Is 'Survival Mode' Your Life With Neuropathy? (Vid)

Today's post from brainlessblogger.net and YouTube video...(see link below), are written and visual representations of what life with chronic pain can turn out to be. Does the video reflect much of your life with severe neuropathy? If it does, or is even close to it, you've at least taken the first steps towards realising that you're living in a sort of vicious circle. Strangely enough, recognising that and accepting that this is your reality, may the first step towards getting out of it. The article below relates someone else's life with chronic pain but could easily be yours. There are no easy answers, or 'quick tips or solutions'. You'll have to take steps to improve your situation yourself but as the article says: it surely isn't the life you were meant to have, now is it!

Survival mode is not meant to be lived in 
September 24, 2018 Nikki

 I wanted to make this post for Pain Awareness Month because it is something that affected my life severely. Survival mode is something we deal with having chronic pain. It is that push through pain mode. It is that crawling through life by inches pain mode. When we get stuck in it, it can be very destructive.








Here are some signs of survival mode you may recognize:
You are just struggling to get through the day in whatever way you can
You only think about getting through the day, not planning for the next day or week. Just focused on surviving the moment.
You feel hopeless and isolated because it is just a struggle to exist
You are in reaction mode. Just reacting to whatever crops up
You are in a constant state of high stress
Your pain isn’t managed at all
Literally just focused on existence to the exclusion of all else

I have been there. Hell, I lived more than a decade there. And it isn’t meant to be lived in. It is destructive in the long-term.

I had developed:
A lot of suicidal ideation
Was activity suicidal and attempted
I fell into a deep, dark depression
I felt utterly hopeless
It crushed my sense of self and self-worth

It is a horrific existence. I was constantly telling myself I ‘gotta get through the day’, ‘I gotta make it to the weekend’, ‘I I just push through until my neurologist appointment he will help me’. And every neurologist appointment didn’t help me. One neurologist said there was nothing more he could do for me. And I literally cried. I was going to be stuck like this forever. And that wasn’t something I could mentally, physically, or emotionally handle.


People with chronic pain often get stuck in survival mode. 
It happens when we are constantly and consistently exceeding our limits. It happens when we have no pain management or not sufficient pain management. And we try to push through. We just try to exist. Until things get better. But sometimes they don’t get better. And we live in survival mode. And it destroys us mentally and emotionally. 

I can say what helped me get out of survival mode. But, there is always the constant risk I will get stuck in it again. So the things I did were:

First, I got a new doctor since the one I had was indifferent to my suffering.
That new doctor sent me to the pain clinic, and the pain clinic put me on pain killers (200mg of slow release Tramadol), as well as doing botox. And taught me some physio exercises to do. And I started an exercise protocol (which I can only do when not working and certainly not now with the vertigo, but it helped a bit when not working). Picked up mindful meditation as well.

I saw the pain psychologist at the pain clinic for about a year which helped me cognitively deal with the constant negative thoughts I was having

I saw their psychiatrist and he suggested a depression med. I have issues with anti-depressants as they worsen my depression and suicidal thoughts. So I was put on Abilify.
I had to give up my career and work part-time. As full time was exceeding my pain limits. Part-time was also extremely difficult, but at least I had some income. That is until the vertigo hit and hasn’t gone away. So even part time I missed too much work and went on too many leaves.

And all that was over the course of about two years of consistent effort to finally get out of survival mode. And certainly to treat the depression that went with it. And this very well may not be your plan of action. Your way out may be entirely different. What I do know is that change is needed when we are stuck like this. A massive amount of change. And the way out… it can’t be seen from the start. The only way to get through hell is to keep going. Unfortunately, it is extremely difficult to get out of if we do not have the proper medical supports in place. Also my depression made me so hopeless I couldn’t concieve of a way out. Not when chronic pain will never go away. I couldn’t grasp that all those things would help me cope with the pain that cannot be managed. So I stayed stuck for years and years. And once out you are so very aware it is a fragile state. The status quo can change in in a moment.

What is vital about this list is that all of them needed to be done. And doing one or the other would not have worked at all.

We need to reframe our existence. Focus on what we need to do. What complicates this is that pain management is vital and these days very hard to find. You can check out ‘How to get out of survival mode‘ for some ideas on where to start. Or Trauma: How to move beyond survival mode. But with chronic pain we have to manage the pain, we have to manage the co-morbid mental illnesses, and generally we have to make compromises. And it all takes time. And in the end even when you are out of survival mode it is like you were permanently traumatized by the experience. My self-worth had tanked. I felt bruised inside. And it takes so much longer to recover your sense of self.

https://youtu.be/pvi74gnNFcY

and

https://brainlessblogger.net/2018/09/24/survival-mode-is-not-meant-to-be-lived-in/