#I don’t have a new medical issue or chronic pain or anything. Body just hated me today

[endren]

.

[justyourtypicalwriter]

I just saw the post SERVICE DOGS HCS PLEASEEE !!!

HERE WE GO GANG! These are the one's I have so far! Feel free to suggest recs for any characters or disabilities y'all wanna see! (feel free to rec it even if it's for a character on the list)

STAN:

Service Dog: Brown Newfoundland, Delta (F)

Psychiatric Alert & Response Dog

Disabilitie(s): Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Minor Psychosis 

The hair dye oh my god. He can rarely drag himself out of bed during depressive episodes but occasionally he’ll get a random burst of impulsivity and re-dye his hair. Most of the time he does the same shitty job at bleaching it blonde

“DARLING! GUESS WHO’S BACK FROM THE PSYCH WARD” vibes

Sharon and Randy officially divorced when he was fifteen. He got a little better now that there isn’t constant screaming or the threat of a drunk or high Randy doing something stupid

Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a total mess-

Patched his relationship with Shelly

Misdiagnosis club AND public breakdown club

God his entire aura just radiates LOSER energy but he’s somehow insanely popular

Not cousins with Craig & Red in this AU but their parents are insanely close so they hang out a lot

CRAIG:

Service Dog: Irish Setter, Saturn (M)

Medical Alert & Response Dog

Disabilitie(s): Epilepsy

Lowkey autistic but Saturn isn’t task trained for anything related to that

Goes non-verbal at times but it’s pretty spontaneous. Most people outside his group can’t tell if he’s actually non-verbal or just not talking to fuck with everyone

Peru drama was secretly worked out when they were twelve. Craig was hospitalized for a while when they were running tests to get a diagnosis, it was roughly a month long stay. He told Stan he’d call it even if Stan looked after Stripe until he was out. Tweek was away for the summer and he knew Stan wouldn’t let anything happen to her since he’s a massive animal lover

Gotta maintain the bitch personality 

TWEEK:

Service Dog: Doberman, Latte (M)

Psychiatric Alert & Response Dog

Disabilitie(s): Chronic Anxiety,

“Ah fuck, the magic school bus is waiting outside to take me back to rehab-”

I kid you not, he was absolutely terrified of Latte when he first got him

Which is funny because Latte is the sweetest goddamn thing, not at all like Fable whose a fucking demon shit

CPS was called on his parents right before senior year

Placed with the Broflovski’s so he and Kyle got closer

Public breakdown club

BUTTERS:

Service Dog: Boxer, Haven (F)

Psychiatric Alert & Response Dog

Disabilities: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Depression

Public breakdown club (IN DEVELOPMENT)

KYLE:

Service Dog: Black Giant Schnauzer, Noble (M)

Medical & Psychiatric Alert & Response Dog

Disabilities: Diabetes, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder (ARFID)[This one might be switched]

Tubie Kyle (I fucking LOVE this one)

For once I give Kyle an ED that doesn’t stem from body image issues

Humancentipad trauma bc I love being problematic about the episode

DESPISES his lows because it means he has to eat something

Also goes non-verbal but only during times of high stress

Noble is a program dog. Kyle got him when he was 14 and initially he was so against it. He wants to function independently but he really fucking can’t. As he grows older he learns to accept the help more

HATES mirrors. The Humancentipad incident left him with scars

Public breakdown club

KENNY:

Service Dog: Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Harbor (M)

Medical Response & Mobility Aid Dog

Disabilities: Muscular Dystrophy, Chronic Pain

Regularly hospitalized, fucking dies, and revives the next day

DUMPSTER DOG<3333

He trained Harbor mostly by himself (Wendy, Tolkien, and Kyle pitched in a bit and bought him books on training techniques)

MOM FRIEND! Bro I just love making Kenny one of the parental figures of the group. He’s just got a bag of shit he carries around for both himself and everyone else. Stan forgot to swap his bandages? Boom, Kenny’s got new ones. Kyle’s sugar is low? Boom, he’s got whatever little snack the boy is able to tolerate. Someone needs a distraction? Medical episode causes them to need a vomit bag? Boom, done. Mom friend Kenny

So fucking ADHD

JIMMY:

Service Dog: Grey Great Dane, Kitty (F)

Mobility Aid Dog (IN DEVELOPMENT)

TOLKIEN:

Service Dog: Papillon, Jax (M) (IN DEVELOPMENT)

WENDY:

Service Dog: Black German Shepherd, Nike (F)

Psychiatric Alert & Response

Disabilities: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) (IN DEVELOPMENT)

CLYDE:

Service Dog: Husky, Fable (F) (IN DEVELOPMENT)

BEBE:

Service Dog: Golden Retriever, Bucky (M)

Medical Alert & Response Dog

Disabilities: Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

Misdiagnosis club

Went to multiple doctors from 13-15 who all told her it was all in her head

And she’s just sitting there like “bitch please, the only thing in my head is my girlfriend and how hot she is. Now tell me why I keep experiencing these symptoms-”

HEIDI:

Service Dog: Chocolate Labrador, Isa (F)

Psychiatric Alert & Response Dog

Disabilities: Autism Spectrum Disorder

Public breakdown club (IN DEVELOPMENT)

[yuhi-san]

Alright for trigun fanfiction appreciation week by @trigunfanfic I made a small fic record, though I might add more

In the meadow by @eomma-jpeg

Rating M

Tags: Milly has a Savior Complex, No Smut, Slow Burn, farm life, Knives Redemption, Hints at Vashmeryl, but I have other plans for them, POV Multiple, Post-Canon, Post-AnimeTrimax influences, Character Study, Panic Attacks, Social Anxiety, Mutual Pining, References to both Millywood and Vashwood

ngl I just opened it because I was starved for ‘post series knives needs to learn how to live with people’ content. I thought Millyknives was just a case of pairing the ‘leftovers’ but I figured the rest might bee good.

It is so, so good and also, not a case of pairing the leftovers (if you think you don’t care for millyknives, this story will probably convert you lol).

Its 98 trigun with some trimax and stampede elements (Roberto!!). its sweet, its funny, they have ups and downs and without wanting to spoil anything, I love how it does explore that a lot of knives hate for humans stems from fear.

All the original character are great, everyone gets their time to shine, vashmeryl are so cute and silly

Sinking sand by @rainflamestudio

Rating T

Tags: Angst with a Happy Ending, Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Medical Trauma, Found Family, Whump, Smoking, because Wolfwood is here, Trust Issues, Friendship, Mixed Canon, Alien Biology, Nick's dying but he walks it off, dadberto, Nick learns he has friends, Panic Attacks, Sensory Overload

We all love some hurt comfort for vash but this time its wolfwoods turn! he’ is not having a good time but cant ask for help either. Not that this is topping vash, meryl and Roberto from coming to his rescue and staying by his side no matter what.

Hot water by OpticalCrown

Rating G

Tags:   Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Chronic Pain, Character Analysis, Light Angst

A short story about sleeping arrangements, the things vash so desperately wants to hide but Roberto and Wolfwood notice anyway

 

New growth by @puffinpastry

Ongoing

Rating T

Tags: Alternate Universe - Post-Canon, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Millions Knives-centric (Trigun), Depression, Implied Mpreg, Mostly trimax with some tristamp for seasoning, Trans Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Trans Millions Knives (Trigun), Millions Knives domestication arc, Brief suicidal ideation, Knives gets to heal but hes got to confront his past first, Angst with a Happy Ending, past trans male pregnancy, Knives doesn't know how to interact with kids, Silly but its buried under all their issues, Hey knives what if you were confronted with the forgiveness of a small child?

Still ongoing but very good knives has to learn to live with people, specifically vash. its very well written, I love knives in this and the struggle he and vash both have, especially because vash cant just move ast what had happened, even though he kinda wishes he cold. cute kids, also bless wolfwood

The heaviness we’ve known  by @cosmictapestry

 Rating T

Tags: Heart-to-Heart, Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Hurt Vash the Stampede (Trigun), Vash the Stampede has Prosthetic Legs (Trigun), Caretaking, past Abuse, Past Child Abuse, Past Violence, Vash the Stampede's Scars (Trigun), Body Modification, Father-Son Relationship, Non-Sexual Intimacy, Episode Tag, Parent-Child Relationship, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Unresolved Tension, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Vash the Stampede Needs a Hug (Trigun)

Look, I love trisamp brad and his relationship to vash. he didn’t do right from the start but he cares so much and this one is just, oof. Goes deeper in the lost tech that keeps vash together and the pain he has from it and how little brad and others sometimes can do. Set after episode 9.

Ricochet by @heffawhump

Rating G

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Whump, Sick Character, Poisoning, Caretaking, Hidden Injury, BAMF!Meryl Stryfe, dad!berto, Fluff

Classic hurt comfort and sick character. Very well written, absolutely in love with the gang ready to kick anyones ass that wants vash harm. get them, meryl

Never understood a word by @aboxthecolourofheartache

Rating T

Tags: Road Trips, Introspection, Character Study, Developing Friendships, Trust Issues, Trust, Loneliness, Treasure Hunting, Brotherly Angst, Dysfunctional Family, POV Alternating, Developing Relationship, Emotional Manipulation, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, the inherent vulnerability of bringing someone to a favorite location, the inherent sanctity of natural places, eccentricity as plot device, Vulnerability, several instances of blink and you miss it Trimax-flavored Plant lore, Singing

Absolutely amazing story and character study about vash from the view of Roberto, meryl and Wolfwood. Love how it shows that there is so much rage and other emotions bubbling under vashs cheerful attitude because knives tormenting him one way or another is not so easily brusched of. But my favorite part might be that it also shows vashs silly and clumsy persona isn’t all fake either, rather it is an exaggeration of genuine traits he has. Also some really great Roberto rep!

Like Eden by @revenantpoet / @revenantghost

Also known as untitled E fic lol

Tags: Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Grief/Mourning, narrative poetry, Frottage, Vash the Stampede Has Plant-Like Genitalia (Trigun), Sexual Inexperience, First Time, They're so in love and they're stupid about it, Written as Vash being demi and Wolfwood being grey but, All I know is Vash is Wolfwood, sexual and Wolfwood is Vashsexual ok, Emotional Sex, Trauma, the usual Guilt, This was supposed to be a quick pwpIt is not, Canon Compliant

Look, I’m not usually one for poetry stile and it never occurred to me before to give it a try. It’s worth getting over the hang up though. It ready very nicely, like following Vash’s thoughts which fits soo well for the situation. Also we need more fics where they get some time after the sandsteamer disaster. And especially of vash getting the chance to show ww the geodome and for him to have a chance to be actually comforted after what happened to livio. It’s a really sweet one, though of course Wolfwood and vash cant make things too easy on themselves… communication is hard isn’t it boys

sorry if this looks all so messy, i have no idea how people have the nerve and patience to put thing togetehr nicely. I might do another list later in the week because there are so many lol

maybe a seperate E list, too (Like eden gets to be here because in my opinion it isn't really that much about the smut and its smal compared to everything else going on.)

[legendoftortor]

personal vent on family/health/body image discussions below

I’ve been dealing with some really debilitating stomach pain and issues with eating over the last few weeks; I’ve dealt with this on and off since I had covid in February but it doesn’t seem to be going away this time. As someone with like six different chronic illnesses, I hate when new symptoms crop up out of nowhere because it’s always so hard to pin down what exactly is causing it.

I literally can’t drink or eat anything without being in immense pain and dealing with other debilitating symptoms, so I’ve been avoiding eating/drinking anything aside from a few sips of water to take medication during my work days just so I can function as normally as possible and eating just enough at the weekends to try and make up for it. It’s not ideal and it’s meant that I’m flaring other conditions of mine and I haven’t been able to go in office for work at all, but I can’t seem to get my coeliac specialist to call me back to try and pin down whether it’s something I need more tests for and my GP is shrugging me off, so I don’t feel like I have much of a choice at the moment. I think it may be gastroparesis (as it’s a comorbidity of two of my other conditions, but I’m just not sure because I’m not a doctor and I have so much else going on health wise)

I spoke to my mom for the first time in weeks last night, and was venting about how frustrating it is to not be able to eat normally and how it’s causing me all sorts of other issues, and all she had to say back was that ‘I could stand to lose a bit of weight’.

Like…what. the. fuck. I’m literally having to pretty much starve myself over here and am struggling and all you are willing to do is bring up my weight, which is something I’m already incredibly self-conscious about and feel like I have so little control over? I was just starting to come around after struggling with my mental health for weeks, and she’s gone and fucked it. She is so uncaring and unsympathetic to anything I’ve gone through in the last few years, and I will literally never be good enough for her, no matter what I do. She treats me like it’s all my fault or like I’m faking it, and it doesn’t matter how much concrete evidence I show her, or how many times my husband confirms what I say - she still acts like I’m a liar.

Apologies if I’m quiet on here for a while, I don’t want to be that person who’s always posting negative things so I may just lurk in the background for a bit until I feel a bit better.

[confessions-official]

I feel so guilty for not going to work tomorrow. I’m not even on the schedule but I was invited to come in and pick up some extra hours. I was going to because I BADLY need the money because this month has been expensive and I’m trying to get promoted but my body had other plans. Plans like me being in debilitating pain.

I have chronic pain from a medical condition. My boss knows this and usually lets me sit down for a bit if I start having issues but our regional manager is going to be in the neighborhood plus it’s Christmas and we have ten times as many customers as usual which means I can’t afford to be sitting down. I don’t even get to relax at meal breaks that much anymore because we have so many people to attend to that even though I’m clocked out I still get called out to help when we get slammed.

I’m usually pretty functional but these new regulations against sitting by corporate, having to look extra professional in case the regional manager comes in and all these customers means I have to be on my feet all the time, usually 9 hours straight. Everything hurts from the waist down and when I finally got home tonight I could barely walk up the stairs. It’s never been this bad and I don’t think I’ll be much better in the morning. If I had been asked to come in in the afternoon I could have easily managed it but they wanted me there early in the morning which would give me less than 5 hours to rest my legs.

I’m going to hate myself for this at the end of the week. I just paid rent and since I had to travel this month I have a lot less left over than normal. I normally have around $600 left over but now it’s $300 and I don’t get my main paycheck til the 13th. I have one coming in Friday from my side hustle but I don’t know if it’ll be anything substantial.

I know that I need to get off my butt and get those hours but I’m in so much pain I had trouble even standing long enough to vacuum and put the laundry away when I got home around midnight. I couldn’t do it and instead ended up sitting in the bathtub for 30 minutes doing nothing. I was still achy by the time I got out, so I did the irresponsible thing and went to bed.

I can’t afford to let it get this bad. I need money. I am used to flareups, but I’ve never been in so much pain or so fatigued from it that I had trouble doing my chores or had to call off work. I’m actually afraid that I won’t have enough money to make it to my next paycheck because of this.

.

[somecunttookmyurl]

Part of the addiction debate issue is that people also don't understand the difference between "physical dependancy" and an actual addiction. Personally, I smoke a lot of pot, enough that if I were to suddenly quit, I'd have an adverse reaction due to physical dependency. But unlike when I smoked cigarettes, I don't have an addiction. I could comfortably drop it anytime, provided I am ready for my body to protest my choice. Giving up tobacco on the other hand, was fighting with my own brain.

there is that, yes. physical dependency is just gonna happen for a lot of stuff and it's why when you stop taking prescription meds you get titrated down instead of just chucking it in cold turkey. ain't no way around that one. people have different tolerance levels of course but all of my prescribed meds have that warning on them actually.

i don't smoke weed (allergic to THC. god hates me, personally) but i have smoked cigarettes on and off since i was 16. because they help with certain ADHD symptoms and also with my chronic pain.

however i have never, at any point, been addicted to nicotine. it just never happened. i would on occasion go for several days because i just like... forgot i smoked? i just pick 'em up and put 'em down whenever i please. right now i am an active smoker bc i'm less well medicated but prior to december i hadn't smoked for like idk 2 years? outside of new years eve parties or whatever bc i live for brief friendships formed in the smoking area outside of bars.

never had to fight my own brain on it. honestly i don't get much in the physical dependency department on that one either but in fairness i am an alien in a human suit i fully accept this fact. it's a family trait.

actual addiction doesn't just happen bc a substance is a substance that existed in your vicinity. you can get addicted to, quite literally, anything. you name it - someone, somewhere in the world has a psychological addiction to it and it is presently ruining their life.

it has far more to do with circumstances than whatever the thing itself is. if you're self-medicating but you don't know what for or why and you don't have medical care or a support network... you risk psychological addiction. if you have a shitty quality of life and you're trying to "escape"... you risk psychological addiction. if you are criminalised, it is harder if not impossible to seek help or advice and... well whaddaya know

not to be all RAT STUDY! THE FUCKING RAT STUDY! but. the rat study tho lads. the rat study.

[vtforpedro]

health update- long post

so we are still trying to figure out all my health shit. I just now started to lose a couple pounds again but still feeling bloated and crampy every day. my right arm looks slightly swollen and hurts + my purple nail beds that literally sparked this entire thing way back on dec 20th, 2019 or w/e that no doctor has acknowledged have gotten darker and now clearly noticeable to other people. been seeing it for nearly 16 months myself but I stopped asking after like a year cause they ~couldn't see it~ in bright ass medical offices and didn't bother investigating further cause You Seem Anxious™ n e ways, I had to call the paramedics on march 29th cause I got so lethargic I felt like someone had drugged me. could barely sit up, speech was slow, could NOT open my eyes, felt like it was hard to breathe. took me three minutes to stand up with a paramedic's help AND I knew if I tried to walk I'd fall. almost fell twice in a row a week beforehand, tho the fatigue wasn't as severe. sorry if I've mentioned this already I don't fucking have any brainpower anymore to remember what I've talked about and haven't have experienced two more bouts of sudden, extreme lethargy, the pain/swelling in my arm isn't going away, purple nail beds, etc etc. so went to my PCP and barely got halfway through explaining everything that was happening and she's like 'yeah so I want you to do labs today' and sent a referral for a vascular ultrasound. so every artery/vein from the big ones in my neck down to my arms and to the tiny ones in my fingers sooo my labs became available for me to see tonight in the lab portal, but my doctor set me up for an appt on monday to 'discuss them' and I was like ok either the labs or the vascular ultrasound is abnormal. OR BOTH yeah, it's probably both. I'm sure doctor's hate that we can view our labs before talking with them but I actually like having an idea of what's wrong instead of being blindsided lmao I knew I had leukemia before my doc told me I did and it was much easier to handle after sitting with it for a few days beforehand so yeah pretty sure I'm really vitamin d deficient, if I'm reading it right, which she was concerned about, plus, again if I'm reading it right, I have a whole ass, brand new incurable autoimmune disorder that honestly sounds like it sucks more than the fucking cancer I have c: c: c: I don't know 100% if I have this but it seems pretty likely and would explain a lot of things going on (not the head stuff, which is very likely still IIH, but the bloating + inability to lose weight, which can be helped so I can continue losing weight to hopefully help the fucking IIH) my body is just. breaking down and trying to kill me at every turn, I swear. like what's the point anymore, nothing ever gets better lol I have no life to live, just chronic disability that's agonizing day in and day out. what's. the. fucking. point. this can be 'managed' but will always steadily worsen over time because it can't be cured sooo,,,,,,, I don't want to do this anymore, I truly don't. I've been telling my mom for six years every time I turn a corner it's something worse and that was for psychological trauma, but now it's turned into trauma caused by debilitating and declining health issues. I don't want to do this anymore did labs on monday for my hematologist to check where the cancer numbers are, I expect that one to take a while to get back. if the cancer numbers are detectable, I can't even treat it (and don't want to since, as my hema put it, the treatment can't be worse than the disease and chemo tried to kill me like three times) yet another thing I could've possibly been treating 16 months ago (third potential thing but You Seem Anxious™ sure delays diagnosis, seems like they should fix that, huh???) as an aside, this is the second time I've read POSITIVE (reference range: NEGATIVE) on my labs and it's not a great feeling guys NOT GREAT AT ALL all of this is happening during a pandemic so I haven't seen my family in over a year and I've seen my brother like twice? since last march? I kinda feel

like I'm never going to see them again at all. haven't eaten in my fave restaurants or gone to a movie. idk it just really feels like these aren't things I'm ever going to experience again got three MRIs scheduled on the 16th to see if my chiari/anything else has worsened. it feels like it has. I'm losing mobility in my neck and it's becoming harder to walk, so if that's any worse or if brain surgery is recommended, idk what I'll do cause I'm not doing that :) it's too risky considering everything else. I'm constantly stuck in a place that no matter which direction I go I face further harm, so what can even be done? I'm sorry. I'm sorry these are always depressing and hopeless, but I don't know how to feel hope anymore. we'll see what my pcp says on monday, but it's not looking good I'm truly sorry if I bring you all down with these posts. it's the only place I can put all my messy thoughts and feelings without feeling judged. thank you, all the same, for listening and offering words of encouragement and hope where I don't have any love you all very, very much. thanks for always being there for me <3

[sage-nebula]

((do NOT reblog))

Lately I’ve been thinking that I have Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I’ve been tired—like, extremely so—for . . . maybe a year now? If not longer. It feels like it settled in shortly after I started my new job back in March of 2019, so in that case it’d be more like a year and nine months, but it’s hard to say for sure. I thought for a long time that it was because of my new job, because I have to wake up early in the morning for it and my delayed sleep phase disorder means that I’m running on a lower than average hours of sleep each night during the week. But lately I think it’s more than that.

See, the thing is, it doesn’t matter how much sleep I get. Even if I get the suggested nine hours a night, I’m still dozing off a little after waking up, like a couple hours later. Even if I get twelve, thirteen, or fourteen hours of sleep in a night, sure enough I’ll be dozing off again a few hours after waking up. I have no energy to do anything on the weekends. Even if I get the aforementioned thirteen hours of sleep Friday going into Saturday, on Saturday I still feel so drained that doing a load of laundry leaves me feeling completely wiped out. This causes mess to pile up in my house, because I just don’t have the energy to get it done, because I only start to feel normal by Sunday night (and even then it’s like barely normal) but then the work week starts again. I had a four day weekend this weekend thanks to the Christmas holiday, and I spent both Thursday and Friday with no energy to do anything at all. Even when I didn’t feel sleepy, I felt so drained of energy that just laying there felt like the most that I could do. Today I’ve felt a bit better, but still recuperating. Tomorrow, my last day off, is the only day I think I’ll have the energy to actually do stuff and get my house in order. But then the work week starts again, and so does the cycle anew.

And the thing is, this isn’t normal. I didn’t used to be like this. Even when I was only getting like five hours of sleep a night, I’d just need a day or so of rest and then I’d be back at 100%. But now it’s like I’m slow charging, and it’s never enough because I don’t have time for it to be enough. One or two days of sustained activity is enough so that my body wants to shut down for like a week. And it’s not sustainable! It’s very hard to live like this! I can’t keep my house clean or do basically anything else because I feel so drained. This is also why I haven’t written anything of substance in so long; even though writing isn’t a physical activity (aside from the physical activity of typing), it still takes energy, and that’s energy that I just haven’t had. My battery is constantly in the red, yellow at best, and I don’t know what to do about it.

About four or five months ago, when I told my doctor about this, he gave me Antidepressant #2 in an effort to help it. That seemed to work for like, a day or two . . . then I went right back to falling asleep at my desk at work no matter how much I slept the night before. I recently asked him to up the dosage to see if that would help, and he agreed*, but then I discovered that upping the dosage gives me tinnitus, and people on the internet say that after they kept using it despite the tinnitus it got to the point where the tinnitus never went away even after they stopped the medication, so. I’ve decided to stop taking that one and I’m going to try to wean myself off it. I’ll talk to him about that on Monday.

(*He said that he didn’t think that it would help and suggested that I exercise to get more energy instead. Of course, the fatal flaw of that plan is that I don’t have the energy needed to exercise in the first place. Plus, my legs are such shit that even things like jump rope cause my right ankle and left shin to be fucked up for days afterward. He suggested I try yoga, since that’s a low impact exercise, and I’ve got myself a mat to give it a shot, but I don’t have much optimism about it making much of a difference.)

I looked up Chronic Fatigue Syndrome online and it honestly does sound like it fits. I’m constantly exhausted, I have daily headaches (which could be down to my genetics since I do have genetic migraines but still), I often have muscle pain in various parts of my body, etc. But at the same time I’m not sure if it’s actually that or if I’m just overreacting. Like I don’t know what the threshold is, or if I’m like, I don’t know . . . what if I’m just lazy? I don’t think I am, because there are things I genuinely wish I could do that I just don’t have the energy to do. I wish I could take my dog on hikes and long walks. Pre-pandemic, I wanted to do things like go to the art museum or the science center or the zoo. I’d like to do rock climbing, provided my legs could handle that, and so on. But even before the pandemic, I never had the energy on the weekends to actually go out and do those things. I’d want to! But then I’d feel so dead that I couldn’t even get out of bed before late afternoon / evening, much less actually go out to do things. Don’t get me wrong, I do take my dog on short walks at least once a day, usually multiple times a day, because I’d never neglect her needs like that. But it’s not the same as being able to take her out to a trail and explore new areas that would surely be more interesting to her nose than just our neighborhood.

So I don’t think I’m lazy, because I want to do these things, and even smaller things, like I wish that my house could be clean and that I could make all these interior decorating renovations to it, but I just don’t have the energy. But I still don’t know if it’s actually bad enough to be considered Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. I still don’t know if I’m overreacting. What if this is a level of exhaustion that everyone has, but unlike me they can push through it? What if this is just part of Being Thirty and I’m just too weak to handle it? It’s like how I didn’t know if the pain I felt during my period was normal or not, and I still don’t actually. My gyno gave me the birth control implant to drive my periods down just because I asked for it, she didn’t actually diagnose me with any illness like endometriosis or anything like that. Sure, it felt like machetes were being shoved up into me every month to the point where I’d become incapacitated and sometimes even cry out in pain and sometimes even throw up due to how bad it was, but it could be that way for everyone, right? Maybe that’s just how it feels to have the lining of your uterus shred itself because it’s mad you didn’t get pregnant that month. How am I supposed to know?

There’s no real point to this post. It’s more that I just wanted to get my thoughts down somewhere. I don’t even know where to go from here, really. I don’t think my doctor takes me seriously enough to look into a diagnosis like this, but also I’ve never had luck finding a doctor that does take me seriously and I don’t really know where to start looking. To be fair, I do have an anxiety disorder and so I grant that my mind does find jumping to the Worst Case Scenario to be an easy one, but also the last doctor I had literally would not listen to me describe my breathing problems to her without dismissing me entirely, so. It’s been rough. Of course, even if I did get a diagnosis, it’s not like there’s a treatment, and definitely not a cure. So even if I do have CFS, what can be done about it? It’s not like knowing will solve the issues that it causes in my life. 

I don’t know. There’s no point to this. It just really sucks to be fucking physically exhausted all of the goddamn time, especially since sleep does little to help it and I hate sleeping anyway since I have nightmares at least 75% of the time, if not 85%. (It honestly feels more like 85%. Maybe even 90%. It’s very rare that I wake up having not had at least one or two bad dreams that night.) I just want to have energy. I don’t know what that’s so much to ask of my body.

But anyway, DO NOT reblog this, or I’ll just delete it so the cut leads nowhere anyway and also block you, thank you,

[batwynn]

Quarantine Positive Mental and Physical Health Checklist:

Note: Not everything works for everyone and not every service is provided by your local services, so please always take advice with consideration of that fact. ALWAYS check with your doctor or informed professionals about anything that requires medical treatment, etc. 

(American) National Suicide Hotline:

1-800-273-8255

List of international hotlines:

http://www.suicide.org/international-suicide-hotlines.html

(WARNING! Some of these are no longer operational. Double check in your country for a line if one of these does not work.)

*IF  YOU HAVE/THINK YOU HAVE COVID19 AND ARE SELF ISOLATING TO HEAL AT HOME:

*If you have asthma or any other chronic lung conditions, heart conditions, or kidney conditions please be sure to call either your doctor’s office or the ER if you are experiencing any symptoms of the virus. (Fever, dry cough, trouble breathing.)

*If you are trans and bind or bind your chest for any reason, DO NOT WEAR A BINDER IF YOU HAVE ANY OF THE SYMPTOMS! This virus attacks the lungs! You could cause serious complications and end up hospitalized or worse. I understand the need to bind, and I understand the dangers of not binding. But please, please DO NOT BIND when sick or symptomatic. 

WHO does not recommend people use Ibuprofen, but to use Tylenol for fever and pain reduction.  

Please remember to keep up your intake of fluids!

Checklist: 

Have you taken your medication(s)? — with the stress levels at high right now, now might be a good time to make up a schedule somewhere for your daily medications and their times. If you need reminders, you can use your phone’s calendar function (with an alert set at ‘at the time of the event’) or the ‘reminders’ application (iPhone). If you can’t use these, or don’t have them on your phone, consider asking someone who is available and able to send you a message/text/call to alert you to take your medication(s). If you don’t have a phone, try to place the schedule somewhere you will see it often during the day. (Possibly on the fridge, by your desk, by your bed, etc.) Multiple copies of the schedule might also help.  

Have you been drinking your water, or other fluids? —Hydration is important whether you’re sick or not! If you have trouble drinking water, good alternatives would be coconut water or low-added-sugar juices. (100% juices are best) Sipping soups like broth can also hydrate, but be careful of salt content! Many fruits and veggies also have a high water content. Try: celery, cauliflower, spinach, broccoli, dark leafy greens, tomatoes, watermelon, cantaloupe, strawberries, kiwis or oranges.

Have you spoken today? If not, try to read a few lines of something out loud just to stretch out your jaw and vocal cords a bit. A lot of tension can be held in your jaw, and it’s good to loosen it up a bit every so often. 

Have you had enough sleep? Your mood/health can be seriously affected by lack of sleep. If you’re having trouble going to sleep: Consider reading something familiar and comforting before bed, or consider putting your phone away an hour or so before going to bed, and try to keep it just out of reach. With everything that’s going on, the temptation to check the news all the time or scroll for hours to try to de-stress is understandable. Try to limit yourself to certain times of the day, and avoid doing it late into the night. *There are medications of all sorts from over the counter Melatonin to prescription medications that can help with falling asleep, staying asleep, nightmares, and more. Please reach out to your doctor/therapist/psychologist if you think you need help with sleep. 

Dealing with chronic illnesses or pain and aren’t allowed to go in for your usual appointments or PT(Physical therapy)? Check in with your doctor/specialist’s office by phone and see if they are allowing phone/video appointments. A lot of offices are doing this, and some are willing to refill medications/start new medications via these appointments. MOST Pharmacies will now deliver your medications to your home, some even for free. If you don’t already have a print out of home PT exercises for your specific pain areas, call and ask for them to either mail one to you, or direct you to one online. It’s important to keep up with your PT!

If you’re low on food due to money/stores being empty and you need to keep your blood sugar up, you can try to even things out with Glucose Tablets.  These are not a replacement for a meal, though! Please check all your local food pantries, churches, and even school food programs.

A lot of schools are offering a meals-on-wheels-like program for people with children in need. 

And if you’re elderly, Meals on Wheels is working extra hard to make sure everyone has food, including doubling up the amount you get per week for a lot of people.*  (Please also consider donating to them if you have the funds!) 

If none of these options work, please call 211 to speak to a member of the United Way call center who can help connect you to resources in your area. (This is not just for food.)

Stuck inside with family/roommates/partners and need some alone time?—If you have a private room, stick a sign on the door requesting to be left alone. Adding a period of time can help give them an idea of how long before knocking. For example: ‘Leave me alone for 40 minutes unless emergency please!’ If you do not have a room to yourself, if possible make up a plan with your roommates/family/partners to designate alone time in a room. Each member of the household can have 1 hour time alone in the bedroom/living room/bathroom/etc. Try to keep communication open, even when you really need to be alone. Make sure the others know you need this time, and that it might be good for them, too.

Did you eat today?

• If you feel like you’re dissociating, try counting your fingers or looking at your finger whorls. Remember that they are unique to you, that you are real. If this doesn’t work, you can also try counting things of one shape or color in the room to try to ground yourself in your surroundings. Fidgeting or chewing gum can also help stimulate your senses, which can help keep you grounded.

• If you are having a panic attack:

1: Ground yourself to reality with something familiar like a keychain or even pictures of something on your phone. [Cats and dogs are good.] Also, do not trust everything your mind/body is telling you right now. Thoughts like, ‘i’m going to die’, ‘everyone is leaving me’, ‘everyone hates me’, are a part of the panic, try not to linger on them, because they will only make it worse. A good trick is to try to replace these thoughts with a mental image of something either calming or silly. Like a Sloth, or a unicorn fighting a giant jelly bean.

2: Find a space that feels the safest for you, and stay there.

3: Take slow, deep breaths. After breathing in for four seconds, hold it for a few seconds before breathing out for another four seconds.

4: Stimulate your mind with something simple, and not stressful. Tap your fingers, re-read nice messages from someone, play a game one your phone that doesn’t require any thought or is timed.

5: You are doing a really good job. You don’t have to feel embarrassed. You are not alone. You are strong, and awesome.

Try not to feel guilty for feeling overwhelmed, upset, angry, sad, etc. This is a really rough time, and you’re allowed to feel how you feel.

Did you brush your teeth today?

Don’t be afraid, you’re not alone!-Reach out to someone you know, if you need it. If you can’t find someone, feel free to reach out to me and we can talk, or I can direct you to someone else who might be more equipped to help. 

Have you hurt yourself recently? Please take the time to clean and cover it. I know it’s hard to take care of yourself right now, but it’s not good to get an infection especially with the hospitals and doctors possibly turning you away due to the influx if COVID19 patients. 

It’s okay to take time to get going, and no, you do NOT have to write that book right now. 

You don’t have to talk about it if you aren’t ready. Being stuck inside with people does not mean they get to pressure you to open up about anything you’re not ready to open up about. 

You CAN talk about it, if you’re ready. Your problems are real, even if they might seem small or insignificant in the face of huge, global issues. 

If you are stuck in a home with an abusive person and cannot get out because of the current situation, please remember there are many applications, chats, text lines, phone lines available depending on where you are and who you are. 

Have you stretched in the past hour? 

Here are some online/phone options for AA/substance abuse groups. 

Pet a cute animal today! If you can’t, there’s loads of livestreams from all over the world with cute animals on display! 

10 relaxing online games

Try making one of these comfort foods: 

American Comfort Foods

Canadian Comfort Foods Indian Comfort Foods Japanese Comfort Foods German Comfort Foods Mexican Comfort Foods [sorry, a lot of Tex-mex in there.]

Remember: You matter. Your feelings matter. Your life matters. 

[leam1983]

It’s the end of the work week and, well...

I’m having thoughts on labor culture.

My father was born in 1958. He lived as the son of an absent father of five children who had no ability to truthfully express his love and care, and who instead chose to bury himself in work as a means to display his commitment. My paternal grandfather made and sold mattressees and died quite young of a cancer strain that today would’ve seemed benign. He was described as a hard worker, either up to his neck in his business or wanting just a scant few hours per day to himself. It made an aloof lover out of him and a distant father - who still loved his wife and children to bits but who felt emotionally castrated in a sense, as were men of the era.

The family consensus is that his work killed him.

My father is now 65 and survived a bout of Non-Hodgkinian Lymphoma. The oncologist and anyone with half a brain agreed that stress was the culprit. Early on, Dad had the family as an excuse for his tendency to overwork. He had to provide for us, after all, and garnish my mother’s meagre savings. All she has is her government-issued pension plan, while my father does have his own pension as a retiree of the City of Montreal’s Real-Estate Appraisal service. Considering, he felt obligated to pull a heavier load to bring in more, so they’d have better investment opportunities. Later on, he kept working out of a sense of fealty and attachment to his division, breaking out of retirement during the pandemic to join the work-from-home team. He wanted to help techs and city officials find ways to bring more of the traditionally snail-mail-based parts of the system online so the city’s Land Management service wouldn’t be paralyzed by COVID-19. What was supposed to be a single month turned into four, which turned into twelve.

By the end, they were begging him to stay on the team and to pull longer hours. We’re talking twenty hours per day, in some particularly grueling stretches. That means being logged in by breakfast and scarfing bagels down with Urban Design techs on Zoom instead of your own family, or having supper with your boss because she needs a play-by-play of the situation to stave off her executive anxiety.

Long story short, I didn’t see Dad much during the first wave. His reasoning was that he’d eventually stop, pool all this cash, and chuck it into his and Mom’s Registered Retirement Savings Account - with maybe an extra two thou or so in case the country reopened enough for their postponed trip to Cuba to take place.

Guess what? His zona flared up and he ended up with odd, shingly bumps along his scalp which to this day the local dermatologist grimaces at and tentatively has us dab with cortisone cream.

Mom, though? She’s a retired and registered nurse with a self-negating streak and a chronic propensity to undervalue her own physical ailments. Someone who quite literally understands the pain of busted hips on a clinical level because she was trained in Gerontology - and also someone who refuses to schedule an appointment with her GP and who inexplicably self-medicates with white wine.

As for me, I’m a 37 year-old man with a paycheck I consider massive with its meagre six bucks above the minimum-wage threshold - someone who chose to shack in with his folks until the current crisis ends and who therefore has a history of a single, willingly terminated apartment lease that originally began in the Planned Housing market. The apartment I want is basically a Barbie doll house for adults, a gleaming fantasy I’ll never have enough capital to touch unless I feel like trying my hand with criminal applications of my skills. The apartment I can get right now is a shithole, and I have the audacity to think I deserve a shithole that at least wasn’t someone’s former cockroach den.

Now here’s the kicker: I value my sanity and my health. I know my mental stamina levels and I know from experience that after working seven-point-five hours per day with the occasionally shorter Friday, I’ve found my limit. I could invest more if I worked more, yes, and I’m already in a better position than my parents, retirement-wise. I’ll never be rich, but I’m already set to be comfortable, provided I don’t spend my golden years trying to make it as an unsponsored TechTuber or anything else that’s equally ludicrous.

Where that’s a problem is in the toxicity this is generating. See, I have the gall to slide my daily schedule later so I can start at an hour that fits my biological clock and ends at an hour where I’m at my most creative. That means the folks saw me spending my pandemic mornings on Animal Crossing while Dad was trying to wrangle Excel spreadsheets for non-tech-savvy fellow Boomers while preventing the dog from eating his meeting notes. That means they guzzled vinho verde like it was Kool-Aid after seven while I made sure to find more concrete means to distance myself from work - ideally ones that didn’t involve functional alcoholism.

Naturally, what was bound to happen, happened: Dad soon spent his evenings calling me shiftless or “unwilling to commit”, while I was stuck watching him miss all the cues his stressed-out body were sending him. We already had Trump’s last desperate months and a global plague to handle, I really didn’t want my work to turn into more of a nuisance than it already is. I already love the people I work for and hate what I do (repeating the family cycle, it seems), but I’ve at least decided to give myself ample Me time every single day. 

I’ve paired that with smaller, if consistent portfolio investments, along with a few new habits I wanted to get into to stay saner. Dad pulls crosswords or plays competitive chess in the wee hours, while I usually lay down to meditate around midnight and fall asleep by 1 AM at the latest. I’m half-expecting my father to pull a Tyler Durden and to sneer at me, at some point. “Self-care is masturbation,” he’d probably say.

Looking at classifieds for rentals, it’s obvious that the entire system is predicated on abuse. Work yourself down to the therapist’s office, right down to the fucking bone, and you just might earn a half-decent retirement because nobody’s taught you to invest incrementally. Nope, Society seems to say, you’re supposed to buy, buy and buy some more, until you realize you have ten years left to start from scratch!

I remember Dad’s face on my eighteenth birthday. “Why would you want a Disability Care Savings Account, Brain? You just turned into a legal adult by Canadian standards - you’re in no rush, right?”

I told him the real gift I wanted for my birthday, that day, was a ride to the family’s Financial Investments counsel. I pulled up the PDFs I’d printed out and filled and brought them over. From then on, if I dropped a penny in my nest-egg, Ottawa would drop another one. If my share grew, so did the government’s. In the twenty-odd years since, it’s expanded exponentially.

Dad thought I’d done this to have a big cushion by the time I’d retire. Mom thought I’d done this in case my disability worsened and I started requiring equipment or physical assistance. Honestly, my dumb, if slightly prescient eighteen year-old self figured I’d rather spend my time reading or playing video games than working. I knew I’d need something to help cushion my admittedly low career-related ambitions. I might throw several thousands at a new computer every seven to eight years, but that’s because I’ve saved them up for just as long, little by little. I have no vices beyond what sillicon offers and what you’d find in the pages of a book and don’t exactly need a big ‘ol, stonkin’ humidor stuffed with conoisseur stogies.

I have a shoebox with a poked-out Ziploc bag and a sponge, with a handful of joints and a few Santa Anas I got off of a buyer’s pool from work. Five of us occasional chair-bar goons pooled cash together on Cigar Chief and cushioned prices with a single, shared and massive order. I’m nowhere near rich, but assuming the housing market can catch its breath eventually, I’ll be able to live modestly - with one or two markers of occasional luxury I’ll have chosen.

I have a shittier job than my father has had and I’ve chosen to be happier than him. It’s just sad that the usual response elevates overwork as the supposedly one, true way to leave a mark in society.

No, Dad. I don’t want to die while my own cells eat me alive, I want to die blazed out of my fucking mind, happy because I’ll have had time to enjoy my friends’ company and to finally make some sense out of Kerouac’s Subterraneans or to figure out what the fuck is going on in Joyce’s Illiad. I’ll die crusty as shit and fulfilled as a Pop Culture jockey, because I’ll have either finished Persona 5: Golden in my lifetime or I’ll have watched the entirety of the MCU’s output before Disney finally manages to kill their golden goose.

I want to die decades from now, feeling like I at least owned my choices and didn’t spend my time tethered to someone else’s professional expectations of me.

[traumatized-motherfuckers]

Stress-based sickness, psychosomatic disorders, and the F word. Fibromyalgia.

Read up or listen up @t-mfrs.com (podcast available wherever you stream.)

Waking up, like I didn’t sleep for weeks. Falling asleep after five minutes on my feet. A pounding head. That sense of dread. Sticky sharp pains through in my shoulders and neck. Brain short on energy, missing a few cards from the deck. Waves of nausea and stomach cramps. Chills and sweats, depending on the body amps. Swollen lymph nodes. Muscle weakness poorly bodes. Insatiable hunger but nothing sounds edible - shit, now desire to throw up is incredible. Eyes shriveling, dry, back into my skull. The aches in my legs, pulsing and dull. Foggy thoughts. Racing heart. When will this end, why did this start?

Did I finally catch the ‘rona? Or am I just past my limit for being stressed out again? Well, I just moved, so this time I know that the answer is very likely… stressed.

So who wants to talk about getting sick? Yeah, among this group, the answer might be surprising. A lot of us do.

Why? Not because we love bitching and complaining when we feel less than ideal - spoilers, that’s every day, there’s really nothing left to say about the raging shit storms inside of us after a few years of it. We’re tired of hearing about it, too… just like we’re tired of living it, feeling it, and fearing it.

No, for us, it’s because it feels like there’s always a surprising ailment right around the corner when we least expect it. One that seemingly has no logical basis or reasonable solution. One that no one else understands. One that feels like it’s born of mental illness, somehow, while being very physically present. One that we don’t even bother bringing to doctors anymore, because no one needs to be shamed and shoved out the door again by their flippant disinterest in anything we say after the words, “Yes, I have anxiety.”

Yep. If you haven’t tried to mingle mental health with western medicine before, let me give you a quick disclaimer: unless you’re missing an arm, don’t bother. In my experience, the only thing you’ll get is an eye roll, possibly a prescription bandaid that somehow makes you feel worse, and a bored recommendation to see a psychiatrist - even if you already do.

All of this, of course, has the effect of only making you feel more upset. First, mentally, as you ruminate over the disrespect of essentially being called a liar just because the doctor doesn’t have enough training. Then, physically, as your increased stress and systemic arousal pushes your body into a new level of overdrive.

Oh, was it a mindfuck just to make the doctor appointment, get yourself there, and deal with the social anxiety of a waiting room for 30-120 minutes? I bet it felt great for someone to then invalidate your health concerns, recommend you calm down, and send you out the door without even looking you in the eye. Feeling more upset, now on a highly emotional basis? Enjoy the shame, hypertension, and lost sleep, as if you needed any more of that.

Today, I want to talk about the stress-central area of my health that hasn’t been completely figured out… and the label that I - embarrassingly - just recently learned is highly applicable to my physical condition.

But also, the outrage that I feel over said label, because, well, it explains nothing. In fact, if anything, it probably does all of us a huge disservice after we’re granted this diagnosis by pushing us into the express lane for being written off. It also separates two issues that are poorly explained, rather than combining them into one full picture that might actually yield answers. Oh, and should I mention that I think this is a larger problem of gender bias in the healthcare system? Yeah, why the fuck not. Might as well air all my grievances as a nice lead-in to another upcoming episode; is mental illness diagnosis skewed by gender?

I don’t want to let my pounding head and aching shoulders deter me too much, so let’s just get started.

History of ailments

I’ve talked about this before, but to briefly cover how fucked up this body is… let’s take a trip back to 2013 when my system failed me out of the blue. And by “out of the blue,” I mean that I had chronically overworked myself running on anxiety, obligation, and starvation for 2 years, leading to physiological revolt.

So, looking back, “duh.”

But at the time? This was all-new. It was crisis-inducing and beyond comprehension that I went from a perfectly healthy, physically resilient, surprisingly strong and low maintenance specimen to a chronically pained, systemically ill, digestively impaired, and constantly exhausted sack of wallowing self-hated.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

After a lifetime of zero health concerns, I found myself bedridden and obsessed with every weird thing my body was doing to me. Which, as you’ve probably guessed, came hand in hand with the new weird things my brain was doing to me.

You’ve probably heard the “What IS CPTSD?” episode by now, so I’m guessing you’re not a stranger to the details about the common emergence of complex trauma symptoms. Yes, that’s based on a lot of research, but it’s also a throwback to my own experience. I was a long time depression and anxiety lurker, first time complex trauma contributor around age 23, when my brain was suddenly uprooted by a series of new social and therapy-based traumas.

My depression became debilitating negative self-regard and stronger suicidal ideation. Suddenly, my social anxiety became agoraphobia. My new health issues became topics of obsessive and intrusive thoughts… you know, when I wasn’t ruminating about my role in every trauma, my worthlessness as a human, and my recently-unsettled childhood memories. My early twenties were a great time.

And with all the mental strain, came the unresolvable insomnia. Which fed right into the health problems. Which circled back to spark more mental duress. Health anxiety is not a fun way to live.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

So, to call my illnesses psychosomatic is completely appropriate. But, also, completely insulting when a western medicine practitioner utters the phrase as if it was a turd slowly coming out the wrong end. And that’s exactly what happened every time I tried to seek help.

To be clear - back in the day I had some very easily detectable physical problems. I understand that doctors have a difficult job when it comes to interpreting the immeasurable inner experiences that their patients detail, but that wasn’t entirely the case here. When your body stops digesting food, well, there’s some evidence to prove that it’s a fact. When a 96oz medical grade laxative used for colonoscopy prep results in zero percent colon cleanse… uh… somebody isn’t doing their duty (pun intended). And boy, did my digestive system just decide that it was DONE doing its only job.

Everything I ate seemed to spark unpleasant physical responses, but moving materials through my guts and extracting nutrients wasn’t one of them. After months of garbage disposal failure, I was basically a walking sewer mixed with a compost pile. I found myself chronically starving, exhausted, puffy, distended, intestinally inflamed, and generally sickly. Your body doesn’t fare so well when it has no sustenance, it turns out.

At the same time, or maybe slightly predating my digestive protests, I started getting ill in weird ways. Things I had never experienced before started popping up, like chronic respiratory tract infections, sinus infections, and gum infections. I was having what seemed like allergic responses to something in my inner or outer environment. I was often covered in hives or my face and stomach were inflating like balloons for no apparent reason. I had near-constant pain in my continually-locked shoulders and neck. My actual skin, itself, hurt, as if I was being stretched to the brink of bursting. My lifelong migraines transformed into something new - disorienting tension migraines that came with horrifying loss-of-vision auras and feverish shakes.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

Generally speaking, I was so tired all the time that I could barely get out of bed for more than a few moments before retreating back to my safe place to feel like garbage. My limbs felt like someone had tied weights to them and extracted several major muscle groups. I struggled even showering or washing my face, because both required holding my arms up higher than I was capable of enacting. I was so deliriously tired that I couldn’t see straight, think, or complete basic tasks.

On top of giving up my impressive life trajectory in the aftermath of the physical breakdown - because I was too fucking exhausted to consider the next steps I needed to take for grad school - this is also where I’ve previously mentioned my drive-aphobia coming into play. When you can’t count on your own faculties, you definitely don’t want to be behind the wheel. And suddenly, life gets very restricted.

I gave up my… anything life trajectory at that point. I went from a wildly social and focused student with a fantastic sense of humor about life and stronghold of self-determination to… Hiding indoors. Keeping isolated. Obsessing over my health. Googling the most embarrassing things late at night. Having no answers. Feeling like a crazy person. Hating myself. Fearing that this was the end. Assuming that my future was over. Guilting myself for fucking up my past. Replaying my tragic story of a rapid flight and a crash, after everything I had fought so hard to accomplish. Giving up.

This is riiiiight about where I pull most of my inspiration for talking about living in perpetual “trauma states” from. Being consistently triggered, out of control, and terrified. Having no answers and no one to even ask. Watching mental illness take over my world without the slightest clue of what was happening. And, oh, the perpetual torment of unpredictable physical breakdowns.

Everyday a new surprise. Every moment the opportunity for a shocking change in vitality. Every night a battle of my brain versus my chronic pains versus sleep.

And so it persisted, throughout 2013 and into several later years… despite the fact that I actually came up with an answer for myself that vastly improved a good part of the sickness struggle... but definitely didn’t fix it all.

Finding AN answer

I’m sure I’ve already mentioned this, too… but eventually I found some respite in my health struggles through no help from modern medicine. In fact, I helped myself thanks to familial clues when I decided to exclusion-diet my way into an answer. My grandpa had celiac’s disease long before it was trendy and I decided gluten was a logical place to start. And what do you know? That helped about 60% of my ailments.

So began years of obsessing over figuring out the gluten free life. Which, contrary to popular opinion, fucking sucks. I get that it became a trendy idea at exactly the wrong point in my life, but goddamnit, I hate the question, "Are you ACTUALLY gluten free, or is it by choice?" It is not a dietary walk in the park when essentially every item is contaminated with some form or another of secret sauce and your body is going to flip out at the slightest dusting.

I remember being so distraught over having these drastic dietary considerations to figure out on my own that I would spontaneously break down into tears in all sorts of places - the fridge, the grocery store, restaurants, social contexts when people kindly asked, “how about you choose where to eat this time.” I can’t choose! I can’t eat anything! I would privately bawl to myself. What a fun time that was.

But that was not nearly the end of it.

It turned out, yes, entirely cutting the glutens helped immensely. I also realized that sugar was not my friend. In fact, processed anything was not going to have a great outcome. But then… there was this other weird pattern that I started noticing in my life… sometimes I was pretty healthy and (relatively speaking) happy with the way things were going off-wheat. But sometimes I was just as sickly and digestively screwed when I definitely hadn’t consumed anything questionable. As if other tried and true components of my diet randomly became gluten analogs that upset me just as much.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

Plus, there were some ailments that just never seemed to go away. The insomnia was a persistent problem that stretched back to being about 5 years old, but got more severe with time. The aches and pains in my neck and shoulders only worsened, no matter how many tennis balls I rolled on, yoga classes I attended, or muscle relaxers I popped. The exhaustion came and went with connections to my mental health and diet, but not directly related to bready food items. The brain fog didn’t clear up when I had a strictly regimented diet. The tension migraines never fully returned from where they came.

I was still finding myself bedridden and ready to give up on the whole idea of living on a semi-regular basis. Sometimes it was every two weeks, sometimes once a month, sometimes a few months apart. But I never knew why, how long it would last, or how to control the system-wide failures.

And if you want to know how western medicine helped me with any of these continued challenges… it didn’t. I tried to get answers for years before I finally gave up. Every doctor turned me away. Every specialist was critically uninterested. Even the Mayo Clinic neglected to listen to what I said or utilize applicable resources, after I was so sure they could solve the medical mystery of my life.

So. I stopped trying at a certain point. I resolved myself to being health anxious and perpetually confused by myself. I realized that I would never know what any day was going to bring, because my discomforts and continued sicknesses seemed to come and go with the tides.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

Eventually, after years of this bullshit, it got a bit better. I buckled down with - you guessed it - strict routines designed to circumvent some of the challenges.

I realized that my diet needed to be incredibly tight, and by that, I mean “boring.” Beyond gluten, I cut out basically everything sugary, carby, and processed. I noticed that without a certain variety of physical exercise on a regimented basis, everything started slipping. I prioritized finding ways to get to sleep at night, even if it meant being rigid and assessed as “dramatic” by less slumber-impaired humans. I gave up any activities that caused neck and shoulder strain, and tried to be better about things like stretching. I also noticed that dealing with my emotions was a gateway to pain and discomfort relief, which was an uphill battle all it’s own. And, you know, eventually I learned about this Complex Trauma thing that explained a HUGE part of early to mid twenties, including a majority of the physical ailments.

But, although I began to live like an above-averagely healthy human again… I’ve still always had a few mysteries about my health.

Sure, over the course of many years I’ve figured out how to live with a semi-predictable body after long periods of never knowing what tomorrow would bring. But, unfortunately, there are still times when my system throws me a curveball. During those unanticipated spans of health failure, I’m left ruminating on a question or three that haven’t ever been answered consistently.

One of the most common inquiries is coming at you next.

Stress or sick?

So, even after all my life changes and careful modifications. All my sacrifices and seemingly over-the-top regimes. I’ve still had an ongoing health obsession that pops up from time to time when my shit starts to go downhill.

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

The incrementally-observed question that runs through my head on repeat… “Wait, am I communicably sick, or am I just fucking stressed out again?”

I realized a while back - maybe in my mid-late twenties - that holy hell, I sure felt like I was coming down with the flu more often than it was logical. The thing was, my symptoms only ever progressed to the point of feeling like I was still actively fighting off the sickness as it took hold. I would get the temperature dysregulation, the headache, the muscle pain, the foggy feeling, and oh boy, the exhaustion - that generally serve as your first signs of contagious trouble.

I would be too deliriously tired to get up and do anything. If I made myself go to work, it felt like wading through a dream. Half present, half falling asleep at my desk. My body felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. Even my head was too heavy for my neck to manage the task.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

Beyond the energy void, I would genuinely start to experience pre-illness complaints, like swollen lymph nodes, congestion, and the aforementioned shivers and shakes. I would find myself incredibly hungry, as though my immune system was ramping up for a fight. I would get incredibly weak, like all my electrolytes were purged from my body. I would characterize the experience as feeling “generally under the weather” in preparation for something much larger slamming into town.

And I would respond in kind. I would retreat to bed, Nyquil and vitamin C showering over me on frequent intervals, gearing up for the systemic war of a lifetime. I would drift in and out of sleep for a day or two, fending off the weird muscle aches and sweat sessions that come with an emerging fever. Interestingly, many of my old food reactivities would rear up during this period. I would get my neti pot and vomit-bags ready for action.

And then… nothing else would happen. Assuming I chilled out and retreated to a state of forfeit when I actually treated myself with kindness and care, everything would work out. After 1-5 days of being back in my bedridden state, determined that significant contagious sickness was headed my way, it would seem to just disappear overnight. Or, clear up by about 70% overnight, to be more realistic.

It took several rounds of this pattern - I couldn’t tell you how many - before I finally realized… heyyo, my body shuts the fuck down when I’m stressed out. Every time I experienced one of these sudden falls from health, it followed (or ran in tandem with) a period of significant stress, anxiety, and/or depression. And if I let myself relax for a week, it would all be okay. If I tried to push through it because ObLiGaTiOnS, I was signing myself up for a prolonged and far more serious health failure. It happened too many times; I knew it wasn’t a coincidence. Like I had postulated earlier in my adulthood - my health seemed to be drastically affected by my mental state. Particularly, my interpretations of stress, obligations, and fears.

And I can tell you, my health anxiety quieted down for a while in the aftermath of the acceptance. Call it immersion therapy. When you’ve experienced the same event over and over again, but A never leads to B, and C-alming your shit makes condition A disappear  back into the ethers... well, eventually you take it for what it is and just stop panicking so much. I think I got tired of preoccupying myself with the whole dumpster fire at some point and preferred to extinguish the flames by letting them run their course.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

This is where I’ve lived for the past many years now. Realizing that if I push myself too hard mentally or physically, or if I let too many stress signals infiltrate my brain… I’m about to get fucked up. My health will slip quickly. I will be reactive to essentially every food on this planet. My body will be puffy, inflamed, and painful. Not to mention, so goddamn tired all the time. But that’s it. It won’t last forever. I’m not going to die. Telling myself the opposite makes it all last a lot longer. Don’t pile stress about your stress-induced sickness onto your existing stress, and you'll be better soon.

And yet, when it’s happening, I also never know for a fact that my stress-based illness is definitely what’s going on. The result is getting trapped in a “will I or won’t I” obsessive spiral of anticipating the worst while reassuring myself that it might be nothing at all. There’s a lot of internal and external conversation about it, as people want to know if you’re sick and you want to be able to warn them that you feel like death… but also have to throw in the caveat, “Iunno, you have to realize that this happens to me all the time and it’s usually nothing, though.”

Of course, this creates the opportunity for my brain to 1) tell me I’m probably fine, quit complaining, pussy, and 2) compare myself to everyone else on the planet, who doesn’t crumble when their brain interprets times are hard. Because, of course, I have to make myself feel mentally ridiculous for feeling physically horrible. Other people are always happy to help in this regard, too. "You sure get sick a lot. I thought you had the flu last month. Wow, it always seems like something is wrong with you." Mhm, I feel the same on all accounts.

And, Fuckers, that’s why I stopped talking about it or looking for answers a long time ago. Instead, I've just relied on the most logical answer and quit worrying. I’ve done enough research on my own, not to mention all my Animal Science schooling, to know how stress responses work. They’re significant. They have the potential to disrupt your entire body through hormonal dysregulation. And they work differently - as far as we can tell - depending on the organism.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

So that’s what I’ve leaned on. Acknowledgement that stress really screws with me. It zaps my energy. It fogs up my brain. It makes me overstimulated. It causes weird pains and immune system responses. It churns up my digestive problems. It also makes me feel like I’m starving but nauseous all at once. Over long periods of time, it can lead to infections. It, obviously, ruins my sleep, which reaaaaally doesn’t help with any of it.

That’s that. Pretty complicated but simple. Try not to stress yourself out and god help you, if you do. Chill for a few days and you’ll be alright, probably. No one knows why it happens. Doctors don’t care. Just watch out for yourself, because no one else deals with this shit.

Unless… they totally do.

So, that’s fibromyalgia

I guess this is where I tell you something that a lot of folks have probably already figured out. Sorry if you’ve been yelling at me through your headphones this whole time - chill, I’m getting to it.

There definitely is a term for everything I’ve described. There are millions of other people who experience it. And, yeah, doctors often still don’t believe it’s real… but the numbers and anecdotal evidence don’t lie.

Ever heard of fibromyalgia?

Of course you have. But have you ever really looked into what it meant? Because… I hadn’t.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Annnnd then a listener and I were chatting on Instagram a few weeks ago. And she mentioned... everything I just mentioned. And her diagnosis had been? Fibromyalgia.

Via DM, your fellow Fucker started telling me about being tired all the time, mysterious aches and pains that worsen with stress, IBS symptoms, improper temperature regulation, and over-exertion that leads to required days of recovery. My jaw hit the floor.

You know I hopped online and started doing more research of my own. And all of the information was confirmed and expanded upon in a way that drove my mandible straight into the basement.

Hey, you know how fibromyalgia is synonymous with “widespread pain?” Oh shit, if you dig into it, there is a lot more to learn. Here’s a (maybe, complete?) list of the currently known associated symptoms. Keep in mind, I couldn’t find a single comprehensive resource for this information. This list is compiled of information from the the peer-reviewed article I'm going to read from later, the American College of Rheumatology, the CDC, Healthline, and Medical News Today. And if it sounds like a bit of a "catch all" pile, I think you're right.

Pain and stiffness all over the body

Fatigue and tiredness

Depression and anxiety

Sleep problems

Problems with thinking, memory, and concentration, known as “fibro-fog”

Headaches, including migraines

Tingling or numbness in hands and feet

Pain in the face or jaw

Digestive problems, such as abdominal pain, bloating, constipation, and irritable bowel syndrome

Tenderness to touch or pressure affecting muscles, sometimes joints or even the skin

Irritable or overactive bladder

Pelvic pain

Trouble focusing or paying attention

Pain or a dull ache in the lower belly

Dry eyes

Sleeping for long periods of time without feeling rested (nonrestorative sleep)

Acid reflux

Restless leg syndrome

Sensitivity to cold or heat

Problems with vision

Nausea

Weight gain

Dizziness

Cold or flu-like symptoms

Skin problems

Chest symptoms

Breathing problems

Insulin resistance

Wait, wait, wait. THAT’S what fibro is? Because, I’m sorry, I have literally never heard any of that detail before… and although it gets so ambiguous that I suspect these ailments are all the conditions that just haven't been explained before by medical science... this list just described my life. All the way down to the tiniest detail of dry eyes, as I now recall chronically dumping drops into mine for those same years in my 20s. What. The. Shit.

Prior to this research, my symptomatic knowledge of fibro was essentially - pain, of the unexplained and incurable variety. No one ever once has mentioned anything else about the condition to me, or allll the ways that it correlated with my years of health trauma. Not my peers, not my doctors, and not even my amazing, well-informed therapist.    

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

So, maybe I’m really late to the game here, but long story short, my mind was blown when I heard that there’s actually a term for this experience which I had forfeited to processing as a “unique way that my body individually destroys me” for all these years. I thought I was just uniquely uncomfortable all the time and stopped burdening others with my experiences.

Maybe that’s why I never had anyone clue me in to the diagnosis - I honestly stopped talking about the cyclical sickness a while back, after recognizing that people didn’t respond favorably to the narrative, “I just get too stressed out to function.” Shutting my mouth and writing off my experiences may have halted my potential for hearing a realistic account of living with fibromyalgia. Oh, how the trauma shame shenanigans never stop royally fucking you.

Of course, based on my own recent education, now I’m wondering if fibromyalgia applies to far more of us in the trauma community. Because if I hadn’t found reliable information on it in all my trauma and inflammatory illness research over the years… how many other people are in the same boat?

And this brings me to my next point. I really hate the term fibromyalgia.

Why I hate the term

There’s actually another explanation for why I never heard about everything that fibromyalgia describes. Uh, you’re going to hate me for this, but I didn’t think it was a “real” diagnosis.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

Yep. I’m telling you with moderate guilt that for the longest time, I appraised fibro in the same way that western medicine considers all psychosomatic illnesses - not valid. And I’m unhappy with myself, too. Believe me, I feel like my least favorite kind of person... a hypocrite. But this also points to the systemic issue that undermines so many of our attempts to get help, and that makes me far more unhappy.

You see, a number of years ago, as a budding counselor with a few years of experience, my therapist friend mentioned something about fibro. Specifically, that it was a common label granted to more seriously mentally affected patients… and it wasn’t believed to be a real thing. I wish I could remember more detail on the context, but the basis of the story is, someone that I trusted - someone with many trauma patients - told me that in her experience, no one took fibromyalgia seriously. People with intense mental illnesses regularly presented with unfounded complaints of pain, and this is the term they were assigned as a result.

There was no proof of their physical discomfort. The patients tended to have myriad mental and physical health issues. They tended to be more difficult clients. Professionals had doubts about how serious the complaints were. No evidence, no respect. It was just about that simple.

To give more weight to the story, here’s one quick excerpt that is actually validating to read, from an article titled, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview.

“People with FM often reported dismissive attitudes from others, such as disbelief, stigmatization, lack of acceptance by their relatives, friends, coworkers, and the healthcare system, that consider them as ‘lazy’ or ‘attention seeking’ people, with their symptoms ‘all in their head’. Such dismissiveness can have a substantial negative impact on patients, who are already distressed, and also on the degree of their pain.”

So… similar to the asshole social associates described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

So… similar to the assholes described above… for years after that, I paid no attention to fibromyalgia. When people brought it up, I nodded and moved on. I didn’t disbelieve that there would be a connection between mental illness and the onset of bodily pains after my own experiences, but the term had also been shuttled to a file in my head that sidled up next to, “seeking prescription pain meds.” This was an incorrect judgement based on incorrect, oversimplified information. But unfortunately, it left an impression.

It took the real life account of someone with the diagnosis to show me all the ways that my previous perception was completely incorrect. I suddenly realized how reductive and insulting the false information had been. Annnd all the ways that I could have really helped myself and a few others a lot sooner if I had just investigated the term on my own, rather than lazily falling back on someone else’s casually-expressed opinion.

So, I’m saying… fuck me. 100%. That makes me really upset with myself. But it makes me even more frustrated with the medical field.

And this is why I hate the term fibromyalgia.

It doesn’t actually explain a fucking thing… and it doesn’t seem like anyone is actually trying to.

At this point, there is no known cause for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

At this point, there is no known cause or organic mechanism for the development or persistence of the disorder. Fibromyalgia has essentially become more of a label for a grouping of symptoms that we “allow” people to assume when we don’t know what the hell might be wrong with them. I say “allow” very purposely, because it feels like our medical overlords have granted us this word as a way to pacify the uncomfortable masses - not treat them.

Millions of humans have detailed the same experiences, but science hasn’t yet come up with a way to explain them, so let’s go ahead and give them a new diagnosis that boils down to “Not sure what’s going on, but they say it’s unpleasant and it sounds a little something like widespread pain. Cool, let’s call it a day. Nah, we don’t need to educate the medical community or the public - we don’t need a single list of all the known comorbidities - because we don’t get it, ourselves. Let’s make sure we put that disclaimer right in the definition, so everyone knows it’s a controversial topic."

And implicit in saying that doctors and scientists don’t understand the term, comes a negative connotation of assumed delusion or attention-seeking complaints.

Essentially, what I’m bitching about is the tendency of researchers and practitioners to shuttle things they can’t directly measure to the back of the relevancy line. Despite all of the anecdotal evidence from fibro sufferers that corroborate the same causes, symptoms, and outcomes… we can’t see what they’re talking about and we don’t have an easy explanation, so we put this in the “fake news” stack of information - AKA psychosomatic illness.

Now, it’s also worth mentioning that fibromyalgia is deeply intertwined with trauma. Something like 2/3rds of fibro patients also have confirmed PTSD symptoms, if not higher. Exact numbers depend on which study you trust. Just know, it is a prevalent, accepted, correlation between trauma and the development of fibromyalgia. And of course, no one has determined the causative or affective relationship between the two at this point in time.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

Hell, we all know that a lot of mental and physical health professionals don’t even want to acknowledge trauma at this point - or, do so with a smirk and an eyebrow raise, at best. So tethering the two poorly-comprehended disorders together? Oh boy, it’s a sure-fire way to ensure that no one listens to a word you say after honestly answering their background information questions. Might as well throw down your wallet and walk yourself right out of the office at that point.

The medical field’s lack of trauma education is a big problem. Making “psychosomatic” a dirty word isn’t helping millions of folks out there. Being invalidated by the people who could possibly help you is another mental health crisis waiting to happen. And all of this is infuriating to me, following my own experiences and thinking about other people’s.

Should we take this one outrage step further? Sure.

You know that a vast majority of fibromyalgia sufferers are… women. Sorry, about to get a tad feminist. Is anyone here surprised that primarily female voices tend to be written off by medical professionals? Ha, ha, ha. No, probably not.

For all of human history, the ladies have been getting the shit end of the stick when it comes to medical care. We all know that women were given amazing explanations for their ailments, such as having “hysterics” or "the vapors" not so long ago.

Furthermore, there is research showing that doctors do not take women’s accounts of pain severity seriously, in particular. Even fellow female doctors and nurses are given different treatment by staff when they go to the ER, versus male counterparts. And if you’re a minority or socioeconomically challenged woman? The data says you might as well take two aspirin and see what happens the next morning, because the medical attention research is even worse for those demographics. Huge surprise.

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups one way or another… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?  

So, pulling this all together: Considering that the majority of us who receive complex trauma diagnoses are women… considering that implicit in this label, comes the increased likelihood that we’re not economically well-to-do and belong to minority groups… how do you figure we’ve ever had a chance of receiving real help for our unmeasurable physical conditions?  

Yeah, we haven’t.

We’ve been given a term - complete with a wink and a nudge - that no one wants to meaningfully research or prioritize understanding. We’ve received a new phrase that doctors will “generously grant us” when we’re drowning in unexplained symptoms and pain. We’re then labeled with a word that essentially amounts to “disregard and humor” for all our future appointments. On top of it all, we’re carrying the burden of traumatic histories, which immediately qualify us for misunderstood diagnoses that more or less equate “ghosts in their blood” - because, hell, we can’t quantify mental illness, either.

The whole ordeal makes me really upset. The fact that I was inadvertently pulled into this biased disbelief makes me more upset. It also serves as quite a demonstration of how powerful or deleterious knowledge can be after it worms its way into your head involuntarily and becomes your only “go-to” piece of data, true or false.

One seemingly-trustworthy person mentioning a negative opinion of fibromyalgia one time in my past somehow infiltrated my thoughts to the extent that I didn’t have a second thought for 5 years? And we're talking about a goddamn trauma researcher - with, what I consider - an otherwise open and connection-happy mind?

The power of assumed authority and truth in opinion is significant. If I can be swayed in this way, how could less mental health informed medical professionals stand a chance in responding differently? That’s frightening and clarifying… though immensely upsetting.

So, since biomedicine hasn’t bothered to find any great information for us, despite the rapidly increasing rate of fibromyalgia diagnoses in the past two decades - how can we make sense of the information to actually help ourselves?

Let’s talk about that next.

What we can conclude

So it kindof blows finding out that you probably qualify for a new medical term… only to find out that we don’t actually know anything about said term. I say this, because if you’re waiting for me to pop off with some sweet research on fibromyalgia… uh… I haven’t found it yet. But not for lack of trying. So far every article I’ve seen has been pretty basic and uninspired.

Does fibromyalgia correspond with trauma? It does. Does stress mediate and moderate fibromyalgia, PTSD symptoms, GI problems, and depression? It does. Does it take a long time and numerous appointments to receive medical help for fibromyalgia complaints? It does. Does the comorbidity of post-traumatic symptoms make fibro more uncomfortable and challenging to overcome? What do you know - it fucking does.

(Wow. So enlightening. Having two debilitating disorders is less fun than having one. Who’s funding these research studies, anyways?)

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

The first thing I can conclude is, there’s not that much to conclude. This is to say, no one - that I’ve seen, so far - has revealed anything super shocking or thought-provoking about fibromyalgia.

Really, the  most interesting things I learned from my reading are that

1) insulin resistance is another associated disorder, which explains even more of my baffling life

2) sex hormones are leached from your system under stress, which, refer to point number one... explains another huge chunk of my existence, and

3) the recommendations for treating fibro long term are the same recommendations I’ve given for getting your trauma life re-ordered.

You know how I always push for people to find out what’s manageable on their own through trial and error, rather than approaching trauma recovery with preventable fires burning in every area? Hey - someone agrees.

Namely, it's recommended that in order to manage fibromyalgia you establish routines including strictly nutrition-based eating habits, non-threatening forms of consistent exercising, prioritizing tons of sleep, and controlling your environment as much as possible for stressful stimuli. Doctors can also supplement your rehab with antidepressants, because, again, fibromyalgia is related to the same underlying hormonal imbalances as depression - but the larger health issues are managed best by changing your behaviors. Just like I’ve said.

I suppose this is no surprise, since this entire time I’ve unknowingly been talking, in large part, about how I’ve controlled my own fibromyalgia symptoms. I just thought it was mandatory trauma pains I was dampening. But the word is out! There's a separate phrase for it. The doctors and I agree; stop treating yourself like a turd, and maybe you’ll stop feeling like one. Whatdoyouknow. Sometimes there are reasons for the things I notice experientially, even if they aren’t originally informed by medical lingo.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

Secondly, looking at what we can conclude at this point about fibro… Well, it justifies my previous hypothesis that stress is the root of my body’s evil. There’s not much to definitively say about fibromyalgia at this point, but we know for a fact that it is agitated and potentially caused by stress.

This perfectly aligns with my observations that a terrible work week mixed with a personally challenging month on top of a physically exhausting cleaning marathon will lead to a systemic breakdown every time. And, conversely, those times when life has actually been pretty chill correspond to periods of bodily health and limited upset - the times when I wonder “was I ever really sick at all?” and start to health gaslight my damn self.

Realizing the link between stress and sickness, of course, also begins to explain the correlation to trauma, and particularly, complex trauma.

Now, let me start by saying that there’s some debate over the downstream effects of PTSD - some researchers swear that it decreases system arousal in the face of later stress, others have collected data reflecting that a nervous system hyper-sensitization takes place. From my own trauma involvement, I’ve seen and heard more cases of the latter; we’re quick to upset and easily pushed into stressed territory. I don’t know many, if any, trauma folks who are non-responsive to disturbing life events... but that sounds more like a deep, dangerous, clinical depression symptom to me.

Personally, once I’ve been chronically stressed for a few weeks or months, then I notice the loss of stress response take over. My limbic system gives up, the HPA axis stops responding, and therefore nothing can rattle me. Perhaps you’ve also had the experience of laughing when your car breaks down, because it’s already been 3 months of disaster around every turn and there’s nothing else you can do for yourself. So, sure, people can reach a point where they legitimately don’t respond to the chaos anymore, but I’m not so sure that’s a consistent norm. I think it’s more likely that you turn off your stress reactions if you’ve been adequately prepped to dissociate for the sake of sanity or your chemical balance is so wack that your danger center has powered down.

I can tell you without a doubt that before the point when my stress threshold has been raised sky-high thanks to repeat exposures and wiring disconnections... I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for basically every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses.

I’m a rapid-responder when anxiety comes calling. Stimulus - rapid survival reaction - no space in between being startled and shaking from head to toe. And this is the case for every Motherfucker I know. I’m no expert, but I think we tend to fall more into the hypervigilant camp surrounding this podcast, rather than the laxadonical one. Always on the lookout, always ready, often bowled over by our own responses

This nervous system sensitization, as they call it, explains a lot of trauma symptoms. I’ve regularly discussed the hypersensitivity problem it creates, when your brain doesn’t adequately filter out or assess neutral stimuli because it considers basically everything to be a threat. This can also contribute to the ADD and ADHD diagnoses that we receive, when our heads are too busy trying to sort all that data streaming in to direct our thoughts in a steady way. Or, the ways that we’re uniquely thrown immediately into panic mode when we sense a risk. Plus, we’ve probably all had the experience of tiny, secret triggers sneakily upsetting our bodies when the stimulation wasn’t even significant enough to pass through our cognitive recognition centers. These are all caused by the same systemic over-sensitization problem.

In general: yes, we trauma folk are sensitive to our environments - inner and outer. We are easily pushed down survival pathways to fight/flight/freeze/fawn responses. We rapidly catastrophize ambiguous information, which can convince our brains and bodies that the worst has already happened. We’re hyperaware and easily overstimulated, often agitated, and regularly on edge.

I maintain, in the face of controversial evidence, that we get stressed out easily. And our bodies react dramatically.

I feel like I should also state that this is especially true, as most of us have read, when we have unresolved emotional strain floating around in our meat jackets. We can be overstimulated and aroused (in a bad way) from the inside, out. Since the majority of us are not skilled in emotional recognition or resolution, we’re often walking around with a lifetime of hard feelings stored in our guts. And there’s been roughly zero doubt in my head about emotional and environmental stress contributing to dissociation, contributing to a vagal nerve shutdown as a big part of the digestive failure that characterizes fibromyalgia, IBS, Crohns, and so many autoimmune disorders.

On top of the unresolved emotional root of stress, this pings another episode that I've previously released. The one about being overly restrictive in your diet and exercise for the sake of appearance perfectionism. If you physically exert yourself too strongly through caloric deprivation or extreme work outs, you can easily stress your body into a survival response. It can't tell the difference between starvation for bikini season and starvation for lack of food. Running your ass off for your upcoming wedding or running your ass off for your upcoming bear attack. Your danger sensing center is sensitive and it overreacts, much like myself.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.

Now, considering that all these examples of central nervous system sensitization and physiological survival states that go hand in hand with Complex Trauma and Fibromyalgia, so many weird health mysteries are potentially resolved. But, not exactly the pain component. Or, is it.  

Again, the authors out of Italy and Brazil who penned, The management of fibromyalgia from a psychosomatic perspective: an overview, have a potential way to think about that. They state:

“Even if the causes and pathophysiology of FM are not completely known, widespread chronic pain could be explained by a vulnerability due to a perturbation in the central processing of sensory information, named ‘central sensitivity’ or ‘central sensitization’, that amplifies the response of the central nervous system to a peripheral input. Hence, people with FM and/or other central sensitivity syndromes have a lower threshold for interpreting sensory information as noxious. Several factors, such as genetic predisposition, deficiencies in neurotransmitter levels, biochemical changes in the body, endocrine dysfunction, mood states, anxiety, sociocultural environment, psychological trauma and past experiences in general, expectancy beliefs, and catastrophization have been proposed as explanatory mechanisms of patients’ subjective experience of central sensitivity. Current research indicates that abnormal sensory and pain processing is a key factor in the pathophysiology of FM. There is robust evidence that  abnormalities in central pain processing, rather than damage or inflammation of peripheral structures, play an important role in the development and maintenance of chronic pain in patients with FM.”

Interesting, huh? I still think inflammatory responses are a big part of the 1000 piece stress puzzle, but I don’t disagree with the idea that our finely-tuned danger detection systems amplify pain and discomfort signals to deafening levels. Putting all the system data together, you can deduce a fairly complete picture of how strain, physical degradation, and pain are all related.

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

Finally, I have confirmation that being overly stimulated causes everything from my energy drain to my dietary responses, migraines, and autoimmune attacks... all the way down to my temperature sensitivity, random presentation of allergic reactions, and even that occasional sharp pain in my jaw… not to mention all my life-altering functional problems, like being unable to sleep at night, existing with debilitating pain, and living while feeling sedated?

All of my strange health complaints from the past decade have aligned with this new label. And that label corresponds perfectly with my inkling that running on cortisol and overzealous guardsmen have been the major source of my health anxiety sauce. Welp, it’s been validating research for all of my educated guesses, to say the least.

Long story short, there’s not a ton of helpful information about the reasons for developing fibromyalgia or what makes it get worse. But there’s one thing we do know for a fact; stress is the enemy. At least I think it’s comforting to conclude that stress is the root of many of our C-PTSD complaints, as well as depression, anxiety, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, and now… a whole list of common maladies, labeled fibromyalgia.

Whether or not it’s really understood, at least there is a connection between everything. At least there’s something that ties ALL the random, disjointed pieces of torture together. I’m guessing that for many of us, fibromyalgia is similar to complex trauma, again, in that regard.

And, lastly, I can conclude that… I have more questions

More questions than answers

Here’s one last excerpt from the aforementioned article, which is the only one I found that’s worth hearing from.

They state: “FM is labelled, often with a negative connotation, as a ‘functional somatic syndrome’, part of a ‘somatization disorder’, ‘fashionable diagnosis’, ‘idiopathic pain disorder’, ‘non-disease’, ‘psychosomatic syndrome’, dismissing the true suffering of the patients. In the absence of a univocal identified biological cause, subjective reports of symptoms by the patients are often viewed derogatorily and discredited as ‘psychogenic.’”

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Like I said, there isn’t a lot of helpful information out there if you’re looking to learn more about this controversial condition. Unfortunately, it has been categorized as a “functional somatic disorder” which essentially means that we don’t have an explanation for the organic basis of the disorder.

Uh, I don’t know what could be more organic than the endogenous hormones in our own bodies creating downstream health effects, but hey, I’m not a biologist anymore, what do I know?

The fact remains - there’s a lot more to understand about the assorted mechanisms that lead from trauma into depression, generalized stress disorder, and physical manifestations of a biochemical system that’s running off-balance. And this is where I have the biggest questions.

First, I have to get this out of the way. I’m wondering about the known gender split in fibro. The numbers are horrendously skewed towards women as the primary sufferers, and that’s not helping the medical legitimacy case. So, what are the chances that men just don’t have fibromyalgia at the same rate as women? Either they don’t get stressed to the same magnitude or their bodies respond completely differently? It’s possible. OR. Is it something else?

It seems to me like this follows another similar mystery - what are the chances that men just don’t suffer from Complex Trauma at the same rate as women? Pretty poor? Probably more of a diagnostic or seeking-help issue? Yeah, I think so, too. Yet, if you look strictly at the numbers, it sure seems like there are more women hearing about C-PTSD than men.

This analogous labeling issue between the genders makes me think of a few explanations…

1) Men don’t seek help for their physical ailments the way that women do, either because they’re less in tune with their bodies or because they’re shamed for not being tough enough if they complain. Just like C-PTSD.

2) Men don’t hear about fibromyalgia, because it is an engendered diagnosis reserved for dramatic women at this point. Just like C-PTSD. They receive other partial diagnoses, like IBS, that are less controversial. This leads me into a whole spiraling rant about several genital-dependent psychological diagnoses that I feel similarly about, but one of them is…

3) Men don’t receive the same level of fibromyalgia labels as women because men don’t often receive Complex-PTSD labels, which would serve as a hint to their doctors, since trauma is a well-known predisposing factor…

This brings me to the next set of questions.

It’s unpopular opinion time, but, frankly, I don’t know that any of these trauma and fibro issues are really that separate.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

It seems to me like we’re talking a lot about one particular problem that splinters off into a thousand different outcomes, depending on the circumstances, the biology, and the human in question. Not separate conditions.

First comes the trauma, then comes the presentation of downstream physical and mental symptoms. Presentation, magnitude, and personal recognition of these symptoms varies, just like severity of Complex Trauma does. But under both conditions, our experiences are often so similar - the hard part is that we struggle to describe them and often lean on abstract language which can be used in such diverse ways. We focus on different problems, depending on our own life impacts.

So, maybe we notice and report internal events differently, but it’s hard for me to believe that the two disorders aren’t more than corresponding diagnoses - and are, in fact, one and the same.

I could be very wrong, but I’d sure like to find out.

So, to the small percentage of fibromyalgia sufferers who don’t have trauma… you sure? To the depressed and anxious folks who can’t seem to get a grip on their physical health, but never saw their life as traumatic… want to take another look? To all the traumatized folks with Raynauds, food allergies, hypertension, ADD, aches, and migraines… have you really looked into the full definition of fibromyalgia?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

ARE these conditions of trauma and fibromyalgia different? Or is this another complication in identifying unseeable symptoms in a population of folks who never learned to name their mental and physical experiences? Is this an artifact from a group who tends to underestimate and under-report their own experiences in light of unhealthy others’ core beliefs? How prevalent is fibromyalgia, really? Especially in the context of Trauma?

Is it possible that everything boils down to one underlying event - trauma - that produces a whole host of other biological adaptations down the line? Did we create a separate term for it, simply based on a lack of standardization?

Or is this an exclusionary problem?

Have all the various ways we’ve learned to categorize and describe our experiences actually separated one full disorder into two half-disorders; one that encompasses the brain and another that covers the body? Is it our societal misunderstanding of the connection between our perceptions and our meaty husks, forcing us to separate the issues of mental and physical health that would be better understood together, as one?

I’m not sure! But I’m definitely thinking a lot about it.

Partially, from personal bias. I always considered my physical issues to be part of my trauma life, not separate from it - and that explanation made perfect sense to me. Where do these disorders really split? Maybe it’s possible to have Complex PTSD without the physical symptoms, but that's really not what I hear from people. The most of us have at least some periods of physical ailments, even if they're not persistent. To me, it seems like a distinction that should be made within the trauma diagnosis - with or without physical wellness degradation - rather than piling a separate, largely-ineffective diagnosis on the vast majority of us who have some variety of said bodily ailments.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

I feel like the real issue isn’t “what is fibromyalgia?” The actual problem is a lack of biological understanding in the Psychology field. And a mirrored failure to understand Psychology in the medical field. Then, throw in a reluctance to study the conglomerate of bio-physiology and mental health issues in the scientific research literature because both experiences are difficult to measure or confirm and the studies would be less elegant.

If more psychologists actually learned system biology and more medical practitioners actually studied abnormal psychology, maybe we wouldn’t have disparate diagnoses that each come with a half-recognition. Maybe we could have one term that encompassed the full experience of trauma. Maybe these professionals could confirm all the details that we don’t understand by working with a more comprehensive approach to how humans work as a whole, rather than organ by organ. Just a fucking thought.  

Because, I can tell you, if my therapist friend had the same biological education that I did at the time, I guarantee that she wouldn’t have told me fibromyalgia was a “pseudo diagnosis.” If she had knowledge of the connection between stress hormones and bodily breakdown, plus the trauma physiology that determines our sensitivity to stress - there’s no way she would have been so flippant or insensitive with her words. But under the influence of her counseling peers, the diagnosis became a fallacy.

I think this highlights the danger of the problem at hand. It only took one industry-determined void of knowledge to pass along an unfair opinion that skewed at least my perception for years down the line. And, think about it, how many times has one innocently-baseless comment in the psychology or medical fields probably created a lifetime of bias in an up-and-coming professional?

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Maybe this is why we have the self-perpetuating negative connotation of psychosomatic illness in our society that seems to crawl its way towards improvement, while every other disorder makes significant strides. A lack of personal understanding of the biology-psychology connection is easily turned into a respected opinion, and readily transmitted to unknowing people who are eager to learn from their wise mentors. And so, the next generation inherits the same set of half-baked progress-stunting ideas. Over and over and over.

Depressing! And enlightening.

And that’s roughly where I stand today, after days of fibromyalgia research and very few satisfactory answers. Depressed and enlightened.

More or less, asking myself more questions about the legitimacy of our entire mental and physical healthcare system and all the lines we draw in the sand. Confident that trauma leads to increased stress leads to increased brain and body trauma. Somewhat happy to know that I’m actually not the only one who consistently apologizes for feeling like shit and questions if it’s “valid” or not because it seems connected to my brain. But also, pretty pissed off that we’ve been given a word that comes with no explanations and a hellofalot of medical field judgement, as if we needed more of that.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Oh, one more factoid to throw into the end of this conversation. There’s a link between low socioeconomic status and fibromyalgia.

Hey, the same link exists between socioeconomic status and complex trauma. Hey, it’s another predisposing factor for post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms’ emergence. Hey, big surprise, if you have a stable and predictable physical and financial environment, you’re less likely to develop the terror-based conditions brought on by earlier trauma.

If you have financial resources, you’re also less likely to be chronically stressed by the demands of life. You’re probably also more likely to receive respectable medical care. Therefore, meaning that you’re both less likely to have enough perturbation to develop over-sensitive nervous system responses and less likely to be dismissed by doctors with a label they don’t believe exists. Plus, probably more likely to have access to mental health care that could prevent the onset of Complex Trauma presentation, and likely fibromyalgia, altogether.

Oh, look, logic explains so many things. Or, fuckit, let’s just choose to believe that poor people are lazy and always want to complain about something, whether it’s in their heads or their bodies. Whatever the rich white men say.

Big issues to think about.

Like I state way too often on this show, it’s the small things in this trauma life that bring you comfort. And monumental societal failures that make you scream. (Okay, I just added that last part today.)

Wrap it

Okay, let me get out of here before I question more beliefs that are way out of my paygrade. Sorry, medical and psychological practitioners. I know that I’m just a critical observer who, like that kid everyone hates in class, perpetually asks too many questions.

At the bottom of all my complaints, I just wish that we could come up with a way to characterize these disorders that actually helped people understand what was happening. If you know how your body is reacting to what stimuli and how the symptoms are all related, that's a lot more powerful than throwing assorted barely-defined titles at them.

If we can't definitively say that fibromyalgia and trauma symptoms are one and the same, fine. Let there be a distinction. But I think it would be preferable to call fibro something more telling and true to the accepted cause. Call it semantics, but something like Stress Affective Syndrome would be more useful than the made-up word of fibromyalgia. Please, anyone feel free to come up with a better phrase, because I just made "Stress Affective Syndrome" up so I could say "I've got SAS." It already fits the bill.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

I guess I’m just up in arms that I’ve tried to find answers for my brain and body health all these years, and turned up completely empty handed until random connections have eventually given me the information I’ve needed after a decade of effort. Maybe if I had my complex trauma diagnosis before I had my health complaints, someone would have mentioned fibromyalgia. Maybe, they would have knowingly smirked and sent me to a psychiatrist. Hard to say.

Even if I had gotten that information about fibro, would it have helped separate from the C-PTSD diagnosis? Honestly, probably not. I would have just been harder on myself for suddenly being too weak in the face of stress. And after reading that medical professionals doubt the validity of fibromyalgia, in the first place? Well that would have been a whole other source of disbelief, anger, and negative self-regard. Maybe a whole new crisis, once my inner critic got a chance to hammer away at my head.

I suppose that figuring out the patterns of my strange bodily conditions actually needed to happen organically for this Fucker, because any semi-questioned diagnosis would have just been more fuel for my trauma fire at that point when I so thoroughly despised myself. Confirming to myself, for a fact, that stress fucks me up may have been a prerequisite for accepting that I might be “one of those fibro people.” You know, the ones who lie about their symptoms. Ha.

And, again, this says a lot about the potential damage that poorly-described labels can do to people… just as much as it says about my own reluctance to be considered a weak-minded over-reactor by outsiders.

All of this being said, I’m so grateful for finally finding out exactly what all fibromyalgia actually entails. It took too long, but honestly, the information came at the perfect time. Two days after I got it, I was stress-sick. Ahhh, it's fibro time. How’s that for irony?

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

As always, I do think there is some empowerment in the basic root understanding that you aren’t the only one who’s dealt with any of this. The mysterious illnesses, the pain, or the lack of care from modern medicine aren’t individual experiences. Hey, you might even be relieved to know that someone else on this planet routinely asks herself, “Do I have cancer for real this time, or am I just overworked again?”

After years of nobody I spoke to having a tale that even mildly resembled my autoimmune breakdown, finding anybody who related to my issues was extremely relieving. Not only was it a common experience, but it meant that I hadn’t somehow brought the discomfort on myself - through mental illness, physical shenanigans, or plain old weakness - the ways that I feared.

Furthermore, it proved that I hadn’t imagined it all. Because believe it or not, you’re surprisingly willing to throw yourself under the bus after all the pain has passed. I’ve spent the past decade telling people, “I think I have the glutens, as I call it... but I don’t really know though, it’s never been explained, sometimes other things bother me, and sometimes it’s really not a big deal, I don't know what it is” as an almost-apology. A disclaimer that I, too, doubt my own memories and conclusions because they weren’t properly validated by who I considered authority figures.

Hearing that other people had digestive disorders and autoimmune disasters in the wake of Complex Trauma, via the book The Body Keeps The Score, shocked me into self-acceptance of my prior experiences. Hearing that all of it can be encapsulated by this term fibromyalgia a few days ago - well, shit. This is a more mainstream occurrence than I ever previously thought.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma feel more applicable than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

And you know what? It does matter to me that I’m not the only one who falls apart when my brain gets overwhelmed. Even if it doesn’t fix anything. Even if my own postulations for how fibromyalgia is born from trauma are more enlightening than the scientifically proven ones. Even if I don’t believe the term deserves to stand alone as a medical label without further delineation - especially of the connection to and overlap with trauma. Even if I think… it might be inseparable.

Now I know. When I feel a physical breakdown coming on, with the suspected cause being stress… I don’t have to apologize for it. I don’t need to tell people that I just can’t handle the pressure with unfettered shame for my own biochemistry. I can rest assured that what I’m going through is common - far more common than we know - and completely valid. Even if there are people ready to tell you that it's not.

But, to be honest, I still probably won’t tell anyone that it’s called fibromyalgia. I’m not proud to say, I wouldn’t want them to think I’m just being dramatic.

UGH.

[vulturepunk]

what is wrong with me?

i get asked a lot, point-blank, “what’s wrong with you?”, usually by total strangers. i get so sick of answering that question when rude strangers interrogate me about my disability, that i don’t actually tell friends that i love and trust what exactly is Wrong With Me, even though i’d like them to know. so WITHOUT FURTHER ADO here is an explanation of my disabilities, for my friends and mutuals to read at their leisure & for me to send to New Friends who are interested in my flaming dumpster of a body

brief explanation: when i was 18 i had a really bad virus that damaged my nervous system, and as a result i have two chronic illnesses, POTS and ME/CFS. they cause chronic fatigue, chronic pain, fainting, and a bunch of other stuff. my symptoms get worse when i stand up, and better when i lay down (though they don’t go away completely). i use a wheelchair to get around on bad days, and i’ve been experimenting with using a cane as well.

longer explanation: the virus i had when i was 18 damaged my autonomic nervous system, which controls blood pressure, heart rate, digestion, breathing, and other “automatic” body functions. as you can imagine, this causes a lot of problems for me.

the main one is that my body doesn’t regulate blood flow correctly; when i stand up, instead of maintaining equal blood distribution throughout my body, my veins just let all the blood pool in my feet. none of my organs, including my brain, get enough oxygen because there’s not enough blood carrying oxygen to them. this causes me to pass out as my brain shuts down all non-essential processes and prioritizes not getting permanently damaged and/or dying. 

i can prevent the fainting and manage the other symptoms by drinking a lot of water and eating a lot of salt to beef up my blood volume, taking medications to control my heart rate and blood pressure, exercising regularly to strengthen my heart, and getting up really slowly to allow my body time to fix the blood issue. this doesn’t always work, but it mostly reduces my symptoms.

because my ANS (autonomic nervous system) is broken and there’s not enough blood in any of my organs, i deal with delightful symptoms such as: frequent vomiting! dangerously rapid pulse! stabbing chest pain! generalized pain! exhaustion worse than anything i’d ever experienced before i got sick! migraines! vertigo! trouble breathing! inability to regulate temperature! generally feeling like i have the worst flu ever and also am having a heart attack! yay!!!

because my main problems are caused by being upright and i can be more or less functional while not upright, i use a wheelchair on my worst days. it helps me get around with minimal fatigue, pain, and brain damage from fainting and hitting my head. most people expect me to be sad about using a wheelchair but actually i love it! it means freedom, the ability to move without pain and exhaustion and danger. with it i can do things that i could only dream of without it. i don’t resent my wheelchair; i’m grateful for it. also, nyooming down hills is fun. 

EVERYTHING THAT I’VE JUST EXPLAINED is from ONE of my chronic illnesses, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (also known as POTS or dysautonomia). i have ANOTHER chronic illness, called myalgic encephalomyelitis (more commonly known as chronic fatigue syndrome, but i hate that name; it trivializes a complex and debilitating illness). more on that in my next post; i decided to split this up because it was getting really long. 

[askbloatedbellyblog]

Update: AKA wtf did you go AB3

Alright everyone, now that my birthday is over, I thought I should give everyone an update on why I’ve sorta disappeared. 

Well first off, life and work got extremely busy. I’m been trying to accomplish some real life goals and have made some success, got super stressed out with too many things to do and even quit a place I’ve worked at for nearly 6 years for mental health reasons even though I then worked there for another 6 months after. yeah it was super weird.

I’ve had anxiety for a while and some of the stuff I was doing was trying to get over it by confrontation, lessen some by getting out of situations, and pursuing dreams.

Now that doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten bellies or anything else either, just been stretched thin. Or so I thought.

So what I chalked up to getting old I’m not really old just thought “aging” and apparently this is fairly common with what I will lay out and anxiety sometimes to an extreme with more panic attacks and depression which I’ve always dealt with and have been going to therapy for, which I suggest for anyone, lack of focus, ADHD, muscle aches, tiredness (which I thought was from bad sleep habits), etc; weren’t exactly what I thought they were.

I’m a fairly fit person. I workout or had but again motivation was waning or being busy but also gets to this in a second nearly every day, I don’t eat TOO badly, I sleep way worse than I should but okay, take vitamins etc. Recently leaned on energy drinks too much but oh well. But I’ve had some bad foot pain and other ailments for a while. I’ve not had a ton of money, thought part of it was from tile floors or planter fasciitis (basically a tendon injury that can be caused by over use and flat feet, which guilty). 

So after finally reaching deductible for the year, I finally went to the doctor and discovered that somehow I have peripheral neuropathy. Meaning somehow my nerves are messed up. I can move fine, but I was told my “sensory nerves were worse than an 80 year old” and that why my leg/feet were on fire. Usually this happens with advanced diabetes which I don’t have (as far as they can tell and said I’d know it by the time this would have happened). 

It’s really great to hear that your nervous system is all jacked up and you didn’t know it. I’m still trying to figure out a legit diagnosis with a few of the blood tests I’ve had be fairly normal. It still could be something with my thyroid, maybe cancer, MS, who knows. I’m still trying to get in to see other doctors to try to see what is going on, though I have a sneaking suspicion and so far way less serious than all that.

At the casual suggestion of the doctor who did my nerve test because it “helps the nerves”, I took vitamin b12. I’ve taken some before and its in BASICALLY everything as far as anything fortified, the multivitamin I take, energy drinks, cereal, you name it. It’s in there to SOME degree. Well I’ve been having digestion issues as of late (wondering if I really had like IBS or Celiac etc) so I thought “You know what, I’ll buy one of those gummy versions so I can chew it up better and see what happens.” Well boy howdy, did that affect things and not necessarily for the better at first. I had bought both a b12 gummy and a b complex and the complex happened to have a different form of b12 than is usually in all those shelf stable fortified version of food. It was the “active” version of the vitamin (because apparently there are 4 different types, who knew).

Have you ever wanted to know what it’s like to feel like you’re on fire? Or to have your whole body be electrically charged? Well basically that’s what happened. Still happening to a degree. Still trying to find out for sure (which apparently is very hard to find doctors well versed in it because it does have symptoms similar to other diseases and not always present in the blood) but it looking pretty likely I have pernicious anemia. SUPER fun let me tell you. Not sure if it’s going to be a forever thing or just somehow got a b12 deficiency but I’m really starting to suspect actually a family history with it and not having things connected together.

Normal people don’t react to vitamin B12, even if they take too much, they just pee it out. But when I’ve taken it especially at first (it’s a known issue that it can have worse symptoms when you first start getting B12 again because your system finally is screaming GIVE ME ALL THE THINGS) I’ve gotten worse symptoms of pain, migraines, spreading nerve pain, lung, heart issues, breathing, stamina, everything out the window for a little bit. Being on fire but knowing you have to deal with it as best you can is super fun let me tell you. In  a perfect world, I’d actually get shots for it but that requires finding a doctor who believes it. The big problem is that some people don’t find out they have it for YEARS and by then nerve damage is permanent. If you act fast it can be reversed. I don’t want to ruin my shot at getting better while I can. 

Now the good news is so far, I have been getting better! It’s early days but nerves are less on fire. I’ve been getting energy up, libido is better, mood is better, breathing is getting better, heck even my digestion and heartburn have been getting much better. Not perfect but improving. Hell I didn’t even realize it was an issue but I had a night a bit ago where I was tingling all over in my legs and feet and suddenly could move my pinkie toes more than I ever remember being able to. So things are communicating and trying to recalibrate. 

Fun fact: did you know lack of B12 can cause anxiety, panic attacks, depression, insomnia, sleepiness, dementia, lack of focus, bowel issues, nerve damage and more? So my anxiety and depression (not saying I’m fixed or that it will go away by any means) could be linked to chronic lack of b12? That lack of being able to concentrate and focus could also be symptoms? Did you know that if you have absorption problems (bingo from intestinal issue) and taking heart burn medication (also a check mark because have fought it for years) can cause b12 deficiency? Because you need the stomach acid to digest it and have it in your colon? WELL I KNOW NOW LET ME TELL YOU WHAT. Did you know that working out burns more B12 and so does stress and anxiety? So its very possible that because I have been working out and super stressed that I actually made the problem worse by using up what little stores of B12 I had? SUPER GREAT let me tell you. 

So while I’m still trying to get to a doctor and hopefully don’t have something more serious, it seems likely that I’ve had a chronic B12 deficiency for years and it may have just not been in the right form for me to use despite ingesting a ton and then the cycle just made it worse. It could be a long road with maybe some permanent issues but I’m hopeful things are looking up even though it seems like it’s kind of a two steps forward, one step back kind of process with some relapses even though there’s progress. I still get worried and stressed about my condition and hate being in pain and weak and probably over research on whats going on (also still hoping that it’s not something more serious) but considering I’m making improvements and doing so fairly quickly all things considered makes me okay and hopeful I’ll be better than ever and able to accomplish more and not worry that I’m “getting old” when I’m pretty young.

Where does this leave me and this blog? Well it’s not going anywhere. I still exist, I’m still pining for bellies or muscle in my own way, and while it’s been slow thanks to health, lack of time, and lack of motivation; I do have some stories I’ve been working on and hopefully can get back to more canons. I do like being creative and trying to think of new things, even if I do tend to reuse a lot of ideas sometimes. Hopefully everyone will still stick around to support me even if I’m absent for a bit either on Tumblr, Twitter, or wherever else. I’m sorry for sometimes dropping conversations from being busy or procrastinating or social anxiety. Maybe that will get fixed with this. I’m honestly horrible at being the first one to start a conversation or pick it up again, so bug me first please.

Congrats if you’ve made it this far in my big life update/rant/manifesto? Thank you those who gave me birthday wishes. I luckily was healthy enough to go out and have some fun and I think I’m well enough to rejoin society again though there may be some pain. Thanks everyone for sticking with me over the years in all the places I’ve been and for enjoying all the weird ideas and writing that I’ve done to torture various characters. I hope to continue to do so for years to come. 

Laters!

AB3

[ranawaytothedas]

Get to know the blogger...

I have a little over 200 followers now... so I thought I would introduce myself properly... 

So... Hi, my name is Jane, I go by Evil Ducky or Deathvalleyqueen on most social media save AO3 where i am LadyJane666 (because i was like 25 and thought I was super edgy when I signed up). I am a Thyroid Cancer survivor who now lives with chronic pain and am in the process of finding out why my body hates itself. I am a full time stay at home mom to my amazing minion who lives with his own chronic medical issues. 

In my real life, I am a vocal advocate for Disability Rights and Health Care for all advocate among many other worthy causes, but I had to focus my efforts on one area because my body can’t keep up with everything my mind and heart wants to support. I don’t call myself a “Social Justice Warrior” or anything like that... I am just a normal person who tries to do her part to make the area around me better... 

I come from a very diverse family, we have people of varying ethnic backgrounds, gender identities, and sexual orientations, and I don’t tolerate hate speech of any kind. Because at the core of everything we are all people and deserve respect and treatment based off actions not skin color, sex or who you date. 

Personally, I call myself Irish-American, because my bio-dad and his family came to the US in the mid 1930′s (yes my bio dad was that old) from Ireland. My mother’s side also has fairly recent Irish Imagreints as well as some who have been in the US since the 1700′s. I really love diging into my family history because some of the best stories you may find are within your own family history.  There was always talk of my father’s family being Travelers (Irish Travelers) but I have never found any like proof of this other than family stories. I am very proud of my Irish heritage and culture. One of the other big “special interests” of mine is Irish history, langue and culture... because I want to know where my family comes from and I have a great deal of respect for all the Irish people have endured and still endure. It gives me great pride to say that I can trace my family back there... because where we come from is important. 

My non-da hobbies include baking, video chatting my sister, spending time with my minion and trying to make sure the stray cats in my neighborhood are semi-looked after. I would take them all in, but my husband has kindly asked me to not to... lol 

My other big fandoms are ASOIAF/GoT, Fallout, The Witcher (this is a newer one), The Walking Dead, and I like SW but don’t actively engage with the fandom because I have strong and often unpopular opinions on the new films so rather than feed the flames of fandom unrest I choose not to engage. 

I guess that’s me...  

I like to think I am a friendly enough person and am always open to chatting with people. I just always ask that you be kind and respectful and I intern will be kind and respectful. If you come at me with harshness don’t expect me to be nice and obliging... 

But I look forward to sharing more of Maeve’s story and little tidbits about my other ocs... Thanks for taking the time read this <3  

[theoutletonmychest]

Painkillers (A Small Story)

Trigger Warning: Suicide, Bad Doctors

I was on 75mcg/hr of Fentanyl for 9 years before people suddenly decided it was a problem.  The policy at my neurologist's office changed, and I had to get my meds from a Pain Management Specialist instead.

Except nobody would give me the medication I had been taking for almost a decade without a single issue or abuse.  The medication that was the only thing between me and so much pain that I don't want to exist.

So, after bouncing around from unhelpful PMS, to one that almost made me cry in their office, to a PMS who hates my guts because I told them my honest experience in this body...

I was just taken off my meds.  No titration.  No warning.  I have never been through anything so miserable.  The amount of pain my body is in, unmedicated, is indescribable.  And it's gotten worse since I first sought out treatment.

Everyone said I was just going through withdrawal, but my only symptom was pain.  No sweating or shaking or craving or anything.  Just the pain that led me to seek treatment initially... dialed up by a decade of my disease progressing.

I was constantly suicidal the entire duration of the ordeal.  Eleven days?  Fifteen?  I don't really remember how long I was unmedicated.  It was a bad.  I've blocked a lot of it out.  I physically couldn't sleep more than 90 minutes at a time.

I eventually went to the hospital, because I didn't trust myself to make it through the night.  They gave me my pain meds.  One patch.  72 hours of relief.  They didn't hold me for suicide watch.

I passed out for a day.  Then, when the patch ran out, I tried CBD.  And THC.  It was disgusting.  And it made my pain worse.  I didn't even know that was a possibility.  I figured there must be a mistake, because everyone sings its praises as a painkiller for conditions like mine.  But, no...  It makes my nerves burn even worse.

I was desperate.

The last Pain Management Specialist I had seen told me about a drug for withdrawal that I should try.  Even though I had zero evidence of withdrawal, I figured that if I take the stupid drug and still have the same pain after however long, that she'd believe that I'm not a drug addict.

What she didn't say, when offering this "withdrawal drug" in place of the pain medication keeping me alive, was that it's a fuckin' pain reliever.  A narcotic with an anti-narcotic (to cancel out any high or euphoria or whatever it is drug addicts chase that I have never experienced) or something.  I don't really care about the details.

The thing about it is...  It works even better for my raw, burning nerve endings than the 75mcg Fentanyl that I had been taking.

Suboxone is freaking amazing, and the doctors aren't worried that I'm taking it to get high because of the anti-stuff stuff.

I just really wish that, when I went looking for help, clearly distraught over my worst nightmare coming true, I had been given all the information I needed to make a decision.  And not treated like an addict.

Because I didn't have all the information, I turned down this miracle the first time it was offered.  I was marked as displaying drug-seeking behavior.  And I went through two weeks of hell... Living my worst fear become reality.

I've been on this new medicine for almost a year, now.  And I've reclaimed a lot of what pain took from me.

There's no real point to this story.  I just wanted to share my experience and, maybe, introduce Suboxone to some people who might be helped by it.

Being chronically ill is really hard.  Give yourself as much of a helping hand as you're able.

[stressedspidergirlsfitnessblog]

Just some things

I have been thinking a lot. And I just want to talk about stuff.

Happy, sad, etc. It's kind of like also going to double as an introduction to new followers.

Hi. I'm Kara. I have bipolar 2 and PTSD. My shoulder is permanently damaged and I will be disabled there for life. It limits a lot of what I do and causes me constant pain.

Something is wrong with my knee, and hip, and lower back. I can finally afford x-rays and so June 3rd they will hopefully take a look if my insurance will cover it. Basically I am mentally and physically disabled. I have stomach issues that are also currently not 100% diagnosed but we're working on it. Some of it is food, some of it... Who knows?

I am always tired. Like bone deep exhaustion tired. Sleep doesn't do anything to help that. The pain is constant. Non stop. It wears me down. Some days the pain is so bad I can't think or function. This is my reality.

Right now my back pain is so bad pain killers aren't touching it. I wanted to run, but it was chilly. So I walked around inside while waiting for a prescription to get filled. It sucked. I wanted to lie on the floor.

So every step I take, every chore I finish... Is a big deal. I know other ppl have diagnoses more severe, or more restrictive. But this is me. I'm a spoonie. And this is my life.

I need tramadol sometimes just to sleep because the pain is so constant. So if you have problems with opioid use or people managing pain leave me alone. If you think people who manage chronic pain with medication are addicts you can also leave me alone. I don't take tramadol often. Just the days it's so bad I can't breathe or sleep. So 60 pills lasts me around 10 months. Because thanks to our govt mismanaging drugs and big pharma... I'm always afraid each refill is my last. And quite frankly taking one or two a week would epically improve my life. I could sleep better more often. Do more physical activity. Etc.

Okay so that's... The sad stuff. I guess.

I started a new job last year. And as I'm improving my physical and mental health I'm working on improving my appearance. A lot of stuff embarrassed me for a long time.

I'm working on clearing up some of the worst of my acne scars. It's taking time but it's working. I could never have afforded to do that before. I'm using a serum and a night cream and a peel. I keep meaning to do it twice a week. I usually only manage once. But I'm seeing improvement. I've wanted to do something for years. Improving my skin makes me less embarrassed and helps my mental health.

My hair also hasn't always been healthy or well kept and maintained. I am slowly getting better at doing this. It's naturally curly and wavy and there's a lot of frizz. I'm embracing it vs trying to fight it. I've gotten a conditioner for it, a little serum kind of thing, and a mousse. All designed to care for hair like mine. I'm wearing it down more vs hiding it up at all times.

I am working on improving my body, too. Losing weight, strengthening it. Eating better.

Some part of loving yourself is taking care of yourself even when you don't want to.

But not everyone has the financial means to do all of it. I couldn't afford medical care. Or hair or skin products in the past. And I don't want to waste hundreds of dollars. But if I'm using them and they help it's not a waste. Especially bc the stuff I have been getting isn't super expensive.

So I want to just remind people that self care isn't always cheap or free. The skin stuff was pricey. But it's helping and once it's done it's job I won't need it.

Eating healthy is expensive. I spend so much more money on food. So if you're not there yet, or maybe won't be there for a while... Be easy.

I had to try and accept myself as is. And I did it in rounds. I would be okay and then be miserable. Will having not frizzy hair make me different? No. Should I care if its frizzy? Not really. But if I can improve the health and it'll make me feel better? Why shouldn't I do it? But if I hate myself because of my hair... Messing with it won't change the problem at hand y'know?

But I love feeling more confident. I love feeling like I look better. Like I'm healthier and stronger.

When I had lost all the weight I felt powerful. Like I could do whatever. So I kind of feel like... If you hate the way you look... And changing it will help you love yourself, do it. If you can. However, if you notice fixing or helping 1 problem creates more, and you keep finding more... That's not good. Be careful of that.

My hair being healthy and soft makes me happy. I'm not finding new problems my hair had always been an issue for me ever since I was little. My skin? Same thing. Sure it's aesthetic. But it looks healthier :) I feel better. And sometimes on days I can't even sit up... It's so nice to know I'm improving something somewhere.

The question I check is:

Am I doing it for me or someone else?

Do I feel better?

Am I increasing issues / just solving them?

Am I hurting myself to do it?

Is it becoming an obsession ?

As long as it's all good it's okay to keep going. :)