• 💖 [Donate To Keep MyPTSD Online] 💖 Every contribution, no matter how small, fuels our mission and helps us continue to provide peer-to-peer services. Your generosity keeps us independent and available freely to the world. MyPTSD closes if we can't reach our annual goal.

Relationship between medical (chronic pain) and psychiatric (ptsd)

Status
Not open for further replies.
I find my line is if I can't sleep (at all) or function (get through work) or the nausea (seems referred from neck pain frequently) I use OTC pain meds, it's daily but I cut back from 8 extra strength / day to 2, sometimes up to 4 but say only once or twice/ week. If I'm off it's 0-2 because I have some flexibilty. Anticipating it before it severly worsens helps, if it gets too bad they won't work, I fund.

I'd say emotional pain still impacts more severly and in an all-out way for me on my ptsd symptoms.

Perhaps we need to learn to "complain" more! Or reframe it. People like this/us need to learn how not to be afraid to ask for help and support?

When it comes to disclosing to Doctors I just freeze and nothing or 'great!' comes out. I have difficulty asking.
 
I want to thank you all for being in this conversation. It has really helped me clarify some things for myself (as well as helping by just being reminded again of how many people are going through similar stuff and finding ways of dealing with it).

Over the past few months, I have finally, gradually, been able to "be in my body" a little bit. I never really knew what it felt like to "be in my body" except when physical things hit a crisis point and I try to think my way out of the misery, then eventually crash out in one way or another. Being in my body is a miserable experience, but I have to learn to do it if I want to heal from all my issues.

It is finally starting to dawn on me that I will not get better, and probably will get worse physically and emotionally if I cannot figure out a way to further change my life without getting so worked up about the drastic losses (my career, my financial stability, my social life, my activist and volunteer life, my athletic and adventuresome life, my mobility, my energy, &etc.) and so frightened of these changes. I'm not yet willing to give up hope that I might sometime recover enough to be able to do the things I most want to do, but I think maybe I am shifting better toward the idea that my "fight" needs to be for my body right now and not against it.

I know that if I listen to and respond to what my body is telling me (rather than my parts), I will end up needing to lie down for most of the day, and to sleep for big chunks of it, and that terrifies me and I have fought against it as much as I can. But I'm going to try some things for a couple of weeks and see what happens. I started today.
 
I found the most helpful way for dealing with this pain which I had from the beginning of remembering was to accept it. It lasted for years and years.

I did body work with a man who did Myofascial Release (MFR) which is also called myofascial unwinding. It was pretty intense for me because I'd have these extremely bizarre nightmares the next day. Then memories would come to me, vivid flashbacks about the abuse. Later flashbacks would occur during the MFR. I'd have tremendous release of emotions as well and that in turn helped with the body pain.

I found a lot of relief from this type of body work though and I miss it. I'd use it in conjunction with my regular therapist. Though I found my regular therapist didn't like me doing it. I never listened to her because it helped with the body pains so much.

Here's a video on Myofascial Unwinding on utube.

the worse the PTSD, the worse the pain

Ditto here as well. Yet no longer. Maybe it's because I'm no longer DID? Don't know. Had bad body pain when I dissociated all the time. I have memories now and don't have the body pains except during my nightmares. Usually by the time I get up the pain is gone.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hope, as you know, I have a different relationship to pain than you do. It worries me for a separate set of reasons.

I referenced a book a while ago (quite some time ago) by Norman Doidge
Dead Link Removed
which talks about chronic pain and how the brain can actually gets stuck in it. He speaks about neuroplasticity and how the brain can be re-trained. Please note that I am not saying that the pain is not there, but instead, that because of its chronic nature, that it literally changes the wiring in the brain and that can be redirected and help reduce the intensity and duration of it.

So, really, take that with a grain of salt, because as you know, I have no real lived experience with pain in general, let alone chronic.

Also, I wanted to mention that medical marijuana seems to be a huge relief to those who suffer from pain. I wonder if that would be another thought for you?
 
I wanted to add that some of my pain was hypothyroidism. As soon as I got on the proper dose, which took longer than it should've, the rest of my pain disappeared. I was initially erroneously diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. One of the pain specialists I saw told me that the diagnosis of Fibromyalgia is the "if nothing else fits diagnosis." He urged me to continue seeing doctors until I got the right diagnosis.
 
I have chronic pain and extreme fatigue. This post is very interesting to me. I never thought too much about the relationship between my CPTSD and my pain/fatigue. I have TMJ (better now), hip/back pain that may be sciatic nerve or piriformis, and a nerve in my back that gets pinched sometimes, though not as badly as other people, though this could be a core belief. My main culprit is a slipped rib when I was nineteen that I ignored, and it torqued my body and messed up my whole right side. At the time I didn't know it was a slipped rib. Something had popped in me during a rehearsal, and I collapsed (I was in "plank pose" at the time basically.). I won't get into the awful details but it messed up a lot of stuff, affected my mobility, and gave me a constant head ache that would eventually tack on frequent migraines. It was a long journey through different physical therapists and a chiropractor, but I got better over the years. I hit a wall with it, and so I stopped going and started working on myself at home, taking all of the information and exercises from those experiences and combining them with my educational background and training in different movement techniques, martial arts, and dance. I'm at a place with it I never thought I'd be. It's manageable and always feels like it's getting better. The migraines happen several times a month but are less frequent than they used to be. My body hurts all the time but it's not as bad as it was. I have a weird pressure in my face that comes and goes that it related to whatever the rib has torqued in me. It had been gone for a long time but came back a few weeks ago. Used to drive me crazy. Hope it goes away again. It will. If I worked out like I used to it would be SO much better. There's no telling how much better. In fact, if I worked out and stretched all the time there may be a chance of getting rid of these problems all together. But because of the way I cope and deal with my recovery right now it's hard to be in a place where I can do that. I'm getting there. I've always had fatigue but I got mono last year and it was on the severe end of the spectrum. Like, BAD. I couldn't work. Couldn't walk up stairs, didn't have the energy to speak full sentences sometimes. Finally I could work, and then every two or three days I would have to sleep for ten or twelve hours. Now I don't have to do that. Been that way for a while. But I wonder if I have any gauge as to how fatigued I still am from that. Because you get used to things, you know? I haven't read every single reply on this post, but I saw something about myofascial massage and how that might help? How maybe some of my fatigue and pain is from my body carrying emotional pain?
 
I had a bad case of mono, I was septic, and it took a couple of years to get rid of the fatigue. They told me I had chronic Epstein-Barr Syndrome, but I ignored them and worked out hard and got over the fatigue. That being said, when I have an intense therapy session, I sleep the rest of the day and night. If I'm badly triggered, after the symptoms go back to their normal level, I am exhausted. So you are dealing with 3 things that cause exhaustion.
 
I had a bad case of mono, I was septic, and it took a couple of years to get rid of the fatigue. The...
Very much appreciate the info. Thank you!


So working out helped you recover from the post-mono symptoms? I went away and did yoga for three weeks and got much better last year right after it went dormant. For a lot of reasons I stopped exercising. Am starting again this week.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Yes, rest when I was tired, exercise when I was not. I worked on farms and when I didn't, I lifted weights. I ate well too. It takes a lot of good calories to sustain the muscle needed to work on a farm.
 
I have been dealing with chronic pain for several years: degenerative discs in my c-spine and l-spine with constant low back pain and referred pain to my right hip, chronic migraine, occipital neuralgia (a new diagnosis and a particularly nasty one), and general myofascial pain (cause unknown).

In addition to the PTSD, I struggle with depression and it is intensified by the physical pain. Unfortunately, most of the pain I have right now is not relieved by anything, although I am on regular prescription meds, take occasional OTC drugs, and use ice, heat, massage, and rest as I can to try to gain some relief.

I am also celiac. I very strongly believe that there may be a connection between the myofascial pain, some of the emotional issues, the migraines, and inflammation. My last brain MRI showed inflammation in the tissues and after trying anti-inflammatories, my headaches were temporarily relieved. Even though there's been a lot of newer research about, for example, depression and inflammation, I just don't think we know enough about the relationship between medical and psychological conditions, the brain, and the auto-immune system for the medical community to stand up and take notice yet.

Really appreciate this discussion. Pain is such an important factor in healing (or not) and I don't think it gets the attention it deserves.
 
Chronic pain/PTSD/skeletal pain. I don't start utilizing the Va until 2007, before that I ran around like a crazy man. physically beating people, drinking to all hours attacking any possible threat . I felt no pain because I was taught not to feel it . I felt no love , I had no mercy for weakness. I lost my wife and kids our home our future. This to me was normal, I didn't know the meaning of normal. In2007 I started going the Va after awhile of homelessness. They started me in a combat PTSD course that lasted a year,plus other classes in between anger management, group discussion ext... I started reading about PTSD in books and online to gain more knowledge. I wanted to learn more about this beast that ruined my life. What was acceptable in the Marines was not acceptable in civilian life, all I could do with all these courses was to take what I could use and Leave the rest.l had been on over 20 meds.,and now I am on only 2 depacote and sertrlin,one sleep med and no pain meds. The Va doesn't use opiates anymore. I try to live a stress free life but that doesn't always work, I don't get involved with family squabbles, I quit drinking,i try to stay busy . When I am in pain I try to move through it. But of course there are setbacks, I still get frustrated and angry at times.So actually I am always in pain(going to try cbd oil) and that leads to other. symptoms. So that means I have been working on PTSD for 10 years I have gained some ground but I have had some slippage here and there. DR's don't really have an understanding of PTSD or the pain involved PTSD or skeletal, Actually I don't think they really care anymore they just want to make their money and go home. PTSD/chronic pain/skeletal pain there not going to go away just find something that works for you and your life . Don't get to complicated, talk to other vets you know . Wish you luck and happiness Semper Fi.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top