thebibliosphere:

exhaustedtree:

thebibliosphere:

Finding adequate pain management is difficult, especially with so many doctors becoming reluctant to help chronic pain patients thanks to the scare mongering over opioids at the moment, so in every literal sense, I feel your pain and I sympathize.

For me pain management is tricky as I react so negatively to medications, but if you do not have a pain specialist already, try and find one and see if there’s anything else they can do for you, or if there’s a med tweak that might help.

My biggest pin relief comes from weekly massage and physical therapy, without it I get acid build up in my muscles and it starts to feel like I have shards of glass under my skin. Not all insurances cover it (mine doesn’t) but it can be extremely beneficial for those of us with chronic pain. It can hurt a lot at first, particularly things like deep tissue massage, but if you start out gentle and work your way up it can really help with things like circulation and muscle spasms or breaking up painful adhesions that might be the cause of some pain. Plus it can just feel good to take a time out and stop carrying extra tension in your body all the time.

Acupressure, reflexology and basic therapeutic massage are all great ways at lowering inflammation and stress levels, and that can go a long way toward helping your pain.

Another thing I started doing this year was cognitive behavioral therapy for chronic pain management. The therapy itself doesn’t lessen the pain, but it does give me a better mentality for coping with it, which in turn helps with my stress levels and how well I’m able to manage it. People have noticed more and more recently that I’m enforcing stricter boundaries online with how far I’m willing to go in order to help or explain something, and this is a huge part of it. I’m also doing it in real life, and have cut out a lot of toxic and draining people who made demands on my time and energy that I simply don’t have to give. I’m always telling folk never to set themselves on fire to keep other people warm, and by golly gosh it’s high time I took my own advice cause if my mental health is shot to pieces, I can’t cope and I’ll just lay in bed and cry and cry and cry because everything hurts so much all the time. If I’m in a better place mentally, I’ve got more energy reserves to cope. It doesn’t make the pain any less, but it does help me not to fall into a pit of despair every time I have a flare up.

I also always try to take the time to do something nice for myself, whether it’s making sure I get my haircut every six weeks to keep down on maintenance, enjoying a nice bath or letting myself go to bed early to read a book, I make active time to treat myself with kindness and to do something out of enjoyment and not obligation. So much of my energy is rationed in terms of trying to have a functional life, it can feel like such a waste of energy to just do something that you’ll enjoy, and that’s just not true. Tonight was our anniversary and I wanted to feel fancy so I used a wine glass to drink my water with. Sounds ridiculous, but it made me feel special and normal for a split second out of a thousand moments of feeling like crap. Be kind to yourself and allow yourself small joys. They add up.

I appreciate you answering! I’ll try CBT out because I have noticed that when my mental health is bad it gets a lot harder to endure and they add on to eachother making the mental problems and the physical pain worse. I’ve been trying to figure stuff out with my doctor but he is a bit unsympathetic so I’m in the process of trying to get a new doctor. I might try acupressure as well thanks for the suggestion! I appreciate it a lot, I’ve been dealing with various issues for a while and reading your blog posts about getting better and healing helps give me hope.

You are so very welcome. When I first started blogging I could hardly ever find anyone who was dealing with my types of issues, and that feeling of isolation alone was unbearable. I never wanted anyone to feel like that, so I’m glad to know that me talking about these things helps. It makes living in the public eye somewhat more bearable lol.

If you wind up struggling with CBT or find it doesn’t help, another thing I’ve been using to great effect is EMDR. It was initially supposed to just be helping with my PTSD but we’ve actually found through trial and error that it’s very good with helping to deal with the stress of always being in pain, so that’s another option.

Good luck, and I wish you great progress on achieving a better quality of life💖