Chronic Pain, How To Get Through Day by Day

I, like tons of you out there have some sort of chronic pain. It comes with age, injury, disease, neglecting your body for a long period of time et cetera.

😥 It’s not fun living with chronic pain. I know my pain is not near as severe as some other people’s, but it can be equally as debilitating to me.

They say you learn to live with pain, and find a new normal. When I suffered from a stroke four years ago, I was determined to try and actively find ways to get myself to a state, where I could say I was having more good days than bad. That was goal #1.

Goal #2 was to try and find avenues of healing that would reduce and minimize the amount of drugs I would require to function somewhat normally in my everyday life.

Goal #3 was achieving the same level of productivity at home and work at least 80% of the time.

🛣️ When this journey started for me, I was in a recovery state. I spent most of my days thoroughly exhausted, on the couch, trying to not spend all day sleeping. My mind was telling me that there is so much to do, but my body would just say ‘hell no!’. I would shower, and I’d be so tired, I’d have to take a nap. This was driving me crazy!!

Normally I was an over productive person. Never sat down to rest, always had a multitude of projects on the go. How does a person like that deal with the inability to do anything?

At first I just made myself do things. By the time I finished one thing, I was just done. Couldn’t possibly do another thing, felt worse than before. Something else had to be helpful.

📌 I started a board on Pinterest called Stoke recovery. I pinned lots of ideas about things I could do to help myself. I methodically went through them one by one. And I started to see a difference in myself. With rest, exercise and nutrition, I slowly started feeling better. I found a couple of key things that were helpful to me. These are:

1. Be easy on yourself. Managing pain on a regular basis is not easy, and will most likely not solve itself over night.

💤Do you best to get adequate rest, exercise and nutrition, but if you aren’t perfect with it, give yourself flexibility. Just try to do the best you can in those area.

🍎 For me my Isagenix shakes and yoga were key! Once I started making these a regular part of my day, things started to become a lot more manageable.

2. Make sure those around are aware that you are not ‘being lazy’, you’re trying to take the best care of yourself you can. And hopefully, they’re won’t be any excess demands on you and your time, that may overwhelm.

3. Be your own advocate. If one doctor says your fine, and you feel something isn’t right, get a second opinion, and a third.

Trust your gut. You know what your ‘normal’ is, if you’re feeling something is wrong, your probably right. If one doctor can’t figure it out, find another who will. Push to see specialists if that’s what’s required.

💫 I myself saw 4 different doctors in 2 different communities, and was in the ER 3 times before they found out I had a sagittal venous thrombosis (blood clot in my brain). And it took a forth time to ER and a stroke in progress for them to finally take me seriously. I knew something wasn’t right.

4. If you need meds, be ok with that. I will need some meds forever more, at first that really bothered me, but now I’m ok with it.

However, if you’re getting a ton of weird side effects or they aren’t working how they should, it’s ok to ask questions. Talk to the doctor or pharmacist, maybe there’s something better suited to you that can do the same thing. Again, second opinions are always good.

✨ Remember our GPs can’t know everything. They know about what they’ve learned and what they’ve treated previously. They may not know about whatever it is your struggling with. This doesn’t make them bad doctors. They can’t know everything, but aim to find doctors that will exercise their available options for finding you solutions, or refering you to someone that can find you solutions.

5. Wake up everyday with gratitude and purpose. It’s easy to get sucked into feeling bad for yourself and feeling like the world is against you.

💕 Your best friend is going to be gratitude. Practicing being thankful and focusing on the good things you have in your life, looking at heartwarming photos, mentally reliving joyous times can go a long way to redirect your focus on positivity. This can aid your body in self-healing.

For me, meditation was extremely useful. Centering my energy and directing my focus on mind and body healing. It’s good to remember that the body naturally wants to heal itself.

I use these practices still everyday. I still get bad days, but thankfully they are not as frequent as they were previously. I would say that I’ve achieved my 3 goals.

✏️ What I’ve written about here is based on my own experiences, and hopefully they will be helpful to you. I pray you all will find some relief soon.

Love & Peace ❤️☮️