I’m going to tell you a story to express my point where I learned a thing called ‘push through the pain’. We all do it. Need to get something done. Have to work. Push through the pain. It is just something we do out of necessity. And we pay the consequences of it as well.
September is Suicide Awareness Month and it is also Pain Awareness Month. I think the fact they both come in the same month is a lesson in itself. Pain itself is a suicide risk factor. But what I want to talk about also is a risk factor.
When I was younger
In my 20’s with fibromyalgia and episodic migraines at the time I was in university I would go find summer jobs. Every single on I picked was bad for the fibromyalgia. Heavy repetitive lifting. Standing for 8 hours. And many other jobs with many reasons. It would cause me immense pain and stress. But I needed a summer job and the area I lived in had few options.
In every single one of those jobs I was in a lot of pain. But there was a limit to it. Just had to get through the summer. So I would push though the pain. Knowing it would be over in a few months. I excelled despite my pain. Did well at every job. Most of them asked me to work while in school. I declined, because that I knew I could not do it.
This taught me if I pushed through my pain I could accomplish something. And that my work would not suffer because I achieved my goals even in a lot of pain. I learned pushing through the pain gained me the results I wanted.
I learned this. I applied it years later.
Pushing through the pain
Except now I had a full-time job and more pain. The rule didn’t quite work anymore and I wasn’t applying it with a limit. I was pushing through the pain every single day with no limit on it. Every day. Hoping for what? Some sort of relief somewhere down the line?
My brain said you just have to push through the pain until … you see the neuro, until you try a new med, until the weekend, until holidays, until you see the neuro again, until, until… There was no until.
It was constantly exceeding my limits. Thinking it was fine because it didn’t affect performance. But it did. It affected attendance. Because pushing through the pain exceeds limits. This causes a crash and burn cycle where the pain gets substantially worse, so a lot of missed days in there. I had a lot of leaves of absence. My relationship with my employer was strained to say the least.
Denial plays a massive role in this. I would believe I could just push through the pain. Or that I had to. Or that when I returned from a leave of absence things would be different for whatever reason. That maintaining a career was normal and important and everyone did it so, so could I. Everyone else could do it, so why couldn’t I?
A short term solution made into a lifestyle
Pushing through the pain is a Very short term solution. Not designed to be how you get through work, because you burn out. High pain after every time you exceed your limits, causing sick days, then roll it over and do it again and again. Wasn’t good for me or my work place.
When I was younger and I taught myself that pushing through the pain got me the reward I wanted I had no options. I was on no medication and no doctor was treating my FM. I knew I would have to work a desk job but at the time I took what was available.
Later on it was pure raw desperation to hold onto a job. Push through the pain every day to just be there. Be there and get through the day.
I knew from a long time ago to moderate my activities. To stay within my limits. To pace myself. Just not in that one area. It was like when it came to work it was all off and I would force myself through the pain believing it was for the best. To not apply those lesson to my work as well… especially since I am there for most of the day led to a lot of pain and suffering I did not need to suffer.
This is a story about how I ended up in survival mode and with severe depression. It is also a story about how I ended up with two suicide attempts. So when I say this is the worst lesson I learned from pain, I mean it. I could have realized I couldn’t maintain that job and gotten a different lower stress job. I could have gone down to part time substantially earlier than I did. I could have done a lot of things. But I didn’t listen to my body. I forced myself to push through when there was no end to attain. No goal in sight. Nothing but an increase in pain, suffering and stress.
The real lesson here is this:
Listen to your body. Do not push beyond your limits. If you feel like you are always pushing through the pain to just get things done, you need to change something. Work, or pacing, or moderation or limitations. Because exceeding our limits greatly increases our pain. No matter what people tell you or think of you, you listen to your body.
I know people can work with chronic pain full time. I just wasn’t one of them. I also know compromising for this and making sacrifices for it are not easy at all. Trying to consider different jobs, or flexible jobs, or part time work or other options is not easy at all when we all have financial obligations to consider. All I know is that I didn’t consider my options till the end and had to. And by then was pretty sick and shortly
Reprint from brainlessblogger.net
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Chronically Nikki 