system issues than there are in the rest of the population...BUT this does NOT mean there is a causal effect. The research shows that the medical issues like chronic pain are clearly separable from psychiatric disorders, even though both generally overlap in the central nervous system. So...for all of us who have been told that our physical pain (somatic pain and other symptoms) are caused by our psychiatric disorders...well--that is wrong. There is overlap, but the disorders are different.
4. The medications offered out for sufferers of chronic pain are only effective in about 1/3 of patients. The only thing they know for certain about medications and chronic pain is that any medications considered opiods are not only NOT effective for chronic pain sufferers, but can exacerbate the problems. And other interventions like joint replacements or injections and such are usually not effective either because they are targeting a specific area of pain (like the spine) when really all or at least some of the pain is being generated through the central nervous system/brain.
Here's the link: Central pain mechanisms in chronic pain states – maybe it is all in their head
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