Dealing With Chronic Pain: My Feelings and Most Helpful Lessons
Pain vs. Mind: How my daily battle feels — and my four most valuable learnings for physical and emotional relief.
I stood in the hall of the apartment house I live in. It was a beautiful summer night. I just returned home from an evening with my boyfriend. One of those evenings with a magic spark. Nights like this were different for the past five months.
Tears ran down my cheeks. Silent tears of desperation. I knew about the spark that evening held for me. Theoretically. I knew about all the love my boyfriend and I shared. Theoretically. Yet, I could not feel the beauty of it. All was overshadowed.
All positive feelings were numbed by chronic pain.
Joint Inflammations Changed My Life
In my case, chronic pain means reactive polyarthritis. Several of my joints are inflamed. Both hands, elbows, knees, and feet as well as my right hip. The inflammations started two weeks after my infection with COVID-19 in January. First, it was only my right hand. The expansion of the pain to various other joints went fast. And they changed my 28-year-young life:
- I do not work for three months. I loved my job in sustainability. 🌱
- I do not play tennis (I usually trained 3x a week) for five months. 🎾
- I went on a surf holiday 🏄🏼 where I tried surfing once and had to stop.
- It feels hard to keep in touch with most of my friends. 👯
How Chronic Pain Feels
When the pain flares up, it works like a filter to everything. Positive or neutral feelings are washed away within seconds. At the same time, anxiety and panic catch my mind. I feel powerless. When the pain hits really bad, I cannot do anything despite crying and trying to catch my breath again.
My immediate psychological answer (panic attack) is mostly followed by less impulsive emotions. Often, a slow fear creeps into my mind and makes my stomach hurt. It makes me overthink how pain impacts my life. I fear meeting my friends: I might have to drop out because of sudden pain. I fear the lack of self-control and the inability to do anything about it. But most of all, I fear the future: Will this ever end?
Most moments are marked by thoughts about pain:
- Every morning becomes a check-in on my joints. What is the pain level today?
- Every food I eat is carefully assessed by my mind: “How will this affect my joint pain?”
- The sun reminds me of all the things that my pain-free version would do
- Going on a walk makes me anxiously anticipate the pain this will cause
The long-term psychological impact is much more complex. Pain makes the most beautiful summer appear like a black-and-white picture. You could imagine its true beauty, but the colors are missing. It feels like being heartbroken – but by physical pain instead of love.
Asking “When Is That Over?” Does No Service
When I stood in the hallway, silently crying, the light went off. “No light at the end of the tunnel for me”, I was thinking. “When will be the day on which I am pain-free again?” I asked myself and just felt hopeless.
„When is my Day X“ is the question I asked for the past five months. For five months, no doctor can really help me. My psychological condition became as unstable as my physiological one: It is hard being forced to give up your passions. I miss working in sustainability, playing tennis, and writing a lot. This is my only article since March. Despite the pain in my hands, I learned that writing is emotionally helpful. It helps to sort my mind. And: Leaning into my desperate thoughts certainly is not.
“When is that over?” is something that no one can answer. Consequently, it is no productive question to think about — but rather an outcry, only reinforcing desperation. I had to learn this the hard way. To hopefully make things easier for others in similar situations, I assembled my most important lessons from living with chronic pain.
Three Principles for Physical and Emotional Relief
1. Radical Acceptance of the Situation
Quarter past midnight. I am sitting on my kitchen floor crying and now throwing all these feelings at Medium. On the stove, I am cooking some chickpeas to make hummus myself — at the cost of some pain in my hands. However, I just wish for some normality in my life.
Deep down I know: I cannot simply wish the pain away.
This is my situation for now. It is like a test life throws at me. Improvement will not appear by desperately wishing for a different situation.
Months went by until I came close to that realization. During the first weeks, I told myself to ignore my condition and carry on like I did before. “One day, the pain will randomly disappear”, I lied to myself. I acted like a defiant child, ignoring every sign my body gave me. Until the pain went so bad, I couldn’t ignore it anymore and was forced to deal with it.
Acceptance is still a hard task and needs to be worked on a daily basis. And I am still working on internalizing that it is up to me to make the best out of my situation.
What does that mean?
Partly, that is trying not to spiral into negative thoughts. But the biggest part is definitely taking ownership of those parts of my situation, which I am able to control. I am proactively working on developing the best approach to improve my condition.
For example, I started preparing my doctor‘s appointments like a meeting (inspired by this article from Katie McCurdy). I store a basic preparatory mail in my mail account I send out before seeing every new doctor with the following structure:
- History and description of present illness
- Past diagnosis, including MRI images, blood tests, doctor’s letters, etc.
- Other diseases I had in the past that might be relevant
- Current medication
I connected with people in similar situations to talk through emotions and life. I am seeing conventional as well as alternative doctors. This allows me to combine various perspectives in my therapy. On top of that, a mental coach advises me on how to cope with pain. She told me:
2. Start Yoga!
I do a lot of research on the connection between psychology and pain. There was one article in the Guardian on chronic pain that I could relate to so badly I had to cry. My mental coach, a sports doc I was visiting, and an article by medium writer Robert Roy Britt motivated me to start yoga against the pain – which proves to be helpful physically and emotionally.
I know, it might feel scary to go to a yoga class (“Will my joints hurt due to that?”, “Will the class be too hard?”). I know, it might seem boring (“I only do fast sports, playing tennis, running — what the hell will I be doing in a yoga classroom?”). Yes, I experienced some pain while doing yoga. But I told the teacher and she adjusted the exercises for me. Also, I was bored at first at the slow speed and the detailed attentiveness these stretching exercises require.
However, yoga appears to benefit my condition: After every class, I felt some pain relief and general improvement in my body. I also felt less stressed about my situation.
3. Appreciate the Small Things
In pain, it is an incredibly hard task to not let desperation take every moment away from you.
I try to always ask myself: What are the good aspects of this moment? Which automatically leads to mindfulness.
I became much more grateful for the small and beautiful details of my life. As I had a very hard time walking, I was very surprised one evening when I walked three kilometers through the city – nearly pain-free. I collected some flowers on the way and was simply happy to indulge in the pleasure of walking in the sun.
4. Keep Up Unreasonable Hope
Seeing every doctor in town, steady trial-and-error and ongoing research on my condition made me feel empty — and finally mad. Maybe, you found this article as a result of a similar research journey. Thus I’ll summarize my most important learning from the past five months very briefly:
No matter how bad the pain is and was the past weeks, months, or years — center your mindset around hope.
No hope means no action. It means throwing your towel. I found the article from Alex Mathers on unreasonable optimism very helpful — generic, simple, and nailing the concept of remaining hopeful.
Giving the best for my mind and body is all that is within my control now. I belive: One day, I’ll get there and will be freaking proud of myself. 💙
