Have you ever felt like you were broken goods because you experience pain? Have the things your medical professionals told you made you feel fragile like a china doll? I know I have been there. Can we take a moment and talk about how wrong all this is?
If I may, I’d like to start with a look at how I felt at the height of my pain years.
With a pain journey spanning twenty years, lots of thoughts spring into my mind about how broken and fragile I felt. Maybe you can relate to some of these thoughts.
1. I thought my body was so weak it couldn’t hold the bones of my pelvis in place. One wrong move and things would fall out of place.
2. I thought no one would love me because I couldn’t do a lot of things because I might hurt myself further.
3. I thought my spine was fragile and prone to damage, so I moved so very carefully. contract y core, move and stand tall, bend at the waist, don’t round my back. I moved like a damn robot. I worried about every movement.
4. I couldn’t go out with my friends, I wasn’t whole enough, strong enough, enough enough… they moved on without me in many cases. Sometimes I went along hoping to feel normal but ended up in more pain thinking about all the damage I had caused myself.
5. So many stories of muscle weakness and imbalance. I wondered what was wrong with me that no matter how hard I worked out I was always told my pain was from weakness or this imbalance that no one could really explain why it didn’t get better or more balanced with target exercise. I felt like my body was wrong and didn’t do what it should.
6. I couldn’t handle the pain. I wanted to die some days. I felt emotionally weak. Like somehow I should be able to handle it all. It made me feel less than to think my only way out of pain was to end it all.
7. ” This is one of the worst cases of SIJD I have ever seen” said by a proclaimed SIJ specialist. I really was as bad as I felt. I was so concerned I was beyond repair. Beyond help. Beyond hope. Those words did not comfort or validate me, they scared me more. It’s right up there with when a Dr calls your case “interesting”.
8. I felt like the worst mother in the known universe. As much as I wanted to be the Pinterest Mom BEFORE Pinterest was even a thing, I couldn’t. I failed to meet my own expectations day in and day out. Somedays, my pain was so bad the sound of my daughter’s voice made me want to end her life. It tore through me like a bolt of lightning. I was left feeling broken.
9. I couldn’t work. I gave up even volunteering. I wasn’t contributing or participating in my life anymore. I was existing from pain med to pain med and physical therapy session to physical therapy session. I didn’t even feel human anymore. I didn’t understand what I had done to deserve this pain, this never-ending, unsolvable pain that no one could help me with.
I felt alone, weak, fragile, and unhelp-able.
Have you felt these things? Are you merely waking up to wait to fall asleep again? Has the joy and the breath and the hope left you? If it has, know you are not alone. So many in chronic pain feel that way.
The truth is all those things I listed were lies.
You are not weak. you are not unhelpable, you are not alone, and you are not fragile. You have been given a crazy resilient body that is not easily broken. You will not snap in half if you move. Your spine is meant to twist and bend and do all kinds of things.
Pain is not weakness. Pain is not who you are.
Pain is trying to get your attention. Let’s get that sorted together ok.
Join me in my Facebook group and let’s feel stronger, more resilient, and unbreakable together. Introduce yourself and tell me how you feel.
