Searing, radiating, pulsing.
Acute, chronic or phantom.
Mental or physical.
It’s debilitating, but it’s more than that, it’s exhausting.
I started playing with the idea of writing a blog of the feeling of being “free”, and to really get to the guts of that, I need to write about pain first. As a lot of the time I feel trapped by pain as I feel it constantly, and no it’s not because I’m in my 30s (as the internet would have you believe), but I’ve got a whole bunch of it, whether it’s ongoing or just normalised.
These past few weeks have been hard, even though I’ve had time away, but like many other chronic sufferers that pause, this space usually opens the flood gates to what’s been brewing. For me, just before my time away I was having audiology tests for ongoing pain spells and dizziness. Everything was normal, but the tests could set off a migraine flare, and my did they. I find sunglasses help in times like this, not only to hide my squinting, tired eyes, but also a chance to shield and protect myself. This pain decided to stick around for most of the 12 days down south, ranging from I’m going to be sick to just plain exhaustion, but that is my day to day. I have chronic pain in my head from a head injury I sustained in 2014. Scans and what not, all okay, but the continued residue of potential nerve damage vs my body is holding on to the pain of the past. Regardless of whether it’s physical or mental, the pain is absolute. I describe this pain as flossing with cheese wire, amping up to a full blown saw if I’m having a migraine flare.
Staying with friends in St.Ives, I was pretty exhausted and telling them about how migraine medication is going to be the next steps for me, according to audiology. I don’t know whether you’re the same, but if I’m feeling low or painful, I always judge myself for feeling it. That I should be able to magic myself better, or maybe create a solution to this problem I’m having. My friend Nicola though asked me poignantly “what happens if you stop ignoring the pain? What happens if you just feel it?”. Well nothing would get done for one, but I think it was this conversation that led me into the doctors not a week later.
Throbbing pain, radiating from my ear and down into my spine. Feels very much like achey flu on acid, simultaneous with unavoidable pain and dizziness. I had normalised it as just post adventure blues, that I’d had a long drive, give it another day, but in my gut I knew I was just delaying out of fear and should just go. I should probably state at this point, that even though I am rife with ailments, visiting a local GP is fear inducing. I hate it. It’s like you wander in there and it feels like you’ve been offered health roulette by sitting next to someone else, an alarming amount of doors that people could go in or out of, worrying whether you’ll hear your name called if you put headphones in to calm yourself, the temperature is always too high, and then you’ve got the awkward exchanges with fellow patients also hoping to get answers after winning receptionist roulette. Then the fear of whether you’ll get a doctor who will listen or who has already decided you’re a woman overreacting.
Sooner than expected I was called in, and after 45 minutes of prodding and even a second opinion I was hooked up with antibiotics and told I was on enforced rest due to a bacterial skin infection. Again, being told I was “lucky” that I came in, as any longer could have seen a stint in hospital. Lucky is a word much like resilient, I don’t like it, they both feel like I had no say in it. You just have to be or you’re not, but that’s a whole other thing,
Here’s the kicker for me though, how on earth do you know? How do you know that the pain is too much or loud enough to need action? For me I was sat in that doctor’s room in tears saying that the pain was too much, an 8/10, and coming from someone who experiences pain daily. It just feels relentless, a complete suffering escalator at this point, that there is always going to be something else. I mean the level of frustration is similar to that new winter swimmer asking “how long should I stay in for, when do I know when to get out?”, when in actual fact only you know and only experience will tell you. In the same way that when I get an ‘acute’ migraine that I feel like someone has taken a machete to my skull and decided to waggle it around for extra measure. Those moments have me grabbing my head with both hands, usually bent over to some degree, a scream if inclined, but the only thing that helps those sorts of “attack” are ice packs. That pain is a solid 12/10, but experience has taught me at most they’ll last maybe 10 minutes. You have to sit through it, just breathing, knowing it will pass. I remember the first time I had one of those and I genuinely thought my head was breaking open.
It’s recently drawn me to the comparison between ice swimming and pain, that in my opinion we’ve all got some level of something going on to need to put ourselves through it. As for me on reflection, especially with long distance ice swimming, I’m starting to wonder whether it’s just complicated my relationship with pain further? That I’ve normalised it and taught my brain to push through pain rather than to listen to it? In those initial years of training for my ice mile I felt I had some sort of superpower when it came to being able to cope with the cold pain. That searing ice cream headache accompanied by those fingers that feel like they’ve been shut in car doors, and I was already well versed in ignoring pain, so when it came to pushing distance I could just tune out. I think I was tuning out a lot more than just pain. I think ice swimming made me feel normal, much like when I was having panic attacks or experiencing high levels of anxiety, watching thrillers and horrors made the sensations feel normal. Putting a plaster over the issues and normalising them away, rather than addressing them.
I think pain for me too has become some sort of twisted guide, a way to maybe reset my integral trauma response. I’m sure you’ve heard of fight or flight? That inherent response we have within ourselves in the face of trauma to either run or face whatever is happening. Unfortunately, no matter how much you want it to be one, you will no doubt be the latter, or even another entirely as there can be several different responses; including fawn and my own response freeze.
I think it’s safe to say I judged myself for my freeze response, maybe the most unhelpful of the four but it’s a reaction I cannot control. An intricacy within the human brain, that we can barely comprehend as we have no access to it, it’s just primal instinct. The best example of my body’s response was during the Barcelona terror attack on the Rambla in 2017. I remember feeling stuck, almost like someone had pressed pause without my knowledge. My brain goes somewhere else entirely as I remember the initial scenes, but I was terrified. The next thing I know, a police officer grabbed me by my shoulders and told me I had to move and that it wasn’t safe. It’s almost like my brain goes somewhere else, which to my conscious brain makes no sense!
So why am I telling you about the freeze response? Well because these primal instincts and my traumas have led me to experience panic attacks, which I feel have adapted over time and each one can feel different from the next. My latest one for instance feeling the complete opposite of my primal trauma response.
I was sat in Newlyn cinema, watching The Outrun, a film I was excited to see! I hadn’t heard much about it, I knew it had been popular with a lot of my friends so relished a night of cinema. Although funny at the time, the cinemas serious “no crunching, no rustling” rule turned into a foreboding warning of how understanding the clientele would be to someone leaving mid screening. From the moment it started I was unsure of whether there was an audio problem or if it was a sound design thing, as I felt out of sorts. Without spoiling anything of the film itself, it’s pretty much the protagonist’s feelings throughout. My tells had started showing, legs that felt like they couldn’t keep still, not being able to get comfortable. If they don’t issue a response my brain then sends in the hard hitter; shooting pains in my forearms. I can get these in any given day and it doesn’t necessarily tell me I’m having a panic attack but they’re a sign of high stress. They’re linked to my car accident in 2014, where I sustained burns on both my forearms from my air bag. My brain took that pain and weaponised it for action. My brain does this with various stimulus, usually from traumatic events and likes to sprinkle them in amongst my C-PTSD (Complex Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) triggers which can occur any time, much like a flashback.
Then a continued pressure building inside of me, much like I was either going to combust or fracture. It feels like you’re in some sort of vice or ancient torture cage and someone else is in charge of the bolts and how tight they’ll go. Sitting in the cinema the nuts and bolts were only tightening as my inner monologue was screaming at me to move. I’d already written the end of this film, what was coming next, the trauma that I was going to be watching over the next hour or so, but then the new sensation came. Almost like my conscious brain had decided enough was enough and whether it was there or otherwise I felt a pressure on my back that physically pushed me out of that cinema. I don’t say this lightly either, I was nestled in the corner of the screening having to clamber over 3 or 4 people to get to the exit door, I felt like I was suffocating and needed to retreat. On my scramble a woman tutted me, with no knowledge of the internal battle I was suffering. I pushed open the doors and span into the toilets. Getting to the lock on the door in time to collapse into relief. The tears come as they inevitably do, but the pain subsided, almost as if my brain was physically showing me I was safe.
It’s almost like I have pain to tell me what to do, whether it’s in this visceral way during a panic attack or giving me an excuse not to do something. I often wonder and question whether pain is there or whether it’s trying to teach me something. In reality though whether it’s there or not, it’s very much taught me that my time needs to be considered. That even though I want to do all the things and be creative, my time for rest needs to be built in too or I’ll burn out. There was a time I judged myself for stillness, that I compared myself to others, but how is that helpful?
Have they had the same experiences as me? No.
Is this how my body is processing it? Yes.
Pain and I have a complicated relationship, but when it’s non-negotiable you know what’s worth doing in life and what’s not. Don’t get me wrong, I’d wish away this pain in an instant, but in the real world I’m trying to normalise, analyse and judge it less and just allow myself to feel it more.