I was in a similar situation with my back a few years ago. It could be absolutely excruciating. While I also had a protruding disc, it turned out a lot of my problem was hanging on to the mental trauma from the death of a family member in the form of muscle tension. What ended up helping me get better was the combination of therapy (mental not physical) and regular massage appointments. There is also a great book by Peter Levine called "Waking the Tiger" that helped me to understand how my body can carry emotional trauma physically.
Not sure if this relates to you at all but hopefully it helps.
this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2023
12 points (100.0% liked)
Mental Health
4233 readers
40 users here now
Welcome!
This is a safe place to discuss, vent, support, and share information about mental health, illness, and wellness.
Thank you for being here. We appreciate who you are today. Please show respect and empathy when making or replying to posts.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules
1-Posts promoting paid products and services of any kind are not allowed here.
2-All posts and comments must be helpful and supportive. Do not put vulnerable people at risk.
3-Do not DM or ask to speak privately to any of our members unless they specifically request it.
If a person from this community disturbs you in a comment, please report the comment. If you receive a DM you did not request, send a screenshot of the DM in a message to a moderator. This is a bannable offense.
4-Suicide, Self-Harm, Death-- Extended discussions are STRONGLY DISCOURAGED here. First, mods and community members are caring people, but not experts in crisis situations. Second, we want to avoid Lemmy becoming like many commercial social media platforms, where comments can snowball into counterproductive talk.
If you or someone you know needs more help than can be found here, please refer to the pinned resources.
If BRIEF mention of these topics is an important part of your post, please flag your post as NSFW and include a (trigger warning: suicide, self-harm, death, etc.)in the title so that other readers who may feel triggered can avoid it. Please also include a trigger warning on all comments mentioning these topics in a post that was not already tagged as such.
Partner Communities
- Therapy
Neurodegenerative Disease Support
Friends and Family of People with Addiction
To partner with our community and be included here, you are free to message the current moderators or comment on our pinned post.
Community Moderation
Some moderators are mental health professionals and some are not. All are carefully selected by the moderation team and will be actively monitoring posts and comments. If you are interested in joining the team, you can send a message to ZenGrammy for more information.
founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
Mate, if it interferes with your well-being so much, you definitely need to get a second opinion. It could be what the other poster mentioned, but you can't know until someone else takes a look.
Further more, the doctor should have given you some better advice on how to handle it.
It sounds like maybe it's time for you to see a pain specialist if you haven't already done that. Mine are amazing. They help me manage my meds and any follow-up testing I need, and also work on hunting down the cause of any new or existing issues that could be managed by them. It's so frustrating when it feels like your doctor doesn't understand your pain, and a good pain specialist will not make you feel like that.
I have read some articles from chronic pain specialists saying that it's possible what your doctor is saying has some truth to it, because long-lasting pain can cause changes to your brain that make you feel pain even after your original injuries have healed. I thought that was happening to me, and my doctors probably did too, but I had nerve testing done and it turned out I have a pinched nerve that hasn't been addressed and it is somehow causing my body to experience pain at much higher levels than it should, and I tense up and become a ball of muscle spasms. The human body is so strange.
We have a lot of chronic pain sufferers in this community. You are welcome to join us. It's definitely difficult to manage and detrimental to your mental health, but I don't think your doctor was saying you are crazy. I think they were saying your brain is causing you to feel pain that you shouldn't technically be feeling so strongly anymore, so the problem is still real, but neurological now.
💀