How to find a sense of safety when you are suffering with chronic pain?

[New_Life]

Hello dear friends,

I have done quite a bit of reading lately, and understand that establishing a sense of safety is essential to the process of healing from trauma, otherwise the brain is stuck in survival mode, blocking growth and learning new information. Many trauma informed therapists define this as the first step on our healing path.

However, I find this first step really difficult, if not impossible to achieve. So far, I have kicked my mother out of the house and sent her to live with my father, in order to reduce her exploiting, invasive and belitteling behaviour towards me. That wasn't doing me any good.

But now, I have another roblem, as I suffer from multiple incurable illnesess and chronic pain. I am in constant pain and can't properly take care of myself, clean the house, or preapre meals. The more I do around the house, the more pain I get. I can't afford to pay somebody to do the housework, as I am unable work. I get a little money from my mother to live, but that makes me feel very insecure also. Especially with the pandemic right now, as she is old, obese and has heart problems - she might die if she catches that virus.

I feel overwhelmed and stressed out by the whole situation. I feel again trapped, hopeless and helpless as I did in childhood.

So, how do you get to feeling some safety, when you can't provide or take care of yourself? How can you feel safe in your body, when your body is a constant source of torture and pain?

Thank you all for reading, sending love and rainbows across the board!
🌈❤️
 

[Marko]

Hi New Life,

I know this topic is old but I came across it and wanted to reply. I can see that you're suffering a lot and that your situation is not at all easy so I wanted to extend some support and sympathy. Also congrats for dealing with your mother in the way you have which I'm sure was not at all easy.

I also have chronic pain due to cPTSD and can relate to your diffculty finding basic safety in a body that is constantly telling you otherwise. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia recently which has obviously been there a while and have a frozen shoulder, which whilst not a chronic illness is long term and both highly debilitating and very painful at times. I have recently gradually withdrawn from psychiatric medication after a long time using it which is probably why these symptoms have come to the surface. I can 'switch off' much of this pain with antids and painkillers but I really don't want to do that as I believe the pain is a message that has something to teach me. I do fully undestand however that people choose to use medication to manage pain as my sister does because there are a lot of variables involved and I am lucky not really to have any responsibilities other than myself so I have control over my life and actions.

I find practising both awareness and acceptance of the pain to be the way to mitigate its negative effects on me. As with many things trauma related there seems to be a paradox here where I find that the more I ignore the pain the more it bothers me, but the practise of having some awareness on it as often as possible, especially during movement, seems to reduce the fear associated with it. I think with cPTSD we develop a relationship with pain over our lifetimes that strongly reinforces the message that 'something is very wrong' which exacerbates fear which then cyclicly increases the pain and so on. By being aware of it and naming it as pain which is a result of past negative experiences coupled with some acceptance of it as 'it is what it is' we are able to gradually break that cycle to some extent and over times it certainly becomes weaker and less bothersome. I find my mind gives me messages about how this pain is unacceptable, it's dangerous, it shouldn't be happening, it's their fault, it's my fault etc, all of which are resistance to the reality of the pain and as much of the pain is often related to tension which in itself is a form of resistance, more of that just feeds the negative cycle.

Not sure if this is at all helpful, but I am increasingly finding that a somewhat spiritual approach to this trauma healing is really helpful as it has a way of rewiring the unhelpful associations we have with our symptoms.

I really hope things have improved for you since you wrote this and it would be good to hear how you're getting on.

Cheers

Marko