Somehow in the last flashback I found this forum and as I started writting posts it just poured out. I am still feeling a bit shaky saying this and knocking on wood, but since I've done this excavation and applied some of the healing strategies I learned in therapy before, I've been feeling normal again. Like I have energy and apetite and my body feels good, no pain. I figured I'd share this experience, since I have cPTSD too and fibro symptoms are so similar to the helplesness cPTSD suferrers know so well.
Over the years there have been so many times I have been in severe pain and been sure I would never walk again or something similar or had some crippling, chronic disease only to discover a few days/weeks later everything worked just fine I have come to understand that kind of stuff as internal manisfestations of intrusive thoughts and feelings and passing moods. Little stuff (muscle tension, small muscle spasms tugging on nerves and stuff) comes and goes all the time. Major stuff (muscle tension severe enough to leave tears and bruises, spasms severe enough to cause joints to cease to funtion, or my back to spasm out) usually involves both a ptsd anniversary (very high internal stress from old stuff) plus a significant level of stress in my current situation plus a specific trigger in my current situation.
For example, Christmas is a significant anniversary for me due to Vietnam stuff that happened Christmas 1967. This Christmas involved a high level of stress in my current situation due to my wife's alztimer's and the thought this may be the last Christmas she would actually be able to enjoy in a more or less normal way. Then, the week before Christmas suddenly a bunch of strange charges started popping up on my credit card. Old stuff + current stuff + trigger = severe muscle tension and pain. My back wasn't working. Crawling, twisting sensations, steady pain of tears and bruises and pinched nerves.
It's not really any different than a passing mood. I have learned to not challenge the passing stuff while it is raging, to just keep myself as safe and comfortable as possible and remind myself this will all pass and I will be fine. This particular episode started winding down after about 2 weeks and by 4 weeks I was back to normal. I called the credit card company and took care of the strange charges. I did the behaviors I would have normally done during the social parts of the holiday season even though the physical pain was there, just as I did the behaviors I would have normally done even though some of the old thoughts and feelings wanted me to isolate or tell people off.
So the old anniversary is past for this year. My wife appeared to have a good holiday, which was important to me. And the credit card thing is history. And I feel good about my ability to not let the ptsd stuff (psychological or physical) result in behavior that disrupted my current situation. All current activities and relationships went well.
It is my opinion that doctors and therapists tend to downplay the physical side of the what is considered a psychological disorder, generally wanting to treat the physical symptoms as seperate and unrelated. If we don't learn the specifics of the physical side of our ptsd experience and learn to process it much as we learn to process our passing moods, we will end up with a lot of unnecessary medication and/or medical procedures and the side effects and residual effects of those compounding our challenge of learning to live with ptsd.
Ted
