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How you deal with pain vs. How you could do it differently

Nixiam

Nixiam

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Joined
Feb 20, 2016
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I self medicate when I'm troubled. What about you guys? I should probably just suck it up but it gets to me, you know?
 
There's a thin line between addiction and safe use of painkillers IMO/E. For moderate to severe pains I'd always recommend you to see a doctor. Sometimes they can prescribe non opioids medication and use it together with with non steroid anti inflammatory. Or mild painkillers which can be taken without any further issues or problems if you follow the doctor's instructions. I've seen a lot of people, including relatives and close friends using opiates, and at some point dealing with their withdrawal issues without feeling so bad or emotionally affected. This was probably because they'd considered these effects as part of the side effects and had no interest in keep using them when there is no more pain. Or in between intervals.

I believe the problem starts when people find the 'need' to increase dosages by themselves for recreation, escape or just to feel good. The pain suddenly becomes their 'ally' so they can use that to have more and by doing that their tolerance increases and they need more medication. And the problems may start because obviously in order to obtain these extra meds they have to lie to the doctor and using medication even when there is no acute pain becomes a problem.

I believe that no one should live in pain. I personally don't think it's okay to learn to live with your pains as our body and mind balance will be affected. And by by doing so one may start to experience depression, lack of motivation, problems to sleep, etc.

The challenge imo is how you handle pain when you already have problems with abuse. How can a doctor treat an opiate addict without risking relapses or misuse. That is very difficult to manage and in many cases addicts who are admitted in hospitals because of pain are easily spot or have already a history in that city or state. I often question myself how would I deal with opioids or opiates if I have to go through a surgery, when I'd need meds for few days. (?)
 
Nixiam said:
I self medicate when I'm troubled. What about you guys? I should probably just suck it up but it gets to me, you know?
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We are between the rock and the hard place on this issue and there is a lot of psychology/emotion involved. Everyone must work out their own salvation or die trying.
 
Are we talking about physical pain, emotional pain, what kind of pain? And how severe?

If the pain is extreme then there's nothing you can do but be at its mercy. We all have our coping limits, some have higher tolerances than others. You'll suffer more if there's a story attached to the pain, but the pain itself can be enough to do real neurological damage if it's great enough, regardless of what story you tell yourself. In fact, at some point pain becomes so great that stories are irrelevant and you need help.

My point is that most people greatly underestimate the extent to which we have little control over our living experiences. In many ways we are subjected to them, and we have some degree of say in how we react to it, but not whether or not it's happening. Pain is like that. You either cope or you don't, and it's not always about doing things differently.

If you feel that your coping threshold sucks, then maybe you could work on changing that. But maybe, like some people, you've done heaps of inner work over the years but still can't cope. Sometimes life is about pain and that's just the way it is.

I'm not trying to be negative or defeatist, actually it's the opposite. By acknowledging what you can and cannot change, you can decide to let go of a lot of worry and focus instead on what is real. If there's a part of you that will always be in pain, then you can let go of worrying about changing it, and instead learn to become accustomed to the pain in a way that doesn't involve fighting with reality.
 
You guys are very right. I did mean more emotional than physical. I believe there is a dangerous power in asserting that ones self can or cannot be.
 
Erikmen said:
There's a thin line between addiction and safe use of painkillers IMO/E. For moderate to severe pains I'd always recommend you to see a doctor. Sometimes they can prescribe non opioids medication and use it together with with non steroid anti inflammatory. Or mild painkillers which can be taken without any further issues or problems if you follow the doctor's instructions. I've seen a lot of people, including relatives and close friends using opiates, and at some point dealing with their withdrawal issues without feeling so bad or emotionally affected. This was probably because they'd considered these effects as part of the side effects and had no interest in keep using them when there is no more pain. Or in between intervals.

I believe the problem starts when people find the 'need' to increase dosages by themselves for recreation, escape or just to feel good. The pain suddenly becomes their 'ally' so they can use that to have more and by doing that their tolerance increases and they need more medication. And the problems may start because obviously in order to obtain these extra meds they have to lie to the doctor and using medication even when there is no acute pain becomes a problem.

I believe that no one should live in pain. I personally don't think it's okay to learn to live with your pains as our body and mind balance will be affected. And by by doing so one may start to experience depression, lack of motivation, problems to sleep, etc.

The challenge imo is how you handle pain when you already have problems with abuse. How can a doctor treat an opiate addict without risking relapses or misuse. That is very difficult to manage and in many cases addicts who are admitted in hospitals because of pain are easily spot or have already a history in that city or state. I often question myself how would I deal with opioids or opiates if I have to go through a surgery, when I'd need meds for few days. (?)
Click to expand...

That is a quite neat observation Erikmen.
Like, inside the mind of an addicted user.
 
Foreigner said:
Are we talking about physical pain, emotional pain, what kind of pain? And how severe?

If the pain is extreme then there's nothing you can do but be at its mercy. We all have our coping limits, some have higher tolerances than others. You'll suffer more if there's a story attached to the pain, but the pain itself can be enough to do real neurological damage if it's great enough, regardless of what story you tell yourself. In fact, at some point pain becomes so great that stories are irrelevant and you need help.

My point is that most people greatly underestimate the extent to which we have little control over our living experiences. In many ways we are subjected to them, and we have some degree of say in how we react to it, but not whether or not it's happening. Pain is like that. You either cope or you don't, and it's not always about doing things differently.

If you feel that your coping threshold sucks, then maybe you could work on changing that. But maybe, like some people, you've done heaps of inner work over the years but still can't cope. Sometimes life is about pain and that's just the way it is.

I'm not trying to be negative or defeatist, actually it's the opposite. By acknowledging what you can and cannot change, you can decide to let go of a lot of worry and focus instead on what is real. If there's a part of you that will always be in pain, then you can let go of worrying about changing it, and instead learn to become accustomed to the pain in a way that doesn't involve fighting with reality.
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I have a very low coping threshold, hence my drug use at 15. I hat to say it because I feel like shit afterwards, but I need a good strategy for coping.
 
^I guess you need to look at emotional pain a bit differently. What is the worst that could happen? Is your emotional pain intolerable or is it something that you simply don't wish to tolerate? For me, its the latter. I'm glad to be aware of that though.
 
I'd have to think about that, honestly. I feel emo if I talk about emotional pain like it is a trophy for others to pity me.

I would say a bit of both willow. I've got depression, so paartially intolerable, and the self medicating comes from not wanting to tolerate extra, I suppose. In the end I've got myself to blame.
 
Well, its not a trophy but nor is it shameful. If you can't talk about pain here, I would leave in a second. I value the insight of others, I WANT to beat this problem. I don't know how to, perhaps if I share my pain someone will have an answer or advice for me. Don't be ashamed of your feelings! As males, we are conditioned to think emotional expression is weak. Its not, hiding your feelings is!

A hard question but with no implicit judgment, but what are you doing about your depression? What is causing it, or what do you think is causing it? I experience the same thing as you may know. I don't know how to overcome it but I do know that smothering it with drugs is not effective.
 
@Nixiam, I don't think it's a problem to speak about our emotions here. Not at all. I agree that there are threads where we can speak about this more comfortably than others. But it's totally acceptable and I have done it a lot of times.

It's good to share as you'll get feedback from people who wants to help you. And I don't see this issue as a matter for pity. You are definitely a good person, clever, has always written interesting and insightful issues and I truly don't believe it would be anyone's trophy to see someone talking about emotional pain.

I see that Willow has asked you an important question on how you deal with your depression. I find it difficult to know the reason it has started in my case. But for a lot of people it's often related to something that has happened and took an emotional effect on them, such as separations. Problems in finding jobs or within the relationships, even the lack of a relationship may be frustrating for some.

I really believe therapy can work and depending on the situation therapy with medication could also work as well. I have used antidepressants with a reasonable success although a lot of people is against it. The only problem is having to go through a lot of different meds until you find the right one for you. This is something that has worked for a lot of people and it's a huge success for pharmaceutical industries. And makes me always look for the catch. Like is it really possible? a medication that helps you with your emotional pain, depression, etc? How does that work, and how is that sustainable, for instance.

If someone has gone through this successfully it would be interesting to hear about it.

Take care!!
 
Thank you guys. I definitely needed the cheering up. I saw my father go through a lot, he spiraled into insanity basically with his several emotional disorders unmedicated, as well as his cancer. He developed colon cancer at my age, undetcted until age 21. He passed away at age 29, and quite honestly I don't see myself older than that.

He was semi abusive due to his anger, striking out when he couldn't get his pain killers or his way. Pretty verbally abusive, but all in allbIbwould say he was a good person. I have some flashbacks every so often of bad times, locked in bathrooms etc. He wasbalso abusive to my mother, though not incredibly. Parents divorced when I was five. I flip flopped between the two every couple weeks to spend a weekend with my father. He overdosed in front of me once, passed out in the kitchen and when he came to, he asked me to lay down beside him in the floor. Never has tile felt so cold. My mom blames him for how I am, but I tell her that depression is genetic. He had it, she has it, and I have it.
 
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Most of us humans have a very difficult time of it. My father was very abusive and neglectful. I never remember a kind word, not even one time in all those years. But he actually was doing his very best. He was also abused and neglected. It was all he knew and the pain of a life unlived caused him to strike out often. Yet like you I think he was good person. I'm very sorry you've had a similar experience to mine. I have a lot of empathy for you brother.

I would like to add that I'm uncertain about the genetic components to depression. This was said about my mother's side, they were all depressed. However when I looked at the life they were forced to lead I can't help but think that is where the depression really came from. A live so megar that it wasn't worth the effort in the end. Life often offers us very little due to circumstance/nurture. We want so much more from life. Like the Fairy Tales and the pretty stories we were told that in the end were just a bitter lie. Hell and fuck man, who wouldn't be depressed. I certainly am.
 
@Nixiam, I'm very sorry to hear about your father and your childhood. It must have been really tough to go through all of that while you were just a small kid.

Maybe having gone through this experience during ever you were a little kid and having memories that are still so vivid should probably be one of the reasons you are feeling depressed and have these thoughts about your future. As much as it's genetic we learn to behave and absorb problems through our parents role/examples and having seen your dad behaving like that must have had quite an impact on you and also very impressive in such early age. Feelings of fear, doubt, anxiety etc are very strong when we are children and more difficult to deal with because we don't have our minds ready and no tools to deal with pain. You didn't have the time to learn the things an adult might have after coping with all difficult moments and situations. It's an immensely great picture we form and these issues can be traumatic. Different from being an adult you don't have the mindset tools to protect yourself. So it must have been really tough!
I honestly don't think it's an issue where blaming your parents would make any difference as they were not acting as parents, they didn't know what they were doing. Apparently your dad was very sick, using strong painkillers and acting like that as a result of all of that. He should have never involved you in this but on top of all of this you also had to deal with their separation too.

So my hat's off to you my friend to come out from such an infanthood and still be who you are. As traumatic as these events have been to you I think you were forced to grow up much earlier than usual and that is a positive thing as you are here trying to resolve that. Searching for ways to deal with your issues. This has probably made you stronger than you might think.

Suggest you try not to nurture bad feelings towards your parents nor yourself. As kids we often think it's our fault. Things which happens especially between our parents tend to make kids feel guilty. At younger ages we tend to think the world functions around ourselves so everything that happens will naturally suggest that you took part in it somehow. We are too young to understand this and due to misunderstandings often caused by adults when we often feel guilty because of our feelings that sometimes makes us wish for things kids think about. And there's nothing we can do when we are that young.

There was nothing you could have done, nothing that was because of you. And due to complicated reasons very young kids still feel guilty about separations and or behaviors like your dad's. He probably did not have a clue of what was going on. With cancer, addicted, divorced or separated. And so young. With so many events going on I don't think you'll get his problem. You just have to find a way to deal with your issues knowing that all of these painful emotions are a natural result from experiencing such a difficult childhood. We are fragile and sometimes propense to think we are going to fail but I believe that these things that happened to you have made you stronger than you might think.

And there are many ways to deal with this. You can go through therapy - psychotherapy which is very effective and you can also look up for other doctors that will make sure you are okay physically speaking. That will make you feel better. At some point you it's possible that you may need some medication, even if it's temporary it's important that you seek for assistance so that you can have a normal and happy 'normal' life.

Take care!
E.
 
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Nixiam, when you responded in a thread in the shrine that your Dad was 29 I thought it was some kind of typo--but it wasn't. Your parents were very young and by the sound of it, not even half ready to become adult guides for their child. You are wise beyond your years to understand how human failings and faults do not make someone a "bad" person. The fact that you learned to self-medicate was a completely rational and reasonable choice that you made, unfortunately it rarely works to do anything other than mask for a brief period of time, and exacerbate over the long run, by adding new layers to the pain that already existed. I was doing the same thing at your age and while I learned a lot from the experience that I will never regret, I also feel lucky to have survived using myself as a medical experiment (hooray for young bodies!:\).

One thing that has been the most helpful to me in my life is to extract the actual messages from the early experiences so that I clearly know what I am dealing with inside. After all, you are no longer lying on the floor with an overdosing parent; that event had a beginning and an end. But the messages from that event are continuing on whispering over and over in your mind: you are not safe, the people you love cannot be trusted to protect you, you are alone, you are in danger of being abandoned, you must be unworthy. Those are powerful messages and they were driven home loud and clear to your very young and inexperienced mind. But now your mind is years older and these messages have become internalized in such deep and ingrained ways that they may be imperceptible.

I once had a dream that I was in a wagon pulled by a team of strong and beloved oxen. These big brown eyed beasts had been pulling my wagon forever and they were comforting and familiar. There was only one problem: in the dream I knew that they were pulling me in the direction of some intense danger and no matter what I did with the reins, they just kept pulling me in that same direction. I knew that I had to release them and it broke my heart to do it. Whenever I think about this dream it seems that I was having to part ways with a part of my thinking that may have been home (familiar) but it was a house on fire and eventually it would kill me. Some dreams are just garbage heaps left over from the day but some are worth pondering and this was one of those.

You are a very strong and amazing young person and I have faith that you will find that this depression you struggle with is more malleable and changeable than you may now perceive. I believe that there is definitely a genetic propensity for depression but I also think that living lives trapped in unexamined pain (especially the pain that was inflicted in infancy or early childhood) is a much more relevant factor than genes. Your curiosity and resourcefulness are the source of your power. I have found that you can change almost anything; not the circumstances that befall you but the private narrative you write about them inside.
 
Thank you guys, very, very much. It is a bit difficult for me to talk about, even online, but I appreciate this all none the less. Recently a large stress has been thrown at me, pressure from my parents to try harder, my fathers real father just died (whom I never got the chance to meet), I'm moving, etc. Its really a mix of things. That's the only reason I brought any of this up is because I've just experienced what I've known to be true for a while, and it's that the drugs don't work forever to push stuff down.

I would like to offer my gratitude to you all for being so understanding, and in return please feel free to talk about your troubles. And also thank you for allowing me to slide into an adult community, it's a bit difficult at my age as you can imagine.
 
Forums like these are a great outlet for recluses like me. I have a lot to say but in my offline life people rarely want to hear about it. I can post it here and just let it go without expectation and more importantly no fallout from family and "friends". In my offline life my real family is my dogs.
 
Dogs will like us regardless of our emotions. As long as we treat them reasonably they will do everything to us and stand in our side. They are an excellent company but can't replace a word of support we need sometimes from people. Humans are more complex, so many of us still live in an entire life needing approval only to feel accepted. We often don't like who we have become, definitely different from what we have pictured early in life. Not to mention how life hold us 'hostage' so that we have similar modus operandis which consists in accepting concepts of having to go to work so to enable us to sustain our families. And in the process we forget we need to talk, to share, to have fun.

If you have your problems I think here is the place you could share them. That's what this thread has been all about for these past days. We try to help, share our experiences and even if you might not be satisfied with the answers it does not mean that we don't care.

The impression I have is that people from different generations react differently and sometimes choose to be silent about their own problems. The more I think about this more I remember how older people, for instance don't feel comfortable in talking about their problems. I don't know if it's because they don't want to bother based on the perception we won't care enough or that it won't solve anything. These days people tend to be more individualist but at the same time more open minded as well, imo/e.
 
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numbing and denial in equal measure work well at this point

vigorous episodes of cursing and limp limb flailing also satisfy

:D
 
Noodle said:
numbing and denial in equal measure work well at this point

vigorous episodes of cursing and limp limb flailing also satisfy

:D
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Limp limb flailing! Noodle, if we ever do meet up I certainly hope we can share a vigorous episode of cursing and limp limb flailing. I used to think I was the only mother that actually felt jealous of my toddlers when they had those all out tantrums like that. Who wouldn't want to go completely limp, fall to the floor in utter anguish and start flailing around cursing when life sucks? Of course back then they didn't curse but many years later Caleb became quite well known in the neighborhood for his ability to project the word FUCK! about three streets away in any direction.
 
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