My Journey through Chronic Pain pt.1

‘I want to rip my head off to make this pain stop.’

It’s time to get real. This is what I experience sometimes. After days and days of constant pain, of having to go through all the motions of living and surviving that we all do, but doing it through this incessant pain. In some moments, I just want to rip my head off and make this pain stop. It’s a thought/experience that comes up in me. I know that I can’t actually ‘rip my head off’ and that in the sense of that meaning that I would be dead, I know that’s no solution either. But that is the experience that comes up in me.

I’ve been afraid to share about what I’ve been going through and what I experience because I have feared being judged or misunderstood or blamed for what I’m experiencing. Because I have encountered that, from others who haven’t experienced something like this. But the only reason that's affecting me is cause I haven't yet sorted out my own relationship to my experience. I want to face the world and what may come and be a part of the solution that brings forth understanding, acceptance, and support, but first I have to face my inner world and bring forth that understanding, acceptance, and support in myself. Things that are so badly missing in this world, and so many of us suffer alone, and nothing gets solved by that. I don’t want to be another story of how no one knew what I was really going through until after I was gone, I don’t want to be remembered that way, with regret, and just be another 'silent sufferer', while there are probably so many of us going through this and feeling alone.

So I’m going to share my experience, and what I’m dealing with, and how I'm sorting through it. Cause this is a hard path to walk, and I don’t want anyone to go through this alone. And I don’t want to go through it alone. I can’t. I couldn’t really keep it from anyone in my immediate reality since it really severely manifested around December of 2015, (although it has it's roots from an injury when I was 11 and have been suffering symptoms since then, with further added injuries and factors over the years), as much as I tried to not ‘burden anybody’. I can’t even keep it from my cat, who comes to be with me in times where the pain is bad. She’s here right now, giving me a wink like she’s saying ‘I’m here for you kid’.

I can't go through it alone and I don't have to. There is support out there and right here in my home as a partner who is willing to support, but it starts with supporting myself first and foremost to even 'get out of my own way' to allow myself to accept and reach out for support.

Everything starts with self, so I've got to start with sorting out my own relationship to my experience as that is why I'm 'affected' or 'bothered by' or 'afraid of' what others might think or how they might react. I've got to face my inner world in order to change the 'outer'.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear talking about my experience with chronic pain.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear exposing that I experience chronic pain.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to avoid exposing and talking about my experience with chronic pain because I fear to be judged and misunderstood, which will make me feel uncomfortable and stressed, which will only add to my pain and discomfort.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want to avoid talking/sharing about my chronic pain because I am actually trying to avoid the experience of stress and discomfort that I experience when I feel like I am being judged and misunderstood.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to want to avoid talking/sharing about my chronic pain in an attempt to control how others see me, which is really me trying to control how I see myself, within my own judgment and misunderstanding.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to keep my experience to myself within the excuse/justification that I ‘don’t want to be a burden’ to others.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to see sharing about pain or an unpleasant experience as being a ‘burden’.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to see experiencing chronic pain as a ‘burden’ or needing or getting assistance from others as being a ‘burden’.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to avoid asking for assistance from my partner out of fear of them seeing me as a burden.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to define my chronic pain experience as a ‘burden’.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to believe that I’m trying to avoid being a burden to others by not talking about my chronic pain or asking for help/assistance with my chronic pain, when really I am trying to avoid my own discomfort and self judgment toward myself, because what I experience when sharing about it with others is feeling inferior, feeling indebted, feeling dependent, feeling ashamed, feeling embarrassed, feeling weak, feeling like a failure, feeling broken, feeling washed up, feeling needy, and so I am really trying to avoid all of this that I am experiencing within myself that I am projecting onto the experience of talking/sharing about my experience and asking for/needed help and assistance.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to judge needing help from others.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to fear that if I ask for help from someone but then it doesn’t help and I’m still in pain, that it was a ‘mistake’ to ask for help and I have in some way ‘cost’ them something or done something ‘wrong’ and they will resent me for it.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to believe that I must somehow ‘know’ what is going to help or not help before trying it.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to realize that by trying to avoid burdening others, I’m actually keeping myself from getting support that might help make me be more functional and thus able to give more of/from myself, and therefore by trying to avoid ‘taking’ from others, I’m actually still ‘taking from others’ in a sense by not supporting myself to be as functional and effective as I could be.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to take my chronic pain personally as if it’s ‘all my fault’ or it’s ‘all on me’ to walk with this alone and not be a ‘burden to others’.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to compare myself to others who don’t experience chronic pain, and believe that I should be able to live up to those same expectations or capacity of someone without chronic pain, because apparently it’s ‘wrong’ to be experiencing chronic pain, or ‘not normal’, or ‘there’s something wrong with me’.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to compare myself to anyone for any reason from the starting point of believing I must be able to match what anyone else can do, as if we are all the same, and should be capable of the same things, as if there is some ‘standard’ way to be.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to really see/realize/understand that we are not comparable in that sense, that we all have different capabilities and capacities and it makes no sense to compare those to each other within a point of expectation of being able to match, or from/within a starting point of inferiority/superiority, as we simply do not exist equal in our abilities.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to blame my chronic pain experience for keeping me from doing as much as I would like to do.

I forgive myself that I've accepted and allowed myself to have an idea of ‘how much I’d like to be doing’, instead of just being here and doing what I can in each and every moment and being satisfied with that, and not comparing what I’m doing to some idea that doesn’t really exist.

I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to focus more on how my experience with chronic pain has been a support, as I do see many ways in which it has been and does support me.

I commit myself to focus more on how my experience with chronic pain is a point of support.

I commit myself to work on asking for and accepting assistance and support from others.

I commit myself to continue using writing and self forgiveness as a tool to work through my relationship toward my experience with chronic pain.

See you in the next post..

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