Sunday, August 19, 2007

Stress and Back Pain or Chronic Pain

It has been awhile since I have posted anything but STRESS has been running my life.

We have had several horrible tragedies and due to dysfunction in my husbands dumb ass family, most of the work and stress has fallen to me.... the least physically capable person of the bunch but I guess I am also the strongest emotionally.

One thing that will increase your pain is stress. My pain level these past few months has been almost unbearable. My pain management regimen has not been working at all. I am taking more oral pain medicine than I have in the past 11 years and it is all stress.

I am not good at managing stress and never have been, I tend to dwell on things unless I am able to have a face to face confrontation with the person causing my stress and just laying it all out on the table... I will dwell on whatever the issue is.

Of course in the past 3 months we have had 3 deaths and sent our oldest daughter to Iraq.... that in itself is very stressful but in the midst of this one of my sister-in-laws decided to get in my face concerning an issue with her sister's recent passing. I would have let it go at that point but she commenced to calling all the other siblings (5) and telling them her version of the story. Then each of them and one of their aunt's calls me and chews me out for daring to argue with their princess little sister..... who happens to be 30+ years old.

So I guess I have major issues with the family dynamic and how I am the villain after all of the work I have done while they sat around and "grieved." I have not had that privilege as of yet and then I endure 2 more deaths and my daughter going to Iraq.

I strayed from my topic...

Learning to manage your stress is paramount to living a healthy lifestyle especially when you are living with chronic pain.