While science has made tremendous advancements in our lifetime, many people still have difficulty finding diagnoses for strange pains in the body. So often, when talking with clients, they complain that they don’t feel heard by their primary care or chronic pain physician when struggling to find answers for their discomfort. They’ve usually heard things like:
“The tests are negative, so there must be something mentally wrong.”
“There is no physical reason for you to have migraine headaches. What are you stressed about?”
“Depression and pain go together, so you probably are just depressed.”
“There is nothing physically wrong that we can find—it’s probably all in your head.”
Feeling very discouraged and frustrated, my clients have gone through so many hoops and practitioners only to continue to feel misunderstood and dismissed. If this has been your experience, I’m so sorry, but also, read on.
Fibromyalgia can be a part of the picture
For most people seeking answers to their chronic pain, it often takes a substantial amount of time to receive an accurate pain-related diagnosis, compounded by the fact that fibromyalgia is still a poorly understood condition.
There are a host of concerns that can contribute to pain related to fibromyalgia, with root issues stemming from genetics, poor sleep, headache, nutrition, and impaired movement. It’s also common for fibromyalgia to have overlapping issues, like lower back pain, migraine headache, and irritable bowel syndrome. In fact, it seems the majority of people who deal with long-term pain have more than one diagnosis.
Knowing this, it seems that a focus on helping people to heal from FM pain must center on the care of the entire person, not just one specific diagnosis. Everything in the body is connected with everything else! One important aspect of treatment is a core focus on developing a body and brain that are resistant to pain.
Trauma is often part of the fibromyalgia picture
Unfortunately, I’ve found that people who have unresolved mental-emotional trauma have issues with pain more frequently, and with more severity.
Helping people to understand traumatic events and how these life events may still have a negative impact on our life is instrumental to moving the healing process forward. These previous, traumatic experiences can range from a significant traffic accident, to experiencing financial hardship, to having a detrimental health condition that’s placed the body in a state of fight-or-flight that it can’t release from – lets’ focus on what that means.
Why does trauma have such an impact on our perception of pain?
Both our bodies and brains have a goal of protection. Someone who has dealt with unresolved trauma tends to have a brain and body that remain in a “fight, freeze, or flight” response. It is unreasonable to think that this can be a sustainable way to manage the trauma, so they tend to “stuff” the emotion and try to bury it deep in the back recesses of our brain in an effort at avoiding the pain and protecting the self. If the patient hasn’t worked through their trauma, the body will store that experience until they do. This is why the health of both body AND mind is so critical to human beings.
Research confirms that people who are suffering from fibromyalgia are particularly prone to these types of trauma avoidance, also known as “disassociation.”
There’s a reason for it; direct avoidance of pain is an important evolutionary survival mechanism. As pain is a sign of threat to the body, we are primed to learn what causes it and to withdraw as quickly as we can to prevent further damage.
For those of us with younger, more elastic bodies, this avoidance method works well with acute pain (avoidance of a hot stove or iron) but unfortunately fails miserably when pain is chronic. If perpetuated, a habit of avoidance sets in, as it may seem safer for a person to avoid something that might be painful and dangerous than to test it out, making us always on constant protective alert. Soon, this powerful alert signal rarely (if ever!) gets turned off, keeping us in a constant state of alarm and chronic, long standing pain.
Where to go from here?
If that sounds like your experience, don’t be discouraged. First plan of action; Any adult suffering from chronic pain should be working with a comprehensive team of healthcare providers in a concentrated effort to take their lives back from pain. But most importantly, this team of providers must acknowledge the role that each person must play in their own healing; a pill won’t make these issues go away. Make sure at least one provider on that team is equipped to explore the role that the stressors of the past played in the symptoms of today.
In closing, the important thing to take away from this is to remember that any care for chronic pain must see the body as a whole, physically, emotionally, spiritually and in all other ways. Instead of avoiding situations that might be painful, the idea of progressive relaxation and allowing one to feel the negative emotion while the body is safe and relaxed allows the body to better communicate, and can be a very useful tool in eventually overcoming that pain.
If you or a loved one is dealing with fibromyalgia, or another chronic pain condition, and have experienced trauma, know that you’re not alone. It’s ok to ask for help! At Body and Mind, we have a variety of tools available to promote the healing of chronic pain, including sleep restoration, fitness and wellness, massage, hypnosis, and much more. Together, we can help you find relief.
