Feeling empty and bored - Pain increases

PatrikH27

New Member
Today is a very hot day, i feel exhausted and im lacking energy to do anything. My pain is worse than usual.

I feel so empty recentely i can not come up with anything that‘s fun. I‘m just laying here feeling like i wanna cry because there is nothing thats really motivating to do something.

Its pretty clear my back pain is part of something much bigger. I can feel i have sadness deep inside me and its holding me back.

Sometimes when im pain free when going for walks i ask myself, now you are pain free, you should be happy now. But i‘m not.
 
I'm sorry you're not feeling best right now! I've been there many times and it does pass. Be kind and gentle with yourself right now.
 
Are you a person who uses journaling? Have you tried writing about it?
I do like the fact you admit you are bored. This might be a big step to understanding what might be going on. I ent through this phase, and a few things might be happening:
You are finally getting in touch with old grief.
You may need to learn to love yourself. Boredom, when it is frequent, can be a sign you find it hard to be your own best buddy.
You’ve found a routine that is “safe” the walking and that’s been disrupted, and just being with yourself doesn’t feel as safe right now. How can you empower yourself? Meditation, I use audio books free from my library through a phone app, I use walking videos on YouTube for walking that eventually led me to being able to do simple qui gong and tai chi (if you click on my avatar it will lead you to videos you can explore), podcasts like mind and fitness podcast, the mind body couple, Nichole Sachs etc which are full of genuine encouragement from caring people..
Know this just might be a phase of healing! It was for me. It can be hard for doers to slow down and just be your own company. Most of all just allow that sadness to flow through you. It will pass.
 
Thank you so much for your kind words!

I do feel like i have more pain when its very hot outside or my body gets exhausted a lot. Is anything like that somewhere explained in a book? I wonder if someone can relate but its almost as if the body is so stressed out by the heat and surroundings that its easier for the pain to come through. Thats how it feels for me at least.
 
I do feel like i have more pain when its very hot outside or my body gets exhausted a lot. Is anything like that somewhere explained in a book?

This is conditioning. You've created an association in your mind with heat and pain. It's a learned response from having experienced pain once or twice when it was hot, and your mind went "It's the heat causing my pain." The good news is that you can unlearn this by telling yourself over and over that there is no logical reason for heat to bring on pain, but you do need to believe it's true. Think of all the people who live in hot climates and don't have pain. Think of all the times you've been in heat and didn't have pain.

I feel bored at times, too. The best remedy for me is to just start doing something--anything--whether it interests me or not. Something physical or creative works best for me.
 
You can help someone else. And you forget about: I, me, my, mine etc.
...
It's interesting, for me great heat is something that helps with pain. I used to go to the desert on purpose and spend an hour there in the heat, in silence, to be able to recover a little bit. So interesting...
 
It's interesting, for me great heat is something that helps with pain. I used to go to the desert on purpose and spend an hour there in the heat, in silence, to be able to recover a little bit.
So interesting @Sita - I used to love love love the heat and would be out in it for hours soaking up the healing energy, but since onslaught of symptoms happened in the summer and intensified with heat (and there is inflammation/redness), my mind seems to link them (I was just writing about this for my Day 11 yesterday), EVEN THOUGH these symptoms didn't just go away at all in the winter months or even just when I am cool (eg. after I take a hot shower often they will calm down). In any case, it seems it just goes to show it is really about the interpretation of whatever variable and then our predictive brains make it so.

I appreciated what you said about helping others as something that helps. This is one of my greatest passions and does certainly help one get out of their heads. Of course, sometimes my mind can use that for fodder to keep me stuck by reminding me all the ways that I am not able to help right now. So at those times I try to just do a little of what I can and use it as a motivator to keep on going so that I can soon be fully there in all the ways that I want to be of service while also being there for myself in the process.
 
I appreciated what you said about helping others as something that helps. This is one of my greatest passions and does certainly help one get out of their heads.
I agree 100%. Although... I have had to learn to be careful about letting mindless goodism, combined with perfectionism, override self-care. This is what led me to the ultimate stress overdose which I believe resulted in my sudden-onset RA in the spring of 2020 (yes, that spring - it was pandemic-related-we-all-need-to-pull-together-whatever-it-takes...)(and it turns out that mindlessly focusing on "whatever it takes" did me in) (my new rheumatologist agrees with me!) I have since learned when to step back and just say NO. Moderation in all things!
 
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