Pain flares, they drove me up a freaking wall and made me crazy during my journey through pain. I would find a groove with my pain and think I had things under control and then one day BAM, my pain would spike and I would lose my mind, my hope, and my will to keep going. In short pain flares suck.
One of the most memorable pain flares I had was after surgery. I had been progressing slowly and was ready to try going out and seeing people. So I went to our small group bible study. I did nothing but sit. I figured it would be a nice night out, doing something I enjoyed, with people I liked, and it was. The next day my SI joint was on fire, my pelvis felt heavy, my legs burned, and I couldn’t sit. It was horrible! All I did was SIT for goodness sake!
I drove myself crazy trying to figure out what I had done to hurt myself, to deserve this intense mind-numbing pain and pressure that was derailing my hope. I was determined to figure it out so that it never happened again.
Things got really crazy in my head during a bad pain flare. The “pain fog,” as I like to call it, would be in full effect and vastly limit my intellectual capabilities. My attention span and patience were nonexistent. Every day of a pain flare presented challenges, a wide range of emotions, limitations, and seemingly endless frustrations that many with chronic pain have to deal with regularly. In short, it derailed my hope and my ability to see that I was getting better. It was hard to see anything positive.
That Bible study was 8 years ago. I’ve learned a lot since then, but I can still feel how crazy-making that increase in my pain was. I want to share 10 things I’ve learned about pain flares during my 20-year journey with pain. My hope is these truths will help you feel a little less alone and a little less crazy. Because you aren’t crazy and it’s not your fault.
- Pain Flares are really hard to predict
I wish I could tell you if you write things down you will find a pattern for every flare. The reality is it may be helpful for some of the pain flares, but really, pain is SO multifactorial, it will be hard to track. Because pain is a response to ALL the things that enter the nervous system, no 2 days are the same. It’s ok that they sneak upon you and that you don’t know when they are coming. No one really does, so you are not alone.
2. They last for random amounts of time
Sometimes my increase in pain seemed to last for weeks and weeks, other times it would last a few hours or a day. It made me so angry that I had no idea when I would return to my normal. I had learned to handle my regular pain, but the pain flares. nope. Never really learned to cope with those. Believe me, the randomness drove me insane.
3. It WILL end
Hindsight is always 20/20 and I can promise you, the flares end and you can and will return to your baseline. I am sure you want to know what the magic wand fix is to stop the flare. Wish I could tell you. It was different every time. Hang on though, it will end. Keep telling yourself, it will end!
4. Stop squirreling your meds away: USE them!
Please tell me I’m not the only one that did this. The waiting until life was excruciating and I was ready to take my own life because of the pain to use my meds. Let’s be frank, getting the meds is a whole different blog post. It’s hard and costs us emotional energy and a lot of other things. THAT is all true. HOWEVER, if you are hurting you SHOULD use your meds. That’s what they are there for. It’s why the doc gave them to you. So please, use them. Decrease your suffering. Quiet the crazy in the brain. Ease the stresses. Take the meds.
5. You are not being punished
Do you spend time thinking you’re being punished for past transgressions? That this is a cosmic punishment for something you did earlier in your life. I spent too much time thinking this was the thorn in my side like Paul from the new testament. That it was given to me by God to make memoir dependent on Him, that it was my fault I wasn’t more faithful. That it was punishment for enjoying sex with the man that was sexually abusing me. I did an insane amount of mental gymnastics to explain the reason I had pain. If you are doing this, I implore you, to stop. Please stop tormenting yourself. You are not being punished. You didn’t deserve this. Pain happens. as do flares.
6. Be gentle with yourself
I cried, a lot. Flare-ups made me even more temperamental, irrational, emotional, and hopeless. I felt helpless to do anything about it and the pain would wear on me. Being isolated, and lacking people in my extroverted life was like a slow suicide. My ability to cope was slipping away with every flare. My home, which I loved, became a prison. I was angry and I didn’t even realize it.
I wanted more, expected more, and wasn’t very kind with the way I spoke to myself in my own head. If anyone else had heard the things I said to myself in my head, any sane being would have told me to be kinder to myself. So I am telling you, be kind. If you wouldn’t let someone talk to a friend of yours like that, you shouldn’t talk to yourself like that! Be kind to yourself. You really are doing the best you can. Give yourself the grace you give others.
7. Sometimes it’s so bad it really is hard to move
There were days it was all I could do to keep breathing. I am not sure anyone who hasn’t been in pain understands that, but I know you do. There were days that all I could really do was lay in bed, cry and remind myself to keep breathing. It increased my fear of movement and I didn’t even realize it. But the reality is, it did. If I’d practiced being gentle with myself, those days might have been easier. Sometimes doing the best we can means laying in bed and breathing.
8. Analyzing every single thing you did isn’t always helpful
In panic and fear, I can be a terrific over-thinker. Like amazing at overthinking and overanalyzing. In my desire to NEVER have another flare happen again, I would consider every move I ever made before the flare and add to my list of “things not to do”. I also noticed the more I thought about all the things I couldn’t do and all the ways I could have injured myself and what I could have done to create more pain… well it seemed to increase my pain.
9. It’s ok to be overwhelmed
Pain IS overwhelming. I felt all fuzzy and crazy and unable to handle one more thing. Your brain changes with pain. Your nervous system is overwhelmed in pain. Changes happen, they are real. Repeat after me, IT”S OK TO BE OVERWHELMED.
10. Pain Flares don’t necessarily mean damage
This was the hardest one to wrap my head around. Realizing that the pain was just that pain, not damage. More pain didn’t mean more damage, but it did indicate that I needed to make some changes. By changing the way I moved, thought, and lived, I began to get a better handle on my flares and my pain. You can too!
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