Your Not Alone: 3 normal things for people with chronic pain.

When you are young & new to chronic illness/pain  you might feel like an alien around your old healthy friends, or in other words you may feel so different from them that it leaves you feeling alone.  I’m here to tell you not ony are you not alone, your not abnormal.  There are many feelings that tend to be universal with chronic pain/illness, here’s a few.

1.       Guilt, loads of it.

It’s an awful reality but a lot of chronically ill people face mountains of guilt for different reasons. Guilt for needing to rest so often that you feel as if your lazy or “wasting your life” because your not as productive as youd like.  Guilt for the way your chronic pain affects your loved ones. Guilt for needing so much help and not being able to offer it back. Guilt for having to back out on plans/leave early so often.  Even having a good day can make you feel guilty, because of course you would want to relax and let go of stress when you finally have some level of respire but you feel so guilty for resting so often that you feel like you have to make up for it. (My advice is relax first, then pace yourself) .

2.       It’s normal to feel isolated. 

Not just in that alien sense, but also in the sense of limited human interaction. If your unable to work or go to school it’s a completely and utterly different world because modern society is built around working. If you have any good friends/family who stayed by you and believed you after you became sick, you’ll find yourself in a position where all of them get busy with their lives and sometimes it can be long periods in between seeing someone face to face. Not only this, but for many people with chronic pain it can be difficult or impossible to leave the house,  Just going out for lunch can feel like an olympian workout.

  

3.       It’s normal to feel like life is passing you by/your living in a bubble. 

They never tell you that the age milestones you were told everyone experiences have the price tag of health and if you don’t have enough well… You miss out…. You might find yourself watching people get their first jobs and cars, graduate and pursue their careers, go out and party hard with their friends. & if your older, you might find yourself watching your friends get their first house and sometimes even starting a family is off the table.   It’s like you’ve skipped decades of living life to the fullest and your body is functioning like your 80-something , the younger the onset of pain was, the less memories you have to speak of. You wonder to yourself, what do I do with my life now? & you might feel like you have no purpose.  (I'll be writing some advice on this topic stay tuned!)

Watch out for more posts on this topic! & Remember you not “abnormal”  there are only different types of normal. Chronic pain affects 100 million people in the U.S. alone.