Breaking Point: Speaking my truth and the emotional toll of caregiving

[Patty Cakes]

I’ve had a really difficult day dealing with insurance and the endless loop of the medical system. The rehab facility wants to send my husband home this Friday. He can barely function, he can barely walk, even with his walker and they are trying to wipe their hands of him and dump him back here with zero aftercare lined up—no wound care, no help, nothing. It’s an unsafe discharge, and I’v spent all day fighting the rehab center and holding my ground on my legal rights.

Today, I finally broke down and told him the unvarnished truth. I’ve never said it quite like this before, but I told him his body is just failing, and that this two-year loop of coming home, falling, and ending right back in the hospital and rehabs cannot continue. I told him straight out: I just can't do this anymore, and he is realistically looking at long-term care because I am completely emotionally exhausted.

My anger at the system—and at the sheer emotional toll of having to fight an uphill battle for a setup that is broken—is overwhelming. And my body let me know immediately. My entire right side, from my head all the way down, flared up like a Christmas tree from the stress and anxiety. It is 110% TMS.

I"ve been working through the workbook on unwinding anxiety, but today I had to face the raw resentment and rage of being trapped in this cycle. Speaking my truth to him was agonizing, but I had to let him hear how heavy this truly is for me.

Since I am already in such bad pain right now, is this the appropriate time to let my anger, my resentment, and my frustration out? I'm trying to process it, but I'm afraid it's going to flare my pain up even worse than it already is. How do you handle this when you're already in the thick of a massive flare-up?

 

[Duggit]

My anger at the system—and at the sheer emotional toll of having to fight an uphill battle for a setup that is broken—is overwhelming. And my body let me know immediately. My entire right side, from my head all the way down, flared up like a Christmas tree from the stress and anxiety. It is 110% TMS.

I think I might have an inkling of what you are going through. My wife has late-state Alzheimer's, on top of which she had a stroke in September that destroyed her already limited mobility and put her in a wheelchair. It is physically impossible for me to care for her because I am not as strong as I used to be and kept injuring myself when I lifted her. This afternoon I had a really frustrating time dealing with something the memory care facility where she resides bungled. The bungling did not bother me, but I got really angry about the bureaucratic red tape involved in trying to straighten it out. I knew I was angry, and I let it show.

But that is not the reason I am writing. At the end of his book The Mindbody Prescription, Dr. Sarno answered some questions he frequently got from patients. One question was: "I know I'm angry. I can feel it. In fact, I often show it. Why do I still have pain?" Here is the first paragraph of his answer: "Because the anger you know about and express is not the anger causing your pain. TMS is a response to anger-rage generated in the unconscious (in which case you are not aware of it), or conscious anger suppressed. TMS is not a response to conscious anger felt or expressed."

 

[BloodMoon]

And my body let me know immediately. My entire right side, from my head all the way down, flared up like a Christmas tree from the stress and anxiety.

Since I am already in such bad pain right now, is this the appropriate time to let my anger, my resentment, and my frustration out? I'm trying to process it, but I'm afraid it's going to flare my pain up even worse than it already is. How do you handle this when you're already in the thick of a massive flare-up?

From what you’ve described above and in other posts elsewhere on the forums, it seems to me that your nervous system tends to react immediately, or almost immediately, to stressful situations with symptoms.

To me, it’s like a slot machine dispensing horrible coffee into a thin paper cup: the stress is the money going in, and the very hot coffee and uninsulated cup are the immediate pain you feel. The stress is real; the pain response is real; and right now your cup is already overflowing.

It's just my opinion and from my own experience, but if it were me, I would not try to force a deep emotional excavation while I was in that much pain and fear. I’d first deal with the immediate reaction, without trying to suppress it:

• Write the rage down in short, unpolished bursts, e.g. “I’m furious. I’m scared. I can’t carry this alone. This discharge is unsafe. I need help.” You do not have to solve anything while you write.
• Then deliberately self-soothe—something Dr Sarno talked about. I’d slow my breathing, with a longer out-breath; unclench my jaw, shoulders, hands and belly; put a hand somewhere comforting; and remind myself: “I am safe enough for the next few minutes. I do not have to solve all of this right now. I can take everything in baby steps.”
• Do something small that signals safety to your body: sit or lie supported, sip water, step outside for two minutes, wrap up warm, listen to something familiar, perhaps do the short meditation I suggested the other day, or simply rest.

Sarno’s approach does include shifting attention from the symptom to the emotional pressure behind it, but that does not mean you have to interrogate yourself or dig deep while you are flooded. Later, when there is a lull in the crisis, you can return to what happened: the rage, grief, fear, resentment, and sheer exhaustion of it all, and explore anything else you feel or felt angry or fearful about. You can again choose to do this in smaller, potentially more tolerable doses, and self-soothe afterwards.

You have already done something courageously important by telling your husband the truth. It was an act of honesty about a situation that would overwhelm almost anyone.

For now, I’d tackle everything in bite-sized steps, prioritising what is most important for your own care and sanity. Any deeper processing can wait until you have a little more capacity.