Living in dignity and love beyond complex trauma (formerly IntoThisBreakingLight)
Tag: pain
Ouch. The pain is really bad this morning and I’m exhausted, anxious and don’t know if I’ll get through the day at work.
Today I am deciding to find as much good as I can. Today I commit to notice and be thankful for 5 good things around me. Today I commit to hold onto hope. Today I commit to find every small way I can to go that little bit further and bring help and happiness to others.
I’ll post the 5 thankful things later today.
Wishing you good today.
Xxx
(Apologies gents – look away now if you wish 🙂 !)
A special thank you to those of you who have been wishing me well with the gynae treatment. I got some more good news this week – a date is set at the end of April for my surgery! I’m very surprised it is so soon. I’d expected to be waiting months.
I’m really pleased that this hopefully means some help and some answers soon. Â Today I’m in a lot of pain again and feeling very faint and I’ve had less than two weeks between one period ending and the next starting….ouch….. so it’s good timing for this news.
I have to attend a drop in clinic to have a pre-assessment before the surgery. I’m also expecting to be sent for an MRI scan.
All in all I just feel very fortunate that things are moving quickly.
Ginny xx
This morning I’ve been feeling more encouraged after a positive outcome at the gynaecology clinic. (Apologies gents who may wish to read no further 🙂 !) I know this is off my usual topics but I thought I’d share some good news.
I’ve had extremely painful periods as long as I can remember, especially over the past 10 years, very  heavy and painful. I’ve been in A&E 3 times in the last year or so because of it, have low iron levels, distressing bladder symptoms too which are apparently connected as the endometriosis has grown across the bladder; all in all it is having a big impact on my life. This year I’ve had to take days off work because of it.
Today I finally had an appointment with a specialist at the hospital. It has taken so long to get a referral, after trying several different medications and having scans. She was very compassionate and thorough. I am going to have an MRI scan of my womb and then a minor operation partly to investigate, partly to remove endometriosis  (hopefully – if it’s too bad they won’t be able to do it at the same time and would need to operate again), and to insert a coil (I didn’t really want this but it may be one of the only options).
I’m so grateful that at long last the problem is being investigated and treated rather than just trying different tablets which all affect your hormones a lot, which “should” help because it’s “probably” this or that, without really knowing what is going on. It has taken years to get here but now I’m feeling optimistic there will be some answers at least, even if the operation doesn’t get rid of the problem straight away.
This has to be the first time for a while where it feels as if things are moving in the right direction!
Ginny xxx
I lost it today. And I wasn’t on my own this time. I went to an appointment with one of the CPNs. I was shaky before I got there, anger rising in the waiting room as two other patients and I were talking about how let down they felt by services, and in my appointment everything I said it felt like it was minimised or dismissed, I think. I can’t remember what we talked about or what we said.
I snapped. I screamed and screamed and then I can’t remember. Pain. Then I was on the floor screaming and then I couldn’t breathe and I was crying and couldn’t stop. I thought I’d hurt the CPN and took a long time to believe I hadn’t. Then I couldn’t speak and somehow nearly an hour had passed with all this, though I couldn’t understand it. I was so tired.
I’ve never flipped out like that in front of anyone. I cut so I don’t get there. Now it isn’t working. Usually it just happens on my own usually at night. Now they’ve seen the worst of me. Now I’ve lost control. I want to take responsibility but I’m losing it more and more. Nothing is working.
I’m home now. On the way home I felt out of my body but unable to get away from everything being shaken. Tea and blankets and NCIS tonight, my usual escape. But I have to face it.
I feel so drained. Every part of me aches. Even the joints in my hands. It takes a stupid amount of effort to do a tiny thing like hang the laundry or wash up. I want to stay wrapped in blankets and pillows in the safety of my sofa. I stayed there all morning clutching my stuffed animals that for some reason I still find childishly comforting. It felt like I was shaking and couldn’t calm and just wanted to cry.
It took an immense effort to go outside, but I did because I had to meet someone. My movements felt wrong and unsteady, my body going from sweaty to chilled and back again and so so tired.
Since I told to the police I feel a more vulnerable sadness. This is a new feeling I am even less able to control. Sadness separate from anger. Sadness of loss. Is it sadness perhaps for the first time separate from self disgust and self hate? Sadness of the little child part of me, that’s always with me, although she’s also lost.
It hasn’t been a great week.
Hurting with physical pain from gynae problems and joint problems.
Going between guilt for worrying and burdening my family and not being able to do what I should, and feeling cut up that I’m “in the way” to them and need to be compartmentalised so I don’t intrude on their life – the part of it they actually want not just feel obligated to do.
Seeing far too many things. ..scary things. ..that aren’t there… that are hallucinations from memories that grip me and shake me.
Wishing someone would hold me and tell me it would be alright even when the flashbacks come.
Working through water or a fog each day and knowing I’m getting it wrong and doing wrong and so so tired.
I slept about 4 hours tonight if that. Tomorrow is group therapy again. I am so scared to go. I will go because I mace this commitment to everyone in the group, the therapists, and to trying to get better, to God, and I won’t throw away what I’ve been given. But I’m scared. I don’t know where we are, I don’t know how to be, I don’t know who to trust, and I can’t trust what I did trust or where I thought we were before. Everything unraveled last week. I wish I need not speak. I wish I could just sleep and stop it all.
I will try to go forward thankful. I will ask thankfulness for another day, to learn to thank our God for revealing His loving kindness in the tiny little helps of each day and pray to notice and see them not just the mess in my head. I will try to work to make something beautiful – even just draw, colour, sew, write to my family and my closest friends who mean so much to me simply by still somehow being here.
Somehow this moment will pass but good will remain. I’m trying to believe.
This has been a very odd week. Â At the beginning I was very distressed by ongoing problems from my old job. Having tried not to judge my old employer or make assumptions or blame them, Â things that have happened now leave me in no doubt they are covering up what happened, lying about me and what happened whilst basically telling me I’m lying, and discrimination, bullying and harassment is going on, worse still, still affecting people who still work there.
I felt anger I’ve never felt before and determination not to let this rest. Also extreme hurt, very alone because two people who I thought I could count on for help have in the case of one apparently cut off contact and in the case of the other, Â he seems to think I should just be able to ‘let it go’ and let them get away with it. He doesn’t think it was that bad.
Again I was hurt beyond what I could cope with. And the obsessional thoughts about being worthless and everyone knows it and I deserve to be alone, went wild. Then a friend cancelled a meet up I had been so ridiculously desperately holding on n to. And I was going to thousands of pieces and hating my childish self for it.
But then Tuesday night I became very ill physically from my ongoing gynaecological problems (endometriosis etc). I blacked out and was very unwell. On calling the out of hours GP I was told to go straight to A&E. So off I went. I won’t bore you with the whole story but Tuesday night to Wednesday lunchtime I was in hospital with a lot of pain, sickness and lovely things you certainly don’t really want to picture 🙂 !
Anyway, before slipping into the realms of distinctly too much information… My friend’s mum brought me home Wednesday lunch time. She was so kind to me and stayed with me whilst I washed and changed and got settled to make sure I was safe. She even swept the leaves away from my door where they’d blown in strong winds overnight. She was so so caring. She did so much beyond what I’d ask or imagine, to look after me when I was that unwell. I have a very good friend more than I knew!
So amidst these horrible days, that was a gift.
Also, the physical pain and shock somehow flung me away from the internal mess that was going on with all my feelings at the start of the week. Since then I’ve been so tired I’m not very sure what I’m feeling. I’m mixed up.
Tomorrow I’m back at work. Fortunately I only missed one day as Thursday was my day off and I don’t work Fridays as I have my therapy. I’m hoping I’ll cope okay, mentally and physically.
Ginny xx
This is a theme I want to come back to in a longer post. I have been meaning to write something on this for a long time. For now, a very quick question, if I may.
As well as my mental health problems, I suffer with fibromyalgia, endometriosis, chronic back pain following an injury, some degree of hypermobility and potentially now a nerve pain condition as well.
I have noticed from therapy and support groups I have attended that pain conditions and joint conditions seem to be suffered by lots of people with personality disorders, PTSD / complex PTSD and/or who have suffered abuse (often in childhood). Certainly in a group I participate in at the moment, I think a higher percentage of us suffer these physical problems than you would expect to find in a random sample of the general population, if that makes sense. I have also read a couple of articles on this theme recently.
I don’t want to push people to disclose something that feels too personal so please don’t feel any need to answer. I just wonder if anyone reading this also suffers pain conditions as well as mental health difficulties? And do you find any interaction between them eg when one is worse, another also is? Or do you feel that psychological things you have suffered have had a physical impact as well as an emotional one? If anyone did want to exchange thoughts on this I’d be really interested.
Ginny xx
Dignity Beyond Trauma 