How about fake it till you make it?
Just push through the pain
I have lived with chronic pain for a very long time and that is a long time for some denial and waiting for treatments and trying to have a life in there. I tried to have a career because I needed to work. As we do. I had way too many short-term leaves waiting for treatments that never worked.
That is the thing about faking it till you make it, you push through, hoping for a return on your pain that never, ever comes. You don’t want to lose what you have gained either.
Early on with chronic pain disability wasn’t an option. So I felt I had no choice but to fake it… till I made it. Or so I hoped. And hoped and hoped.
You fake it till you make it because:
- You try to hold onto your career
- You hold out Hope that the Next treatment will work. And the next. And the next. This idea that you just have to survive Until Then. And that fails. Then it becomes until that next year’s appointment. So one more year.
- Straight up denial that survival mode can be maintained like that.
- You don’t want to lose your independence.
- You don’t want to have financial instability.
When you push through pain, it pushes back. And you can keep pushing, with a facade in place, for a long time. But it will keep pushing back. And you will head for burn out. And you will burn out. Go on a leave from work. Return. Repeat. Until you hit something called survival mode. This thing where you are somewhere beyond burn out. You are so burned out you are numb and just existing. Getting through the day and crashing after.
When you are in survival mode of unmanaged pain and symptoms this requires pushing through the pain every single day. It requires the exclusion of every other facet of life, which you cut out in order to barely function in the workforce. But you’re not functioning well at all which leads to work strain and increased stress. It is a potentially dangerous state to exist in.
The very hard lessons I learned from pushing through unmanaged pain:
- Treatments take time to find and to work and in the meantime, you’re in survival mode. It is an existence, not a life. It can be years and years to find an effective pain management strategy. For me, more than a decade I was stuck like that. That was a hell I wouldn’t put anyone through, man.
- Survival mode can lead to depression and anxiety. It isn’t meant for the long-term. Maybe one day pushing through the pain gets you through something stressful, but everyday beats you down emotionally and mentally. If it does it further compromises our capacity to cope with the immense pain as we have other complex mental health issues to deal with at the same time.
- Unmanaged pain and survival mode of pushing through that pain is a suicide risk factor. You’re adding immense strain to yourself by pushing through the pain all the time to just try to barely function all the time.
- Not pacing and pushing through the pain all the time actually increases our pain load, fatigue, and stress. We can get worse, not better by not paying attention to pacing and following our limits.
- The workplace environment can deteriorate as your functionality declines and you’re less than reliable. Causing quite a bit of tension and a great deal more stress. Subsequent leaves of absence cause further strain on relations.
- It does cause short-term leaves when your doctor will insist upon it for treatments or for the pain or for the emotional consequences. These do cause financial stresses over and over again. And additional strain with your employer. And nothing is ever resolved during them.
- Existence becomes unbearable. Hopelessness can set in.
That is what I have learned from ‘faking it till you make it’. Oh, I could fake it, for years, in fact. And make it too. But the impact of it was devastating on me. It all crumbles. It all fails in the end. And the failure to thrive in the workforce is a blow to the self-worth. All because I was forcing myself to do something I wasn’t really capable of. Making myself sicker in the process. Depressed. Suicidal. And there isn’t a sane reason to exist like that. Survival mode and pushing through the pain is a horrific existence. It is a torment beyond comprehension. I am amazed I lived through it. Amazed I even had the strength to get out of that mode of existence.
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I had to:
- Accept finally I couldn’t work full-time, ever. Certainly not in the traditional workforce. And part-time was a struggle as well and currently impossible. Even before I became disabled I had to accept I could never work full-time again.
- I had to go to the pain clinic to get the pain in check at least modestly.
- I had to get treatment for my Major Depressive Disorder.
- I had to accept there will always be financial instability in my life. I had to find ways to live on a substantially lower income.
- I had to accept I need to pace and stay within my limits.
- I had to give up on a career and ambitions I had.
- And I had to find a level of acceptance from all that, which was difficult to do. I wanted a career. The stability of financial security. It wasn’t possible.
To just get out of survival mode. To stop pushing through the pain every day I needed pain management and management of my depression at the same time. That enabled me to work part-time for a short duration, until my health declined.
It was such a long, long brutal time for me in my past. And so dark. So steeped in depression and suicidal ideation. So much unmanaged pain. And that is why I do not like it when people say ‘just push through the pain‘ or ‘just fake it till you make it‘. They do not comprehend the damage that causes. It just about destroyed me and I would rather we all learned this lesson the easy way rather than what I endured. So I loathe that people push that on us. Just push through it and man up and suck it up. Yeah. Well, they should try it on for size for a decade. It doesn’t work so well long-term. I warn people against it. I really don’t recommend it. It can’t be done forever. We Do burn out and crash.
It can take years to recover fully from burn out. More so, I’d say, from existing in that survival mode for a long period of time. But you do. It takes time, but you do.
Chronically Nikki 