Guilt and Chronic Pain

 

Oh Stacy, if you only new how much your "journal entry" means to me and especially today. Things have been a little rough, stressful, confussing, I am not sure what to call it but rather uncomfortable around my household lately. Well, stressfull for the last 6 months and gone a little crazy just the last few days. Sad really sad. Anyway, it pertains very much to the subject in hand.

 

What goes one way for one can and does not always go the same for the other. I hope I am making some sense here. Is it worth trying to 'make' some one understand? I use the word make because that is what it feels like it has come down to.

 

As the topic of your journal goes the guilt....my god....after 50 years of this one would think that you no longer had to swear on your innocence.  When do I give in. I have said many times I give up and then I say to the migraine I am not going to let you take me to my grave. But yet how many years have I felt that I was one foot in or rather choose the grave than the pain?

 

I am sure for the people around me it has been just as confusing and difficult to watch and live through and try to explain. At least for a very few close to me. I still haven't been able to come up with an answer to " do you think you will be sick" or " if you think you are going to get a headache". Those still get said to me by a couple close family members. I just say I can't promise you anything but I would love not to.

 

I did want you to know though you did make me feel better and gosh did I need it!!!

 

Thank you. Thank you very much! Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas too!

 

Marlene 

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Gosh.. this is so much a part of my life now this post really hit home. I thought I was really at peace with my pain, until I became a wife and mom...especially the mom part. I feel so guilty all the time lately.. guilty that I'm in bed before my husband b/c I'm so tired or in pain, that we can't eat the same things (things he likes) unless we cook two separate things (or three now that my daughter is eating solids). It's just difficult all the way around.. you feel guilty about losing touch with friends, or flaking on them so many times they give up on you. It's a part of chronic pain that eats at me....daily.

 

I also know that my mom agonizes over my pain. And she doesn't even know the full extent.. I don't tell her for a few reasons, which I won't get into, but the guilt plays into it. She has also said to me that she feels awful for what is happening to me and wonders if it was something that she let happen (me falling on my jaw so many times, etc.). Anyway, it's difficult...

 

I'm glad we have each other to help us with the "guilty days".. Thanks for your post stacy!!!

 

Hugs!!

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Stacy

 

Sorry I must of missed this sharepost when you first created it and stumbled back upon it with the new features.

 

Guilt, We all struggle with all the guilt that we naturally feel in our lives, when dealing with Chronic illness.  I get so tired of feeling guilty all the time and it's so dumb, as it's not are fault that we all have chronic pain either.  I think guilt can be such a damaging emotion & it's side effects can torment & ruin our lives.  It adds such incredibly unneeded stress and I don't know how on earth to avoid it.

 

Thank you for the sharepost, it was a really good topic.

Take Care hon

Betty

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This really did hit close to home as someone else said. I used to do everything with my 12 year old.  Now I can't even play catch with her or go to her games. I really think she is beginning to resent me for it and the guilt is tearing me up. My mother also worries her self sick about me and wants to kick all the doctors in the rear because they all expect me just to deal with the pain with out real pain meds and that is what I have done for 10 years with Ultram and Neurontin. After all this time it doesn't work anymore. I mean it keeps me from putting myself out of my own misery, but that is it I have no quality of life. I have 3 daughters now and can't do anything with them and can't even lift my one year old. How do you tell your baby I can't lift you today mommy is having a really bad day. I get it that I am young (31). Too young but this happened to me when I was 21 years old. 10years off suffering is enough. I did the shot's, ten's unit's everything from anti-immflamatory's to the shot's in my spine and nothing works. My arthritis doc takes me back after the neurosurgeons and ortho and pain specialists are done with me but he will not change what he does already which is ultram I take the max and again I say I have no quality of life. My sister uses the duragesic patch and she gets out of her house now when she hadn't left except for doc apt. but he say's no he doesn't want to change what he is doing but will send me somewhere if I want to go but I don't know where to go, I don't want the shot's again they are painful and didn't help at all. No one will give me an idea where to go. I would love to try this patch my 4 year old looked like she through something in her mouth took a drink and tilted her head I screamed what are you doing, she says Im taking my medicine like you mommy, I want to be like you when I grow up. After I flipped out thinking she actually took something I went to the bathroom and cried for a long time because I don't want my kids to be like me, anything at all. That guilt is the worst I have ever felt. I have DDD/DJD/Osteaoarthritis with a lot of disc herniations, a syrnx in my spine which no one checks out or can even tell me really what it is and now to add to the list of depression and all those I have carpal tunnel and have to take breaks just to type something on this forum. About 2 hours is what it takes for me do say this. I literally want to die. I have no where to go for help, I have no quality of life and to tell you the truth if I didn't have kids I would of checked out a long time ago.  I live in Poteau OK and if anyone has an idea where to go I would appreciate some advise although I can't travel to awful far. I mean Tulsa would be ok maybe OK City but that is pushing it but if I could get quality of life back I would do just about anything. I mean with technology the way it is today why in the hell can't they do anything for us that doesn't leave you in a great deal of pain or drugged out of your mind. I lose feeling in my right leg all the time and now my hands. I went to an ortho doc for the Cpl. Tnnl and he says well the good news is I can fix it with a 10 min surgery but the problem is I don't think you can handle the pain of recovery. I know more about pain at 31 than he will ever know. I am so tired, just tired of the thousand docs I see that tell me to live with it. I was suppose to be in a wheel chair at 30, thats what one of the neurosurgeons said anyway but what is sad is I don't even leave the house. Im not in a wheel chair but I am laid up at home with no life at all. I am sorry I made this all out to be poor me when you were trying to tell us something. I have no one to talk to that understands and I have no where to go for help. I posted a few times trying to get help finding somewhere to go but so far nothing. Im sorry
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Yep;  I get the guilt of a mother and a daughter and a sister..  meaning I get the feeling guilty in each of these roles.  And, I also the the irritation that comes from each of these roles.  This guilt, particularly, IS a double-edged sword and incredibly difficult to live with and through. 

Thanks for putting it in such easily understandable wording.. really good post!  Anne

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As always, great post, Stacy! I definitely relate to this...I often feel guilty if I make plans to be somewhere, but then can't make it because I'm in too much pain.  I know I'm very hard on myself at times...sometimes, I even feel guilty for not studying enough for classes! Egh...but anyway, your post put things in perspective and made me realize this, so thank you!!

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Hi Stacy

I just had to comment on this one.  I think that Motherhood is one of the biggest guilt trips around....LOL.   So many things I would have done, could have done, should have done, if I had only known what I know now.  It is difficult not to look back and and wonder...what if?  I understand in my mind that what you are experiencing now probably is not my fault, but my heart tells me that maybe I could have done something to prevent it.  It is not something that I dwell on, but it is always there lurking. 

 

Your post hit home in so many ways, but I think that you and I have a mutual understanding.  You are able to tell me everything...no holds barred, and in return I tell you everything.  It just works best for both of us if we are honest about our feelings.  Does this make for more guilt?  Perhaps, but at least we are not harboring that guilt which would only make us feel worse. (perhaps this is a good example of the cycle of support)

 

By the way, I know that you secretly hated the other blouse

 

Mom

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i empathize .. seems people (including family) love to say they empathize, but i really do , as for others , they couldn't possibly understand the strain and pain we are in .. i hope you join in the banter on the GRIND ..

 

Stacy, I also have a sharepost here at Chronic Pain, and in the MS section also .. you may want to look them over and they , in their askewed way tell you a little or alot about me ...  

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Raised in a fundamental church, controlling mother, married to a passive aggressive ogre....I am a guilt expert. Was I a good mother, do I pay enough attention to my mother and father? If my husband is sulky and moody it has to be my fault. So it would only be natural after my accident and coming to the realization that this pain I have could be with me a long time, if not forever to feel guilty that I now have limitations. I do not ask people for help. I do my own laundry. I don't say I am too tired to go shopping. Sure, I will host a birthday dinner for all my family...I always have. Little things like carrying roasting pans to the basement, or lifting heavy mixing bowls that buckle my wrists and make my back burn, opening jar lids. Having to ask to have this done. It's degrading. Especially when you ask and they say, "you mean you couldn't open that, it was easy"?. I do a lot of things myself, because I feel guilty that I am not trying to do it on my own, even though I know I will pay for straining.  Feeling like I have to explain myself if I need to lie down in the middle of the afternoon. This is one of the worst..when my little two year old granddaughter puts her arms up to me and says "up Mee Mee", and I absolutely cannot do it at the age of 48.  Just a mere 14 months ago I could have held her, picked up my own roaster, complete with turkey and ran my own vaccuum. That's before a drunk driver forgot to turn on her headlights, collided with me head-on and changed my life in the blink of an eye.

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