By wendy, on October 30th, 2011%
 Credit: Free images from acobox.com
By Wendy Burnett
When I was in therapy, my therapist used to tell me I was comparing my “insides” to everyone else’s “outsides.” (Thanks Ginny, it took me a while, but I finally get it.) Intellectually, I understood what she was saying, but I never really “felt” it until recently.
What gave me the push I needed was one day when I was still working fast food. One of the people I was working with said she envied me and wished she had a life like mine . . . My immediate thought was, “darlin, if you knew what my life is really like, you wouldn’t want it.” That’s when it really connected for me.
She only saw what I let her see, the cheerful, funny me with the great friends and strong marriage. Continue reading Are You Comparing Your Insides to Everyone Else’s Outsides? »
By wendy, on August 27th, 2011%
 by Tooley
By Wendy Burnett
I read this awesome post about The Loneliness of Pain and it really made me think about how isolated I feel sometimes. Even though I have people in my life that I CAN talk to about how bad I feel, I frequently choose not to for various reasons.
Have you done that? I’m betting that most of us have, either because we’re afraid that eventually these folks are going to get tired of “listening to us bitch,” or because we don’t want them to feel bad. There are more reasons, but most of them seem to boil down to one or the other of these two. Continue reading (Chronic Illness) = Loneliness + Isolation »
By wendy, on August 16th, 2011%
 Image by chadly via Flickr
By Wendy Burnett
When you have a chronic invisible illness, one of the hardest things to deal with is the lack of understanding from your family, friends, and co-workers. “Normals” (those without chronic illnesses) have only had illnesses that last a few days or weeks, then go away; so when they see you on a “good” day, they think you’re “getting better.”
If your friends see you out shopping one day, and then the next day when they ask you to go to lunch, or help with something; and you can’t because the shopping wore you out, they get angry or think you’re “faking.” After all, you were fine yesterday. Continue reading 3 Ways to Explain Your Chronic Illness to Family & Friends »
By wendy, on June 23rd, 2011%
 Image via Wikipedia
By Wendy Burnett
If you take more pain medication than your doctor has prescribed for you, on a regular basis, you have a much bigger problem than you think. Whether the doctor is under-prescribing or not, if you’re constantly calling and asking for more meds, you are labeling yourself as an addict.
Even if you legitimately need a higher dose, taking matters into your own hands will only make it harder to get. The more desperate you seem when you ask for more, the less likely your doctor is to even renew your existing prescription, let alone increase it. Continue reading Do You Take More Pain Meds Than You’re Supposed To? »
By wendy, on May 6th, 2011%
 Image via Wikipedia
Are you living in the future? In the time when there will be a cure, or a treatment that will make everything better? Or do you live in the past, rehashing old trauma; remembering all the bad things that have happened to you? Or maybe you live in the past, dreaming of the days when you felt GOOD; when you could work all day and still cook dinner when you got home.
I’ve been in all those places, over and over; and you want to know what they taught me? That I’ve spent a big portion of my life missing out on my “now.”
My past is over. The good and the bad are gone, they live on only in my head and in how they’ve shaped me. The only power the painful times have is the power I give them to affect my present. If I obsess over the wrongs that have been done to me in the past, or the things I’ve lost; it prevents me from being able to enjoy what I do have.
The future? There’s no guarantee that there IS a future. If I’m walking home from work worrying about what I have to do when I get here, I don’t see the roses blooming, I don’t smell the sweet honeysuckle that grows beside the sidewalk or hear the beautiful bird song.
I can walk home focused on what I’m going to do when I get here, or focused on how tired I am, or how much my back (neck, hip, knee) hurts; and the more I focus on the pain, the more I hurt; the more I focus on all the things I have to get done, the more stressed I get.
My other option is to acknowledge the pain and what needs to get done, then focus on how good the sun feels on my skin or how sweet the honeysuckle smells. I can choose to focus on the beauty of the roses, or the pain of the thorns. It seems such a small thing, that choice; but it’s actually huge. It’s the difference between having a good day, or a painful one; the difference between being stressed out or relaxed. The pain is going to be there anyway, it’s always there; but if I choose to focus on the beauty I will be happier than I will if I focus on the pain, and in the end, isn’t that what life is all about?
The biggest thing I’ve learned in this journey is that positive thinking won’t cure my illness, but it sure as hell makes it easier to live with.
By wendy, on November 22nd, 2010%
Since Jolene is preparing for her vacation, and is unable to host the Graceful Agony Blog Carnival this month, I will be hosting it here on Transform Your Chronic Life. The topic for the month will be “Holiday Gifts for the Chronically Ill” and is intended as suggestions for gifts that are helpful in managing life as a chronic illness/chronic pain patient. Please include anything you’ve found especially useful or that you would personally like to try out.
Our healthy friends and family members never know what kinds of things are the most helpful for us, and last year I noticed that there were quite a few questions about what to get for friends who had health challenges, so I thought that would be something that would be helpful for those who never know what to get us.
The deadline for entries is Saturday, November 27, and publishing will be on Tuesday, November 30. It’s a little late, but I was trying to arrange it so that trying to write a post wouldn’t interfere with Thanksgiving celebrations for those of us in the US (and honestly, there was a little fibro fog involved as well . . .)
To participate, please send an email including your name, the name of your post, and a link to the post to burnett.wendy7 at gmail dot com
By wendy, on November 21st, 2010%
Dr. Grinstead was kind enough to allow me to post this short article as a guest post, and the copyright belongs to him exclusively. The contents of this post may only be used with his permission, and with appropriate credit and links.
By: Dr. Stephen F. Grinstead, LMFT, ACRPS, CADC-II
To find a balance point you must be able to identify what the extremes are that you need to balance. In the table below you will see each of the target five balance points you need to strive to obtain in your life.
1. Positive Self-Talk
2. Appropriate Emotional Expression
3. Healthy Support Network
4. Spirituality/Humility
5. Effective Pain Management
Most people pay little attention to all the random thoughts that go through their head each day. Unfortunately, this is not the best way to go through life if you want to thrive. I want to have you consider a quote attributed to the Dalai Lama that I’ve posted below.
“Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Choose your words, for they become actions. Understand your actions, for they become habits. Study your habits, for they will become your character. Develop your character, for it becomes your destiny.”
Balance Point One: Positive Self-Talk
The first balance point is positive self-talk. On one end of this continuum is repressed self-talk. When you are at this end of the spectrum you are not listening to your thoughts that eventually create your destiny. When your thoughts can lead you to making poor choices this might not be such a bad thing. However, for the most part it is important to monitor your thinking patterns so you can end up not creating negative consequences for yourself.
Balance Point Two: Appropriate Emotional Expression
A trap I see some people fall into is labeling feelings or emotions as either good or bad. I do not believe in “good” or “bad” emotions. I do believe that emotions can however be comfortable or uncomfortable. Some emotions such as happiness or joy are sought after, while other emotions like fear or loneliness are to be avoided at all costs. This type of paradigm can lead to going to one end or the other of this spectrum.
Balance Point Three: Healthy Support Network
It is crucial to build a chronic pain support network for yourself. This balance point of a healthy support network also has two dangerous extremes—isolation and enabling. Let’s start with the isolation extreme. This is usually fueled with the belief that I have to do it myself. Sometimes this is coming from a power position because of a mistaken belief like “I can’t trust/depend on others.” While for other people the mistaken belief might be “I have to do it myself because I’m no good; or nobody is there for me.” Either way you lose the chance to have someone in your corner when it really counts.
Balance Point Four: Spirituality/Humility
The next balance point of spirituality/humility also has problematic extremes. Here too people can vacillate between the extremes and never stay in the middle. On one end of the spectrum people are at risk for moving into pride and/or arrogance while at the opposite end is shame and guilt. Spirituality is a complex and multidimensional part of the human experience. It involves beliefs, perceptions, thinking, feeling, experiential and behavior aspects.
Balance Point Five: Effective Pain Management
This last balance point of effective pain management is crucial for effective chronic pain management and freedom from suffering. The two extremes here are ignoring pain or suffering. I believe that there are times when ignoring pain—or avoidance by appropriate distraction—can be a good thing. I don’t believe it is ever a good thing to be in suffering from your pain.
Striving for balance in chronic pain management recovery is crucial for freedom from suffering and obtaining a great quality of life. This will help you move beyond surviving with chronic pain to thriving and enjoying life to the fullest.
Dr. Grinstead’s blog: Addiction Free Pain Management Blog
Dr. Grinstead’s company website: CENAPS
Dr. Grinstead’s personal website: Addiction Free Pain Management
By wendy, on October 31st, 2010%
It’s time for the new Graceful Agony Blog Carnival post, and the subject this time is dreams. Not the kind of dreams you have while you’re sleeping, but the dreams you have for your life . . . It’s a wide open topic, and I can’t wait to see what the rest of the group does with it.
Personally, I don’t really know where to start. I have so many dreams that it’s hard to choose between them, and that lack of focus makes it almost impossible to accomplish ANY of them. Since that’s true, it makes sense to me to focus on the dream that caused me to start this blog, and that keeps bringing me back here, even when I’ve been having issues with writer’s block and fibro fog.
No matter how long it is between posts, I always wind up coming back; finishing up drafts and writing new stuff. Even during the worst of the fogs and fatigue, I find myself starting drafts so that when I’m more able to work on things the ideas will still be available.
I started this blog because I wanted to help others with chronic illnesses to find ways to cope that don’t necessarily involve doctors and prescriptions. Allopathic (Western) medicine is great for some things, but it is failing those of us with chronic illnesses because its total focus is on curing disease, and when the doctors can’t cure it they get frustrated.
My dream is to help people find things that help to make their lives better in spite of the diseases they live with every day, whether that is a new prescription medication that reduces their symptoms or a stress reduction technique that helps them cope with those symptoms. Continue reading A Dream is a Wish Your Heart Makes »
By wendy, on October 13th, 2010%
I found this article on Dr. Mercola’s site, and I thought that the information included could be very helpful for those of us who deal with the horrors of fibro every day. (I personally plan to try many of these suggestions, and have already discovered that aspartame DOES make my pain worse.) Republished with permission.
Chronic pain is a pervasive issue and fibromyalgia is a very common form. It is a chronic condition whose symptoms include muscle and tissue pain, fatigue, depression, and sleep disturbances.
Recent data suggests that central sensitization, in which neurons in your spinal cord become sensitized by inflammation or cell damage, may be involved in the way fibromyalgia sufferers process pain.
Certain chemicals in the foods you eat may trigger the release of neurotransmitters that heighten this sensitivity.
Although there have been only a handful of studies on diet and fibromyalgia, the following eating rules can’t hurt, and may help, when dealing with chronic pain. Continue reading Foods That Chronic Pain Sufferers Need to Avoid »
By wendy, on September 19th, 2010%
Does having bipolar disorder automatically mean I’m not in pain, or that my pain should not be treated? Does the fact that someone has been addicted to something in the past mean that they should have to suffer excruciating pain for the rest of their lives to prevent readdiction to a new medication? If someone is dying of cancer, what difference does it make if they become addicted to the pain medication that makes their death less painful, that allows them to have a little relief?
Our society has become so terrified by the picture of the crazed, murderous addict that the government has painted for us that we will allow them to do almost anything to protect us, even though in the vast majority of cases that picture is no more than government propaganda.
The government has lost the war against drugs, they have no hope of ever being able to stop the illegal flow of drugs into this country, so they have changed their propaganda, and their targets. The war on drugs has become a war against chronic pain patients and the few remaining doctors who are willing to treat them.
Doctors are being persecuted (AND prosecuted) for trying to provide adequate treatment for their patients, and for every doctor who is prosecuted, many more begin refusing to prescribe the pain medications that make our lives worth living because of the fear that they will be next. Continue reading Killing Me Softly – The War on Drugs Becomes a War Against Adequate Treatment of Chronic Pain Conditions »
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