Re: Wanting Life Back (long)

[Guest guest]

,

I completely agree with your advice. And I think you phrased it

beautifully.

I know that it may sound harsh, but at some point we have to accept

what our new life is, without regard for what we wanted. I have been

in pain for 4.5 years and I am just now beginning to appreciate this

idea of acceptance. As my therapist says, acceptance doesn't mean

approval. We may not like where we are, but we need to acknowlege

our present and future circumstances and deal with the life we have

now, not what we wished it would be.

Wishing for the past only creates more stress and psychological pain

with no real benefit. It's not as if wishing really hard will make

it come true! My experience has been the more that I feel sorry for

the changes in my life the worse it makes me feel.

I am still struggling to live in the present and to try to

appreciate the good parts and not dwell on the bad parts. The good

stuff is really hard to find sometimes, but it is almost always

there somewhere. It is hard work to look on the bright side, but at

least it has some chance of helping us feel better.

Now when ever I feel pouty, sorry for myself, or that life is just

not fair, I try to ask myself " How will this attitde improve my

situation or make me feel better? " I have rarely come up with a

positive answer to this question. Sometimes I still need to pout and

feel sorry for myself anyway!

I know that this might sound harsh, but I truely hope that this is

helpful advice. I have the best of intentions and I really do hope

things work out for all of us. But I have personally found a lot of

pain in false hopes and I hope others can avoid making the same

mistake.

Wishing everyone a little less pain tomorrow than today,

Dave in Silicon Valley

P.S. I have also found that any kind of activity or distraction

helps me avoid obsessing about my pain.

wrote: [snip] I know that you meant to say that you want your

life to be the way it was before the pain hit. BUT unfortunately,

this is your life, for now anyway. [snip] Yeah, I'd LOVE to be pain

free, but I don't think this is going to happen again. [snip] Not to

say that I like it or that it's easy. [snip] I hope that you will

find some of the peace to live with the pain as it is now and not to

have to struggle too much. The struggle is a stressor of its own and

the fewer of them we have in our life, the less there will be of the

pain that sress creates. I know that stress doens't create all of

the pain but it does add to it. [snip]

[Guest guest]

Dave,

Your reply was well put. I would be willing to bet that every

single one of us has wished to have our " old lives " back. When

you're the victim of daily chronic pain, who wouldn't?

I think it's totally natural, at least at first, to wish to have our

old " normal " lives back. While I was going through the denial

stage, I was totally convinced that I was going to be that ONE

person who led a totally normal life with Fibro...I wasn't going to

let it affect my life in any way. Boy did I ever get a wake-up

call!! You learn really fast that chronic pain does change your

life, whether you like it or not.

Getting to acceptance is a long and bumpy road. Having

Fibromyalgia, full body tendonitis, SI joint dysfunction, and a

bulging disc, I had to completely stop and relearn exactly what my

body was truly capable of doing. I still push those limits,

sometimes with success, sometimes with absolute failure and a lot of

pain. I had to learn how to take care of a different, and damaged

body, to help keep it at its optimal level. I can't abuse it or

treat it with the same level of disrespect as I once did, and trust

that it would get me through. Now I have to feed it healthy foods,

exercise it, and give it plenty of rest, or it will let me down

every time.

But the most important thing I've had to do is create a

new " normal " . The old normal life is gone, so why bother looking

back at it. My life continues to go on, and yes, I do continue to

have a life. It's not as high paced, or as high stress, but

honestly, that's turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I now

have more time to actually enjoy living my life. It's not perfect,

this new normal. I still have pain, fatigue, and all the other

stuff that comes along with my illness and other cp problems, but

they are at a much lower level than they were before I downshifted.

Would I chose this normal over my old life? Heck no! I'd take my

old, pain-free life back in a heartbeat. But as you said Dave,

dwelling on it doesn't any good because it doesn't change anything.

Living in the past makes it very hard to enjoy the present and look

forward to the future, and it doesn't offer much hope. You can't go

back to what once was, but we all have the ability to make our

futures what we want them to be.

Jen

[Guest guest]

Hi,

This is so true. None of us wanted nor deserves the painful life we now

have. When you have chronic pain/illness you go thru a process of grief.

It takes a long time to work thru this. Sometimes I've made a few steps

forward only to fall back again. I continue to put one foot in front of the

other tho. It's all I can do. Some days are better than others. Do I long

for

the days when I wasn't confined to this body? Not really, it serves no

purpose. It will never happen. It's my job to make the most of what I have

today. When I accept what life has given me, my whole outlook is better. That

doesn't mean I don't strive to make things better. I'm always looking for new

things. I get a lot of those ideas here on our list. I'm so grateful that

we're all here to support each other.

Kathleen in NC