Day 1 my story so far:

I have been in pain since 1989, when I came off benzodiazepines (ATIVAN) which had been prescribed for me for 27 years, after visiting my gp for advice about my mother who was telephoning me every day telling me she was being beaten up by my father and by my two schizophrenic brothers.
At age 23, in 1967, before I was prescribed benzodiazepines, I was starting a successful career as a painter, and was working as a freelance journalist writing reviews of Books on Art and exhibitions, after I had been on benzos for a few weeks, I had a paradoxical reaction to the drugs and developed anxiety and agoraphobia, and nobody connected this with the benzos, this was the beginning of an existence which caused me to attempt suicide at least twice. Ignorance about the side effects of benzos was universal. I lost a baby at 6 months because of these side effects, and became a recluse until 1989, when I finally discovered what was causing my problems.


So I had a lifetime of dealing with domestic abuse, with no support from anybody and another lifetime of fibromyalgia and tinnitus and it all got so much worse 6 years ago, after I came off caffeine, I developed worse insomnia, CFS, and the worst thing of all, my walking gradually deteriorated, until I could not walk on my heels, i still have this problem, toe walking, which is painful and exhausting, Walking very fast used to be my one pleasure, so not being able to walk is a dreadful plight for me to be in. This was at the same time that I got Bell's Palsy, which has left me with a permanent dropped lip and a problem with drooling and a speech impediment. My handwriting has also deteriorated, because my hands move too fast, and i can't slow them down.



At this point (6 years ago), I was renting a studio in order to make ceramics and had been forcing myself to work 24/7 in order to finish work for exhibitions.



Anyway, my current symptoms are pain in almost every part of my body, CFS, insomnia, headaches, tingling feelings in my hands and legs, tinnitus, problems with speech and walking, anxiety and depression, irritability, clumsiness, and a myriad other symptoms which i don't have the energy to describe. I am waiting for the results of an MRI scan for Parkinson's which I am certain that I do not have



I am 76 years old, and cannot wait to feel better...

I am sorry that this post is muddled, but I need to start the program!

 

Hi nowa, and welcome - it sounds to me like you've found the right place to be, and that you DO need to start the program! Have you also read one of Dr. Sarno's books? I recommend The Divided Mind, which was his last one. I got my first copy electronically from my local library, and I'm sure it's available at many. My library has all three of Dr. Sarno's books, hard copies and e-versions.

I recommend copying your post to your profile, with today's date. Later you'll be able to go back and see your progress - and add to it!

 

YES, i have read Healing Back Pain, I am about to read the Mindbody Prescription, and the Divided Mind is on it's way to me. But the first book that I read was The great Pain Deception, and the night that I finished reading it, I slept well (for the first time for years) and woke with no pain and no anxiety. Unfortunately, that only lasted for a day and although the pain is much less, on some days, and it is moving around, the anxiety is still high. Possibly because I am trying too hard!

(I have copied my first post to my profile)

 

we lived in New Zealand from age 3 to 7, when my mother left my father because of his violence, and took me and my two brothers (twins aged 2) back to England to live with her mother unfortunately he persuaded her to go back to him a few months later. The violence resumed. I can remember visiting somebody's home when I was 5 or 6, where there were two boys, i used to get into bed with them and read Beano comics, they were always kind to me, and at about the same time, I can remember going to wait for a bus to take me to a school in Lower Hutt, there was a privet hedge near the bus stop, and I remember stripping the twigs of their leaves, and feeling sick with fear because I had to leave my mother, and go to the strange school , I can't remember anything about the school, or the journey, only the tears that I shed at the bus stop waiting to leave my mother. I am feeling sick with fear as I write this, but I don't know why, there is nothing in my life at the moment to fear. it must be because of the memories that are coming back to me...

I have had another memory,

now I am remembering that just before we finally left New Zealand, 3 years later, I buried all my toys in the back garden, because I couldn't bear leaving them with anybody else. I am feeling a mixture of fear ad anger now...



At about this time I had a recurring dream, in it I was walking along the side of a wide road, my mother was on the other side, a little way ahead, and I could never catch up with her, or get her attention in the dream.


Here is a short story about what had happened to me at age 6, i changed my name to Daisy, because

I couldn't face using my real name:


Listening at night


She's six years old, this morning she was sitting in the coarse grass and dust of the paddock, making buttercup chains while the big girls talked about sex. Now she's in her pink cotton pyjamas, wedged in her narrow bed with one grey rabbit, two teddy bears, an orange and white woolly terrier and a striped knitted golliwog, out on the edge because his rolling eyes scare her. She's sucking the corner of the flannelette sheet, and the passionfruit vine on the back wall is whipping in the wind that's wailing down from the burnt bare hills. You can tell a man from Wellington, they say, because he holds onto his hat when he turns a corner.


She's waiting for the right moment, too soon, and he'll smash into Mummy's face even harder. Tension and fear constrict her breathing, rain splashes on the window cill and she would like it to be morning. She waits for the screaming to stop, gets out of bed with woolly dog under her arm and opens their bedroom door, switching on the light. Her mother's enormous eyes plead with her, there is blood on the bed-head and on the sheet. Daddy snarls, "Turn that light off, or I'll kill you". She stands steady, "No"' she says, "You've got to stop hurting Mummy." He throws back the cream and blue striped blanket, Mummy's arm looks funny but she still holds him back. "Run, Daisy, Run" she manages to gasp.


It's just long enough to give her the edge - she races down the stairs and out of the front door. She hears her father cursing as he goes out the back to cut her off, so she doubles back and sprints down the vegetable patch. Years later, she will date her conviction that men are no kind of match for her to this moment, but now she's scrambling over the high chicken wire fence, woolly dog safely under a bush.


It's dark, it hurts, the wire's sharp and her feet are bare, but she does it and tumbles into the Harrisons' garden. Their sleepy yellow bulldog licks her leg while she hammers on the kitchen door. Windows open, kind hands lift her while she gasps and shudders. "It's just a nightmare darling, come on, we'll take you back." And now they can hear the screaming too. Mr Harrison , tousle haired and still smelling of the warm brown comforter that he brews up by Nae Nae Point shouts "Stop that, Alan."


Mummy's all bandaged up, broken ribs, broken collarbone, black eyes, and Daddy's crying, and making her rest and the kind policeman takes Daisy aside - "Mummy's going to need a lot of love, and you keep on listening out, or he'll kill her."


She thinks she won't bother wearing pyjamas any more, or go to bed, she'll keep her clothes on and sit at the top of the stairs - she'll need a head start.

 

I am angry about my father who behaved like an arsehole for his whole life. He used to punch me when i was a child and stood up for my mother, I hate him because he went on to have 4 more children, after me, and when I was a teenager said to me 'IF it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have this lot round my neck", he never gave my mother enough money for food for us, so I often went hungry. I am not able to sleep tonight because i remembered an incident when we lived in Scotland, in a house in an old quarry, which meant that the back garden went straight up, and my father was using a hose up at the top and I was down below near the tap to which the hose was attached, and my father said "Touch that tap and see what happens", so I did, and he threw a stone at me which hurt, because I hadn't understood that he was threatening me. I want to kill him for this (he and my mother have been dead for many years), and I can't forgive him for the way he NEVER showed me the slightest affection, and he caused me to break my nose at the age of three, by letting me fall out of my pram, so I have still got breathing problems in my 70's. And I hate him because when I asked my mother why she kept on bringing more children into or world of misery, she said that "with some men, you don't have any choice". I am angry about how he insinuated that I would end up a prostitute. when, at age 17, I started going out with my first boyfriend.

and I am so sad and angry about how one of my schizophrenic brothers used to burn my clothes and smash up my possessions and terrified me so much that I had to lock my bedroom door at night, and when I was with my boyfriend, he used to throw a wet flannel against my window over and over again, so I never had any peace. I am angry about my mother, who was always talking about getting a divorce, but even after I had made an appointment with solicitors, she never did anything about it. In fact I behaved more like a mother to her than she ever was to me. I can't go on with this, I am too tired, and it isn't giving me any relief. so I will go on with it another time, (I want to forgive them, but I can't)

 

I once read something about forgiveness which I've never forgotten, because to me it makes so much sense:

You might choose to forgive the individual, usually on the basis that they didn't have the mental and/or emotional capacity to do any better, but you don't actually have to forgive their behavior. In many cases, the behavior is in fact unforgivable, and in a just and perfect world, it would never exist.

In the end, the person you really have to forgive is yourself, and that's often the hardest thing of all. Loving yourself for where you are now, without regret for what you did or didn't do in the past, will do more towards your healing than almost anything else.

 

I struggle with this, I find it hard to love myself!

 

i am not sure where to write this, but it is part of my story, so I'LL write it here - After another night of no sleep, I started to think about how I was born at 6 months, and was in an iron lung, (in the early 1940's) and how terrifying that must have been, and ended up in am anxiety state, because that reminded me how when I was pregnant at age 29, I also lost a baby at 6 months, it died in my womb, and I was able to hear it's heartbeat getting fainter and fainter. I was taking a cocktail of prescribed drugs at the time, includingAtivan, which causes floppy baby syndrome, and I am sure it caused my baby's death. I had always had a phobia about giving birth, because my mother had 5 children altogether, and every birth caused me trauma, because of the misery she was bringing the new baby into. (I asked her why she kept on having babies, and she said that "with some men you don't have any choice". So it was a miracle that I became pregnant (I was on the pill). Anyway, I was so out of my head on drugs and had been for years, that I had no feelings for it at all, and only recently was able to feel how much I could have loved it, and shed tears for it. (I asked them what sex it was, but they said it was too macerated to tell). but I feel that it was a little girl... I now think that she would have been brain damaged by all the drugs, so it may have been a blessing that she died, and life with me on Ativan would have been hell.

But I can't forget how they came to me in the middle of the night, roughly examined me, and asked me "do you really want this baby, because you are bleeding so much that your life is in danger, but if we can keep it alive for another few days, it might survive. and I said 'NO, I didn't want the baby', so they went ahead and induced me and I heard her heart beat getting fainter and fainter until it stopped.

Can I forgive myself? and what do I do with all the painful feelings?

This all happened in the early 70's but it feels as if it was a few months ago.