I totally understand that this really is a challenge, Click, when the pain is severe. I have sometimes bladder pain that is really severe. I had a few real bladder infections and they were nothing against this TMS pain in the bladder, the urethra and the pelvis. Sometimes I took a pain killer, but not really often, every second month like once or twice. These are situation where I also preferred to stay at home if possible. But otherwise I really try to pull through. I guess this was also the reason why I before, when I was not anxious about the pain, I was doing often quite well.
I think I must explain this: The pain started while writing my Phd thesis which is now 22 years ago. I was in agony. I went to doctors, but they kept on telling me that everything was fine. I started psychotherapy and it began to help, but only after one year. I continued with a real psychoanalysis (the psychoanalyst will not interfere, it is mostly the patient talking). I accepted that my pain is psychosomatic. I also had back pain for some months and sometimes also bowel pain. These two were the first that vanished - at least most of the time. There are sometimes flares, but nothing that is problematic. I also had years without bladder pain. Then I had a divorce, which was a really good decision, also no pain at that time. And then, when I started to be alone, bladder pain started again. Sometime for a week, e.g. when I had to give a paper or when I dated a man. And then in 2011 the pain wouldn't go away and I got anxious! And I made the mistake to look at the IC website and the forum and they told me that I probably have IC and that I need to keep the diet etc. And I tried that, and I also went to an urologist to get a proper diagnostic. The result was that I don't have IC. But they couldn't tell me what was wrong. I was in such an anxious state that I needed two more urologists to tell me the same: that there is nothing wrong with my bladder, my urethra or other parts of the pelvis. I went to physiotherapy and I also started to have psychotherapy again. This time with someone who is not working with psychoanalysis. It was the last urologist I visited that really made a difference and I felt that I could trust her and that my bladder issues are really psychosomatic. But this took a time. I struggled with food, I was afraid that wine or tomatos would make me flare. I am now working on addressing the psychological issues, getting a better balance between work and life and calming my nervous system down.
Now, the lesson I learned from my own story is that in the beginning, when I accepted I have psychosomatic condition, I was doing much better. It was not the perfect healing, because the underlying psychological issues were not addressed in the right way - not by me but I must say that psychoanalysis is far to intellectual for me because I am an intellectual person. I never had sick leave because of pain until I became anxious about the pain. Then suddenly I also had anxiety attacks. In the end also this experience with anxiety was helpful because now I really address the underlying issues and I am much more aware of the repressed anger, emotions etc. that cause the pain in the first place.
To make this long story short: in my experience the pain as such is most often not the reason why chose to stay at home. It had much more to do with anxiety and the general state of mind I was in.
(byproduct!)