@ShadowMan sorry to hear you are going through a tough time. Please do speak to a crisis team, as recommended by
@Cromulent in his post above, if you do ever feel desperate.
I’ll share a story with you that might seem random at first but it’s really relevant.
A few years ago, I had an accident and I was getting terrible pain in my back, legs and feet. After physio only seemed to make it worse, I eventually sorted out an MRI scan that confirmed I had slipped a disc and it was crushing my nerves, causing pain in weird places. I didn’t initially want to have surgery but after I was in too much pain to even go for a walk, I opted to have it done.
At first it seemed like the surgery was a success as all the stabbing pain went away, but it never ever reaaallly went away. For years now, I’ve just been ‘coping’ with chronic pain in my back that is easily triggered and never really seemed to go away.
So about 5 years after the surgery I think, right, time for another MRI scan to see if they messed it up. The scan came back and was passed around a bunch of consultants and they all had the same conclusion: they could not identify anything physically wrong that was causing the pain. The surgery was a success and nothing was interfering with the nerve. Huh.
I was then referred to a ‘pain consultant’ who, to my great surprise, diagnosed me with a ‘pain disorder’. What he speculates has happened is that my ‘overprotective brain’, from the 9 months of agony pre-surgery, has basically massively ramped up all sensitivity of that nerve and it’s going haywire. This is a bit like when you hear about people having ‘phantom pain’ in their limbs when they have amputations. He’s given me a prescription of a drug called nortriptyline and whilst my pain has not completely gone away, it’s taken away the sharpness so it’s no longer on my mind.. so I’m not so bothered about it all the time. I have relief. It’s a very subtle difference but I think it’s helping me ‘get on with it’. I’m told I’ll need to be on it for about 6 months, at least. Seems like it’s a good result!
Now, I’m not a doctor and this post is not medical advice… but I can tell you that what I’ve described above is broadly analogous to how someone may be treated with antidepressants. I have also struggled with my mental health, have had therapy / counselling for a number of years and also have a prescription for anti-depressants, which have been a co-help with ‘mental exercises’ to help stop my mind engaging in repetitive, unhelpful behaviours. The anti-depressants have been extremely subtle and not at all how I expected they would be. A little weird at first but not affecting the core of my personality in the slightest. Incidentally, the pain medicine I mentioned is also (to my surprise at the time) an antidepressant.
I think both the counselling (over many
years - it’s taken time) and both sets of drugs, for the mental health and the pain disorder, have slowly helped me find a more balanced and peaceful mindset, when accompanied by a ‘can do’ attitude and appreciating that pain, while helpful for us to heal and grow, can actually cause more problems when there is a ‘glitch’… a bit like how people’s immune system can malfunction when there’s an alergy.
Even when states of mind seem impossible to change, it’s my personal belief from my own journey that most states of mind are temporary - some of use just get ‘glitched’ into repeating them from time to time and, likewise, some of us also can’t help that we need a little help, guidance and knowledge to better enable us to deal with what life throws at us.
I hope this is helpful in some way. As said above, keep on keeping on
![[FnG]magnolia](/styles/overclockers/avatars/9.png){kind=avatar}
andysmanclub.co.uk
menssheds.org.uk
