Blogging the last two posts has triggered unbelievable pain. I can't breathe. I want to die.

Addendum
Three-and-a-half hours and 65mg of morphine. That's what it's taken for me to get from the lounge to the bedroom. Not to be pain-free - that still hasn't happened - but just to be able to get up and go to bed.


Addendum 2
Awake till 5am in terrible pain and battling terror and flashbacks. I'm drowning in memories, none of them good.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Frightening truth

The therapist told me today that the sexual abuse I suffered as a child was made much worse and much more damaging by the neglect I'd already experienced.

I was desperate for the love and attention I couldn't get from my mother, and then my father came along and exploited that, giving me the very worst kind of 'attention'.

And that terrible attention was all I got. No wonder, years later when I thought my parents were going to divorce, I decided I'd rather live with my dad. I'd already blocked out the worst of what he'd done to me - the sexual stuff - but the threat of violence persisted and he continued to beat me down mentally.

He terrified me, but at least he 'saw' me. At least I felt like I was 'there' with him; with her, I felt like a ghost, an invisible cloud that would be forever overlooked.

It tells you something, that I would choose fear and ridicule, emotional battery and explosive rage, over the blank nothingness of indifference.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

Therapy meltdown

It was an incredibly difficult therapy appointment today - by far the hardest and the worst. And I'm aware that I've been 'medicating' ever since, mostly with food.

I've eaten probably twice as many calories as I normally would, as well as taking morphine for pain levels that I would usually manage mentally. But I feel so fragile after the appointment that I have no strength whatsoever to stand up to the pain on my own.

The appointment was going fine till about halfway through, when I mentioned that the neck pressure symptoms seem to have changed. Rather than the usual screwdriver-in-the-eye sensation, for the past few days, I've been getting a tight band of pain across my forehead.

The therapist asked what I thought that might represent; I couldn't answer, and she asked if perhaps it might be someone's hand on my head. I suddenly went all hot and shakey and started to cry. I said that it hadn't occurred to me, but based on how I felt at hearing her say that, I guess the answer is yes.

Then I totally went to pieces. I was having terrible flashbacks right there, of my father physically restraining me by holding my head down against the pillow. I don't think I can adequately describe the horror of it. It was visceral, I couldn't speak, I was in floods of tears and all I wanted was to get up and run away. In that moment I hated the therapist for taking me to that point.

Most of the rest of the appointment was me just sitting there shaking and crying. She said that when you're being abused, often the brain redirects attention to a different part of the body, so you're not aware of what's really happening.

I guess that must be it; I've never had any memories of being held like that before (it was always being pushed down by the chest), but the severity of my own reaction leaves me in no doubt of the veracity of it. And it's not like she suggested the images or feelings that swept over me.

And although I've spent all afternoon medicating the feelings, at least I'm not actually having to feel them.

When the appointment finally came to an end, it just slipped out: 'Thank God, I've been wanting to run away for the past half an hour'. I felt really rude afterwards - she's trying to help me after all - but I can't tell you the effort it took to stay in that goddam room. She said I did really well to stay there (and I did apologise).

I'm terrified now about what's going to come up next; every time you think you've remembered everything, something else comes up.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

I'm having a hideous night, with zero chance of getting any sleep.

The pain started to spike just as I was settling down for the night. Like so many times in the past, it went from zero to a hundred in no-seconds-flat. One minute I was fine, the next, I couldn't breathe for the pain.

It was both my shoulder and the neck pressure, and it was excruciating. I tried looking behind it and found that the blankness from earlier on had gone, but I couldn't really tell what was in its place.

I took 20mg top-up morphine; an hour later the pain was still rising, so I took another 20. Normally I would only take 10, but the pain was so bad, and the meds have been so ineffective today, that I knew that wouldn't be enough. Still, it did nothing. Then 40 minutes later my world exploded in terror.

I'd kept looking in on behind the pain, and I knew it was fear there, but I couldn't get any more than that, and the pain was so bad, I couldn't even begin to address it. I still couldn't even breathe.

Then suddenly I'm in the midst of a child's terror, the like of which most adults would be glad to have forgotten. There aren't really words for the depth of the fear that suddenly swept over me. As endless as the sadness was this morning, the fear was easily as bad. I was sobbing with terror, shaking, utterly consumed by it.

The child this time was slightly older again than the 'sad' one - there were more words, and a more developed interpretation of the situation. But still very very young: under two, I'm sure.

All that filled my head was 'monsters' and 'scared in the dark', 'mummy don't leave me', 'mummy help' - begging and pleading with her to come and save me. I could sense that small child lying in the dark, terrified, crying and crying for someone to come, and no-one ever coming. At one point, I sensed my mother having been there, and then leaving - not able to interpret her child's cry as one of sheer terror.

This 'panic attack' went on for what seemed like forever. I was powerless to stop it; I couldn't help the terrified child in me, because of the incredible pain my brain was creating for exactly that reason - to distract me from the feelings. It was awful. every time I tried to do anything about the feelings, the pain exploded just a little bit more.

Eventually, gradually, telling myself I was safe, 'I've got you', 'there are no monsters', etc, I managed to calm down, to calm that child down. When I finally had her convinced she was safe, the pain stopped.

Since then I've had a burst of anger - resolved through thumb sucking - and repeated waves of fear. I got up to get something to eat and had to constantly chant to myself that I was safe, just to go into the kitchen.

Right now (two hours after the initial terror), the pain is ramping up again. Which probably means more panic some time soon. And there's absolutely nothing I can do to stop it.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

It might sound weird, but I actually found myself feeling grateful to the pain today, because I never would've addressed any of this without it, because I didn't know it was there.

I know it affects every part of my life though, and it would be so nice to not have to go through life constantly riddled with misdirected anger and resentment.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone

The pain, the 'baby' and me

So, how do I connect with this 'pre-speech baby' part of me that's behind the pain? The therapist and I talked about using touch, but what else?

Well, I'm finding that just stroking my own skin can be quite soothing, on the hand and wrist. The palm of my hand and the inside of my wrist (i.e. just below the pam) is particularly sensitive, and hence effective.

I also have a small teddy bear that my best friend gave me last year when she came to visit; it has very soft fur, and I find gently rubbing that around my face, especially the cheeks and lips, is comforting. Because of the softness of the fur, the teddy is more comforting than just my hand, so that tends to be the next step up in soothing that 'baby'. And I talk to 'her'; I find that constantly reassuring her that she's safe, is effective - 'You're OK, I've got you', that kind of thing. The kind of thing that no-one ever told me in my whole childhood.

The soothing and comforting is really the easy part, though - it's the anger that's the hardest to address. I spent quite a lot of time yesterday thinking about how a small baby might express anger. I wanted to kick and thrash and flail about like a toddler having a tantrum; I think it would work, but it would be just too painful, so that's no good. I could try screaming, but it doesn't feel like that would be very effective. It's always worked fairly well for venting my adult anger (or rather, the anger I feel that I now realise is actually rooted in the feelings of that tiny child), but it doesn't feel right for this.

I tried scratching at things, but that didn't help. I thought about 'stabbing' at something with my finger, but that didn't feel right either.I tried making 'baby screaming' noises - the sort of 'mewling' scream that babies do - it felt better than the last two, but not right. The only other thing I could think of that I did as a baby, was suck my thumb. That didn't seem likely, because you do it to comfort yourself, but I tried it anyway. And it worked! Bizarrely, agressively sucking my thumb seemed to serve to vent the anger, though I don't really understand why.

But all day yesterday, when the pain spiked and I sensed anger behind it, I sucked at my thumb, and each time it worked - it reduced the density of the pain, till it stopped all together. In fact, having been stuck in bed all afternoon in agony, with none of the medication working, as soon as I hit on the thumb sucking, I was able to get up. I followed the thumb sucking with soothing touch, when the anger had eased, and it actually left me feeling quite sleepy and relaxed. And not in pain.

Of course all of this is only any good when I'm at home on my own. It takes enormous concentration and a lot of time; it's no good when there are other people around, or when I'm having to concentrate on other things (e.g. walking!).

The reason I was stuck in bed at all was that I'd tried going into town for a couple of things; I knew when I did it that the pain was likely to flare badly, but I didn't want to be a prisoner to the pain, so I decided to do it anyway. I had to queue for about 10 minutes in the first shop, and nearly ended up collapsing on the floor. There followed over an hour stuck in a nearby coffee shop, waiting for the pills to go down enough to move. None of the mental stuff was of any use in these circumstances; I couldn't concentrate enough with people around, unable to lie down or even sit really comfortably. So it's only any good at home, for now at least.

Today, I tried going out to Tesco to get the rest of the stuff I couldn't get yesterday. Once again, it felt like things were going to flare up, but I had to go. As expected, it was a bad trip; I got everything and made it home, but it was a close call, and I was then stuck for several hours. What was behind the pain this time was different though.

Yesterday, it had been anger - an enormous, inexpressible, mute anger. Today there was just sadness and loneliness. The depth of the sadness shocked me though - it was just this unfathomable, bottomless sadness.It felt like it went on forever. Interestingly, the 'me' that was feeling this sadness was slightly older; there was language now - not big or complex, but words nontheless. And the really heart-wrenchingly sad thing was that this 'me' - slightly older, but still unmistakeably a baby - has given up on being held or comforted or loved. That was what struck me the most - the sense of defeat. That there was no point hoping for someone to come, because they never would. And she actually doesn't believe that it's real - that there's suddenly someone there who does care.

Every time I tried to 'comfort' this version of myself, I broke down. That awful sadness just hurt so so much, I couldn't bear it. I couldn't bear it - as an adult; how was a baby supposed to deal with it? I spent most of the morning in a cycle of the pain spiking, looking 'behind' it and finding this sadness, being overwhelmed by it and crying my heart out, then calming down for a bit, then the whole thing starting all over again. I couldn't stay with those feeings for very long, because they were just too enormous and too painful. So painful, in fact that later on, after the Tesco trip, when the pain started spiking again and I tried to look 'behind' it and see what was going on, there was nothing. It was blank, completely blank and empty, like everything had shut down.

Initially I thought it was that the 'baby' had shut down, because it was all so painful, but then I wondered if actually it was 'me'. If the adult me just couldn't bear to feel that sadness any more, because it hurt too much, and so I was stopping myself even feeling it.

That sort of thing has happened before, in therapy-type situations. I'll be dealing with incredibly intense feelings and then my mind clearly decides it's all just too much, and it switches everything off. It's quite scary, because you go from being awash with emotions, to feeling competely numb. This is different, because I'm feeling normal emotions just fine, but that well-spring of emotions behind the pain is blank. I'm going to have to talk to the therapist about what it means, and what I should do next.

Parasitic psychological pain

Over the past few weeks, my conviction that the pain is psychological has been utterly cemented. I now have absolutely no doubt that it is.

That certainty comes from the way the pain has been responding to the enormous amount of psychological work I've been doing (It's pretty much my full-time job now).

I've had a number of good pain days as a direct consequence of psychological revelations, or in response to things I've tried, like mantras or affirmations.

It's obviously a good thing that I now know this, and it means I'm doing entirely the right thing concentrating on therapy. But it gives me an idea of how hard it's going to be to rid myself of the pain (and the therapist told me today she doesn't think it will ever stop, which really upset me, but I'm choosing not to accept or believe that).

I'm already finding this process incredibly hard. It's the shift from a good day, back to a bad one that undoes me.

When you get a good day, you have to commit to it, or you just 'think' yourself into pain. But with 'committing' to the day - getting on and doing things, trying to enjoy the respite - comes the inevitable hope-slash-expectation that things are going to stay better. Then when they don't - when the next day is crap again - you crash again. And the disappointment hits you harder each time.

Yesterday it was so bad, I was on the verge of quitting therapy. It would be so much less distressing to go back to pain-every-day, then to have to cope with this constant hope-disappointment-hope-disappointment cycle. I desperately want the pain to stop, but this mid-way point is unbearable.

Luckily, so far I've always managed to pick myself back up again after the disappointments, but I don't know how long I'll be able to do that.

The other development in the field of pain-as-physical-manifestation-of-emotional-pain, is that I'm increasingly seeing the pain as something separate to myself, something almost parasitic in nature.

This is because of the way I've watched it shift, over and over. Every time I start to get a handle on the pain, it starts to fight back. It's like it knows I'm trying to oust it, and it wants to protect itself, and it does that by attacking me.

Looking back, I can see endless examples of this before I was aware of it. Like the way the pain has always ramped up to match the amount of medication I take, however much that is. Or the way it got worse again as soon as I started doing more, like swimming and so on, a couple of years ago.

What I need to do, is to make the pain redundant by addressing the issues that it's trying to mask from me (see the previous post). I have to make it so that my brain doesn't have any need to hide from scary, awful, difficult feelings, because I've already dealt with them head-on.

That's my 'job' at the moment, and it's taking every once of concentration and energy I can find.

Posted from Blogium for iPhone