I have decided to start this "trauma diary." I'm not sure why. My gut is telling me that it might be helpful.
Finally, I found an article that goes a long way toward explaining what is happening to me. This morning, I searched the forum on "repressed memories" and spent a lot of time reading what others have written. I found this article on an old thread. I can't remember now who posted it, but I am sending him/her my gratitude.
Symptoms of Trauma and Traumatic Memory Retrieval in Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Maimo and Laidlaw in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I don't have a "narrative" of trauma, but I do have one of physical pain. I am going to start with that because it is what brought me to where I am right now and, according to the article above, is probably the crux of my problems.
I know I had trauma in my childhood (I never would have called it that until recently) from adoption and growing up as the only child of an alcoholic, depressed, and personality-disordered father, and a hyper-anxious personality disordered mother. I thought I had resolved a lot of my issues in relation to this. I went through some bad times that I remember starting at around 11-12 and finally "ending" in my late 30s. Maybe I will write about some of those later in this diary.
Then, at 48 years old, I developed chronic and severe pain in my right hip. It developed very slowly. Something tells me that the trigger for it was when I fell down my back stairs and sprained my ankle. Maybe I'll write in more detail about that later too. About 6 months after that fall (I did not go to a doctor), I noticed that my knee hurt intermittently when I was doing stairs. Then that symptom went away and the pain in my hip started. Just intermittently over a few months.
In June of 2012, the pain was not really too bad. I had just purchased a new bicycle and had a plan to begin training to ride in a 150-mile bike-a-thon thing to raise money for a good cause. I figured it would help me get into better physical shape, and having a goal to help others would motivate me. I did a 20 mile ride (easy, relatively slow, on flat surface) in late June 2012. I have not ridden since. By the end of July, the pain was pervading all aspects of my life. I could walk, but it was excruciating. I kept thinking it would go away. I stretched, took advil, used heat, used ice--every trick in the book. Nothing worked. I had seen my physician who said I had sciatica.
Finally, I called my husband during a break in an all-day seminar I was teaching, and I told him how much pain I was in. He called a chiropractor I used to see for my neck. He is very good and very highly regarded, and I trusted that he could help me. He agreed to an emergency appointment that evening.
When I was on the table, he pulled on my right leg, and I cursed--It startled the hell out of me and was excruciating for just a second, then I was flooded with relief. He told me that my hip had somehow rotated forward and gotten stuck in that position. His tug on my leg and moved it back into position. I walked out of the office with no pain at all, suppressing the urge to throw my arms around him in ecstatic gratitude. I thought everything was resolved. I went home and had a celebratory dinner with my family.
The pain was back the next day. I saw the chiropractor five more times, then he told me that something else must be going on as the treatments weren't working. He sent me to a physiatrist for hip x-rays. The x-rays were unremarkable except that they showed a bone spur in my pelvic joint. The physiatrist told me that many people with this are asymptomatic. He said I could and should resume normal activities (he didn't have any recommendations on how to deal with the pain) and suggested I might do physical therapy.
After a disastrous stint with one PT I found a really good one. I did get stronger and regain some flexibility, and a little symptom reduction, but the pain never went away. After several months with the PT, he recommended that I get an MRI. I went to a highly regarded spinal specialist who ordered the MRI. There were lots of findings on it (some of which I knew about...scoliosis, spondylolesthesis; and some of which I did not). Most of them were categorized as "mild to moderate." The specialist said I could choose between continuing physical therapy or considering injections into my sacral joints. I recoiled at the latter, and my own physician cautioned against this invasive procedure. I continued for another round of PT. Then the PT dismissed me because he had given me all the exercises and said I should continue on my own.
I did this for a few months, but the pain kept getting worse, and it was causing me tremendous anxiety. I started researching chronic pain. So, next I went vegan for 3 months. I felt healthier but it did nothing for the pain. Then I went vegan AND gluten-free (that was a pain in the a.). Pain continued to worsen. Finally, in early September 2013, I made an appointment with a man who does bodywork and who many people I know refer to as a healer. I liked him very much--gentle, kind, knowledgeable, experienced, etc. and willing to experiment and have some fun. On the second appointment, he took me outside to have "walking lessons" during which he taught me some visualization techniques and we did some postural stuff, etc. He said for the next appointment, we'd work with another therapist there who does yoga therapy/restorative yoga.
In between, I had to fly out to a 4-day conference. I came back a total wreck. Completely exhausted, in constant pain when standing or walking, not sleeping because pain would awaken me, angry and frustrated at my body for not responding to my attempts to heal, and devastated because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I realized that this total exhaustion has been coming on for years.
To make a long story short, over the next few weeks, these therapists recommended that I consider making an appointment with a trauma therapist. I could not fathom this. It seemed so far-fetched that my pain could be psychosomatic. But I was desperate to get pain-free, and I had actually been considering the idea of entering therapy to discuss some other issues in my life, so I picked a therapist out of a directory because in the picture, he had kind eyes and a nice smile. I was very, very lucky.
At the same time, and in an attempt to cover all possible bases, I also went to see a yogi/aryuvedic practitioner/pranic healer at the recommendation of the yoga therapist. This woman had been her teacher and she thought very highly of her healing abilities and that she might be able to help me. I filled out a very long and detailed questionnaire about my history and at the end of our first session, one of her comments was, "My, you have certainly had your share of trauma in your life." I think that was the first time that I realized I must have a very narrow definition of "trauma." I didn't (and still don't really) consider myself to be traumatized. So I began a quest to learn everything I could about it. The yogi also suggested that I begin mindfulness meditation, which I did.
I think I need to stop the history here. This is getting way too long. I will return to it. But, in a sort of "scenes-from-our-next-show" moment, I will document that several things began to happen during October and November. The critical one was my first session with cranial-sacral therapy during which I had a wildly bizarre experience. Shortly after that, while meditating, I began to have involuntary body movements of increasing intensity.
My pain is still intense, still disabling in how it limits my life, but it began to move away from it's tightly focused spot deep inside my right hip. It fanned out more. It moved between right and left and sometimes both hips. It started to move down into my thighs in December and now goes down through my calves sometimes. I have new pains. For six weeks I had excruciating neck pain when I lay down. Now I have pins and needles all down my right arm. I have a pain under my left ribcage that comes and goes, sometimes for moments, sometimes for days. The back of my neck itches. My right index finger itches constantly. Last night, my left hand started to itch. The body movements are getting more intrusive and intense and varied as well. To my torquing spine my body has added shaking, leg jolts, shoulder jolts, facial contortions, shaking my head back and forth, sticking out my tongue, covering my mouth with my hand or fist, covering my eyes with my hands, feeling some energy pushing back at me.
I am having trouble focusing. I am getting lost driving to places I know perfectly well how to get to. I can't sleep much unless I take a pill. I feel nauseous much of the time. I have lost 20 pounds. I am cold all the time, tense, anxious. I feel a sense of dread and impending doom. I am torturing myself emotionally. I'm fighting the urge to run away somewhere and curl up in a dark place where nobody can find me. I am starting to get fragments of images, sensations, that make no sense to me. All this while working full-time, finishing a book, taking care of my family and my aging mother, and maintaining a variety of social obligations. I'm highly functional on the outside.
Based on the article, and on a lot of things others' on this forum have said, I think I must have suffered some abuse of which I am completely unaware in my conscious mind. I don't know what it is, when it happened, who did it, but my body seems to know something.
Finally, I found an article that goes a long way toward explaining what is happening to me. This morning, I searched the forum on "repressed memories" and spent a lot of time reading what others have written. I found this article on an old thread. I can't remember now who posted it, but I am sending him/her my gratitude.
Symptoms of Trauma and Traumatic Memory Retrieval in Adult Survivors of Childhood Sexual Abuse by Maimo and Laidlaw in the Journal of Trauma and Dissociation.
I don't have a "narrative" of trauma, but I do have one of physical pain. I am going to start with that because it is what brought me to where I am right now and, according to the article above, is probably the crux of my problems.
I know I had trauma in my childhood (I never would have called it that until recently) from adoption and growing up as the only child of an alcoholic, depressed, and personality-disordered father, and a hyper-anxious personality disordered mother. I thought I had resolved a lot of my issues in relation to this. I went through some bad times that I remember starting at around 11-12 and finally "ending" in my late 30s. Maybe I will write about some of those later in this diary.
Then, at 48 years old, I developed chronic and severe pain in my right hip. It developed very slowly. Something tells me that the trigger for it was when I fell down my back stairs and sprained my ankle. Maybe I'll write in more detail about that later too. About 6 months after that fall (I did not go to a doctor), I noticed that my knee hurt intermittently when I was doing stairs. Then that symptom went away and the pain in my hip started. Just intermittently over a few months.
In June of 2012, the pain was not really too bad. I had just purchased a new bicycle and had a plan to begin training to ride in a 150-mile bike-a-thon thing to raise money for a good cause. I figured it would help me get into better physical shape, and having a goal to help others would motivate me. I did a 20 mile ride (easy, relatively slow, on flat surface) in late June 2012. I have not ridden since. By the end of July, the pain was pervading all aspects of my life. I could walk, but it was excruciating. I kept thinking it would go away. I stretched, took advil, used heat, used ice--every trick in the book. Nothing worked. I had seen my physician who said I had sciatica.
Finally, I called my husband during a break in an all-day seminar I was teaching, and I told him how much pain I was in. He called a chiropractor I used to see for my neck. He is very good and very highly regarded, and I trusted that he could help me. He agreed to an emergency appointment that evening.
When I was on the table, he pulled on my right leg, and I cursed--It startled the hell out of me and was excruciating for just a second, then I was flooded with relief. He told me that my hip had somehow rotated forward and gotten stuck in that position. His tug on my leg and moved it back into position. I walked out of the office with no pain at all, suppressing the urge to throw my arms around him in ecstatic gratitude. I thought everything was resolved. I went home and had a celebratory dinner with my family.
The pain was back the next day. I saw the chiropractor five more times, then he told me that something else must be going on as the treatments weren't working. He sent me to a physiatrist for hip x-rays. The x-rays were unremarkable except that they showed a bone spur in my pelvic joint. The physiatrist told me that many people with this are asymptomatic. He said I could and should resume normal activities (he didn't have any recommendations on how to deal with the pain) and suggested I might do physical therapy.
After a disastrous stint with one PT I found a really good one. I did get stronger and regain some flexibility, and a little symptom reduction, but the pain never went away. After several months with the PT, he recommended that I get an MRI. I went to a highly regarded spinal specialist who ordered the MRI. There were lots of findings on it (some of which I knew about...scoliosis, spondylolesthesis; and some of which I did not). Most of them were categorized as "mild to moderate." The specialist said I could choose between continuing physical therapy or considering injections into my sacral joints. I recoiled at the latter, and my own physician cautioned against this invasive procedure. I continued for another round of PT. Then the PT dismissed me because he had given me all the exercises and said I should continue on my own.
I did this for a few months, but the pain kept getting worse, and it was causing me tremendous anxiety. I started researching chronic pain. So, next I went vegan for 3 months. I felt healthier but it did nothing for the pain. Then I went vegan AND gluten-free (that was a pain in the a.). Pain continued to worsen. Finally, in early September 2013, I made an appointment with a man who does bodywork and who many people I know refer to as a healer. I liked him very much--gentle, kind, knowledgeable, experienced, etc. and willing to experiment and have some fun. On the second appointment, he took me outside to have "walking lessons" during which he taught me some visualization techniques and we did some postural stuff, etc. He said for the next appointment, we'd work with another therapist there who does yoga therapy/restorative yoga.
In between, I had to fly out to a 4-day conference. I came back a total wreck. Completely exhausted, in constant pain when standing or walking, not sleeping because pain would awaken me, angry and frustrated at my body for not responding to my attempts to heal, and devastated because I couldn't do what I wanted to do. I realized that this total exhaustion has been coming on for years.
To make a long story short, over the next few weeks, these therapists recommended that I consider making an appointment with a trauma therapist. I could not fathom this. It seemed so far-fetched that my pain could be psychosomatic. But I was desperate to get pain-free, and I had actually been considering the idea of entering therapy to discuss some other issues in my life, so I picked a therapist out of a directory because in the picture, he had kind eyes and a nice smile. I was very, very lucky.
At the same time, and in an attempt to cover all possible bases, I also went to see a yogi/aryuvedic practitioner/pranic healer at the recommendation of the yoga therapist. This woman had been her teacher and she thought very highly of her healing abilities and that she might be able to help me. I filled out a very long and detailed questionnaire about my history and at the end of our first session, one of her comments was, "My, you have certainly had your share of trauma in your life." I think that was the first time that I realized I must have a very narrow definition of "trauma." I didn't (and still don't really) consider myself to be traumatized. So I began a quest to learn everything I could about it. The yogi also suggested that I begin mindfulness meditation, which I did.
I think I need to stop the history here. This is getting way too long. I will return to it. But, in a sort of "scenes-from-our-next-show" moment, I will document that several things began to happen during October and November. The critical one was my first session with cranial-sacral therapy during which I had a wildly bizarre experience. Shortly after that, while meditating, I began to have involuntary body movements of increasing intensity.
My pain is still intense, still disabling in how it limits my life, but it began to move away from it's tightly focused spot deep inside my right hip. It fanned out more. It moved between right and left and sometimes both hips. It started to move down into my thighs in December and now goes down through my calves sometimes. I have new pains. For six weeks I had excruciating neck pain when I lay down. Now I have pins and needles all down my right arm. I have a pain under my left ribcage that comes and goes, sometimes for moments, sometimes for days. The back of my neck itches. My right index finger itches constantly. Last night, my left hand started to itch. The body movements are getting more intrusive and intense and varied as well. To my torquing spine my body has added shaking, leg jolts, shoulder jolts, facial contortions, shaking my head back and forth, sticking out my tongue, covering my mouth with my hand or fist, covering my eyes with my hands, feeling some energy pushing back at me.
I am having trouble focusing. I am getting lost driving to places I know perfectly well how to get to. I can't sleep much unless I take a pill. I feel nauseous much of the time. I have lost 20 pounds. I am cold all the time, tense, anxious. I feel a sense of dread and impending doom. I am torturing myself emotionally. I'm fighting the urge to run away somewhere and curl up in a dark place where nobody can find me. I am starting to get fragments of images, sensations, that make no sense to me. All this while working full-time, finishing a book, taking care of my family and my aging mother, and maintaining a variety of social obligations. I'm highly functional on the outside.
Based on the article, and on a lot of things others' on this forum have said, I think I must have suffered some abuse of which I am completely unaware in my conscious mind. I don't know what it is, when it happened, who did it, but my body seems to know something.