Self Care and Attending To Pain

[movementforthebetter]

I am like a frog in hot water not noticing the heat until it is too late. If pain is turned up slowly, I don't register it until it is severe.

I had a tooth fixed today. It had gotten to a very painful point. I felt it constantly and was taking migrane pills to manage it for the last week. If I woke at night, it hurt. And it hurt even when I was eating. It's much better now.

Thing is, I can't be sure when the original low level tooth ache was noticed. It started as hot/cold sensitivity and gradually escalated. It might have been as long as 3 years ago. Maybe even longer!  It turned out I had a cavity under a filling and a cracked tooth, and my next step will be a crown. 

I have been told that the body's natural state is pain free. I have also been told that toothache pain is very painful and it's hard to miss and if you've got one you'll know it. If I said to someone without cptsd that I lived with a toothache for that long, I am sure that they would react like I had grown a second head. Most people barring the truly broke would find the money to deal with it. But I didn't.

When I was young, part of my abuse was either total neglect of my health or else choosing to save money on my care. My uPDM chose to save money by not getting me braces. This led to me having impacted wisdoms and needing dental surgery years down the line. Thankfully I had insurance at that time. It also indirectly led to the last 3 years to today.

I was taught again and again that my pain didn't matter and that by extension I didn't matter, both by family and by doctors. My mistake was believing that. And it led to the opposite result. For at least the last 10 years I have always felt one form of pain or another, and often multiple. And because of that I think I have trouble accurately guaging the severity of pain.

I write this tonight to validate myself and others when they need to hear it that my pain does matter, and so does yours. We are worth care and all the healing we can get.

Over the last 6 months I have been pulling myself out of the hot water, and for the last 2 months Out of the FOG. I don't know if I'll ever be totally Out of the Storm. But I am healing bit by bit and have hope.

[Sandstone]

Im sorry to hear that u were made to believe that u and your pain didn't matter.

I am glad u posted this as i can relate. I ignore pain.

I remember the midwife  (2nd child) being surprised at how strong my contractions were compared to my response (no pain relief )  As for my 1st born,  i was having contractions for 3 days  before being taken into hospital cos 'the book' had said not to go in unless they were less than 5 mins apart. . They were exactly 5 mins apart for over a day lol i was exhausted.

I needed braces as a kid, my mum told me i didnt have to if i didnt want to. I was 9 so i said no. My teeth are uneven and crooked now and have been ashamed of my smile as long as i can remember.

When i was 7 a brick dropped on my toe possibly breaking a bone, my goodness it hurt. My mum had another new boyfriend at the time and she was 'busy' so we never got it looked at.
Big things i seem to ignore and yet go docs for little things.

You are right, we are worth care and healing and we need self love to get that (which im learning )
Thank you for your post its given me some things to think about.

Im happy for you that you are out of the hot water and on your healing journey and even tho youre still in the storm, you are among some good folk here. Hope your tooth is healing for you. Xx

[Dee]

I am totally with both of you in ignoring pain.  I have not gone in for issues as big as back fractures.  I have a real fear of going in and nothing being wrong with me.  As crazy as it is, I would rather go in and hear I have a major issue than go in and them not find anything.

When I as young I went to the doctor very infrequently.  Once I became a teenager I only went once and it was for pneumonia that I had for several days.  I got chronic ear infections as old as 17.  I am sure I once broke an eardrum.  I would have my friends empty their medicine cabinets for antibiotics. 

I suppose with pain inflicted by abuse and also neglect I learned to live with it.  I just wish I would get the courage to go when I need to.  I have a fear of someone thinking that I am just trying to get attention.

[sanmagic7]

dee, i totally relate to the idea of wishing they would find something horribly wrong with me than me feeling bad and having been told that they can't find anything.  something horribly wrong could at least be fixed. 

for so many years, i have asked docs about this, that, and the other, and have been ignored or cursorily examined and told they don't see anything wrong.   i knew something was wrong, but no one cared enough to delve into the problem, to look for an answer as to why i was not feeling right, or to be a healer in every sense of the word.

i stopped wanting to go to docs because of that same fear - that i would be told there's nothing there, nothing wrong.  i didn't want to hear it.  but, somewhere inside me i knew there was something wrong, so all i did was get frustrated and mistrustful.  what i knew was that somehow, the things i was feeling was connected to what i was going thru, which was long-term chronic stress.  i didn't know the terms c-ptsd, npd, or narc abuse. 

i've had low blood pressure for a long time, and was always tired.  i used to ask if one was somehow connected to the other.  never a direct answer; usually a simple 'i don't know' with no follow up, no questions, no concern.  until finally when i began falling asleep at my desk while reading reports in my office, a doc decided to give me a sleep test, overnight in a clinic, hooked up to electrodes.  it turned out that my leg twitches were twice the norm, i had 'dancing legs syndrome' and was finally given something to help me sleep through the night.

however, no one ever went to the root cause of this, which i believe is stress-induced changes to the nerve center in the brain.   i'm only beginning to find out that most of what is physically wrong with me is due to the stress of c-ptsd and its related abuse.  pain has been a constant with me for so long, i can only guess that sometime in my 20's i might've been pain-free, but i'm not sure. 

i am now taking my own steps to alleviate this phenomenon of being in pain all the time, usually by alternative methods.  my body has been so stressed out that for nearly 20 years, i could not tolerate even the small amount of leg massage that comes with a pedicure without crying, sobbing, because it hurt so much to be touched.  however, i am now purposely putting myself thru pain in order to ultimately alleviate pain.  i've pushed toxic emotions and feelings down into  my body (systems, organs, muscles) for so long that they have gotten damaged.  to get them out, i'm now seeing a massage therapist who use pressure point therapy.  it hurts like *, especially when releasing something that doesn't belong, but slowly my muscles are returning to a pain-free state.  it's almost weird to feel like that.

so, yes, i agree, we deserve to be pain free, we deserve to be cared about and cared for.  i didn't have much medical care when i was young, either, except in emergencies (no money), so going to the doc was not a natural thing for me in the first place when i got older.  but, the more i learn, the more i understand that there is more to my condition than a pill can fix.  i choose, therefore, to go thru the toxic pain to come out the other side.  so far, i believe it's working.  best to you all.

[movementforthebetter]

Thanks for sharing, everyone. I'm sorry that you have also experienced this. It's a parenting fail at the most basic level. And then as adults, a self-parenting fail because we don't know better. I'm glad I do now, though. I want to get to healthy in my lifetime and I hope I can. It's up to me to take it as far as I reasonably can.

I also relate to your post, Dee. I have gone in to appointments in a state of panic over results, no matter what I think they could be. I fear they think I am seeking attention or pills if results are clear. I actually want neither. I just want to get better. I'd rather not be there but years of neglect means I will be at the dr's more than others. I think I might try to tell a dr. that one day. I would love to see their face when I say "get used to seeing me a lot", lol.

I find it so hard to advocate for better care. I am learning to speak up though. It's particularly difficult if not impossible to do this when in the thick of an emotional flashback! And I have found, like sanmagic7, that the root pain is burried very deeply inside, and most drs know only about treating symptoms, so we have to plug along at unearthing the cause without any guiding.

Sandstone, I am in awe that you spent so long in labor. Truthfully I am terrified of the pain of childbirth.

I do think all this weird pain resistence/denial we've developed is actually a sign of our strength of spirit. I wish you all well in your healing journeys.