I deal with chronic pain. I usually say that I can’t remember the last time I had a day without pain, but I have been studying the biopsychosocial mechanisms of pain, and I think I do remember now. I have been experiencing chronic pain since childhood. It has gotten better and worse over the years. I am learning now where it all began. I am also starting to pay more attention to the moments when I am not in pain. In all honesty, the moment I ask myself if I am in pain, I feel pain, even if the moment before I asked that question, there was no pain at all.
To make a long story as short as possible, as a child, I struggled significantly with my identity and value. Many things contributed to that struggle. The individual issues are not important. What is important is that this struggle caused an overwhelming sense of feeling like I was never good enough, not seen, not valued, not important. I felt insignificant and often completely invisible. When people did see me, it always felt like what they saw disappointed them. I was never quite enough for others. This led to depression and suicidal ideations that carried into my adulthood. The question I asked myself recently was, how did this begin to connect to my pain?
That is quite simple to see looking backward. I was an introspective child. I spent a lot of time thinking and dreaming, processing quietly. I was not super active. I liked to play alone or with just one or two other kids. I did not like groups or crowds. I was bothered by noises and chaos. Maybe a bit on a spectrum of sorts, right? Okay, so my elementary school environment was an open classroom style. The grades were all in these pods together. The pods were circular in shape and each classroom was a pie shaped piece of the circle. From above, the school looked like some sort of weird alien crop circle or something. Anyway, with heavy curtains for walls and no doors, it was loud. We could hear everything going on in the other classrooms all of the time. There may have only been 4 rooms to each pie pod, but with children, that is a lot of noise. Add to that that I was kind of different from the other kids in pretty much every way. I was in advanced groups for reading and Math, with a small number of kids. I looked different. I thought differently. I moved differently. I did not have friends at school. I just didn’t fit in. I was not like other kids. School was not my safe or happy place.
At some point, I got sick. I sort of remember it was maybe in first grade. I got chicken pox. I remember that being a good time in my life. That might seem strange, but when you have chicken pox, aside from feeling sick for a few days and being itchy, you don’t have to go to school. People take care of you. You get to stay home, watch TV, rest, play by yourself, etc. This was my out. I never consciously thought that though. It just sort of happened. What I remember, is being happy when I was sick. Not surprisingly, I started to get sick a lot. I ended up the the school nurses office several times a month, then at least once a week, sometimes more. I missed a lot of school because I was sick. My mother was a nurse, so when I was sick, she did tests. Sometimes she found something, sometimes she didn’t. I developed asthma. That stopped me from being able to participate in physical things like gym class and outdoor play. I got hurt from time to time, which added to that sort of thing. Here’s the thing about being sick or injured, people feel bad for you and want to comfort and take care of you. When I was sick, people saw me and paid attention to me. They seemed to actually care about me. When I was not sick, I became invisible again.
Okay, so maybe that wasn’t so short, of a long story. Now, I am 54 years old and have significant pain every day. Do you see the possible connection there? I have had so many types of tests and surgeries to stop this pain. I know what causes it physically. I have a diagnosis for every pain I have. But, what if, my body is not actually what is producing the pain, even though it has a reason to do it? What if my brain is producing the pain and creating the situations in my body to back up the pain diagnosis? I know, right? What if I make myself sick?
I am not saying that I am not sick. I am not saying that other people who are sick are not sick either. What I am saying is, that our brains’ response to emotional and mental stress is manifested in our bodies. Our brain assesses our thoughts and emotions and determines where we are in our ability to cope with what is happening outside of our bodies. It assesses our ability to cope with life’s demands. If it senses we are not able to cope, it will begin body changes to try to meet the demands, changes in cortisol, pain receptors opening, fatigue to slow us down, immune system suppression, etc. Our bodies manifest what we need to deal with life, and in my life, my brain realized that being sick was a way to escape the extremely stressful life at school, and then work, and then relationships, etc. I am really in pain. I have conditions that produce pain, torn tendons, arthritis, nerve damage, bulging spinal discs, an ankle that is completely a mess with spurs, out of alignment, arthritis, feet with no padding so they hurt to walk on, and on, and on, and on . . . I am not making this stuff up. When I was a child, I was not faking sick either. I was sick. My stomach hurt, I had a headache, my throat was sore a lot, I felt tired, and my brain was foggy, and on, and on, etc. My brain manifested what I needed to have an out. My brain manifested what I needed to get the emotional support I was not getting when I was well.
Okay, now I am aware and an adult. I do not want to escape my life anymore. I am not depressed. I like living. I like my job, my friends, etc. Why is my body still doing this? Well, my brain still sees life as stressful and beyond my abilities to cope in some way. I am a bit of a perfectionist. I expect a lot from myself. I work very hard to succeed. AND as I mentioned in my previous blog, I am a naturally sedentary person. I prefer to sit than to move. I like thinking and processing more than doing. I like to create, but I spend more time creating in my mind than actually doing the creating. I do follow through and make things, fix things, do things, but I spend a lot more time thinking about doing things. This does not work well for other people sometimes. It means that I do not do things in a time frame that others would prefer. This was a constant struggle in my previous relationships. The more I disappointed my partner by not moving fast enough, the sicker I would become. The more I disappointed them on whatever front, the more pain I was in. The sicker and more pain I was in, the less likely it would be that I would want to do things, or be able to do things, and then boom, more disappointment. It can happen at work too. I disappoint people, I end up with a reason to do so, and end up disappointing people even more. My brain sees all of this a manifestation of the same childhood pattern. I am overwhelmed by expectations that I do not believe I can meet, and so, my brain gives me a reason that I cannot meet them, pain and illness. Real pain and illness. Not faking or all in my mind.
Not blaming the expectations of partners on my brain and body’s stuff. My brain saw those expectations and disappointments as threats to my existence. My brain gave me a way out of them that was legitimate. I tried just saying, “No, I don’t want to meet that expectation.” Frankly, that did not fly with most people. People don’t let you off the hook just because you don’t want to do something they want you to do. I am learning to be more honest though. Only doing what makes sense for me, but that is hard when people are pretty much constantly wanting me to meet their expectations. I am also putting the message out there that no one needs to meet my expectations either. If I am disappointed, that is my stuff, and not about the other person. I am hoping that my brain gets the reverse message ingrained too. Breaking this pattern of expectations, not wanting to meet them, people being disappointed, brain seeing that as a threat and creating a pathway to not meeting expectations for a legitimate reason, being sick etc. and around we go. That pattern needs a break, but where?
Can anyone else relate to this pattern? It has been shameful to me to see this in myself. I know it might be hard to see it if you also have this pattern. I have hope and positive vibes that I can train my brain to a different pattern. I am not 100% certain what to do or where to begin. I suspect that I have already begun though. Just getting to a place where I notice the pattern, am drawing attention to the thoughts and emotions that cause the pattern to be triggered, listening to and being aware of the conscious and subconscious messages I am giving myself. All of this is a beginning to the end of pain. Let me know if you are on this journey too. I’ll keep you posted on my progress.