Month: September 2019

Deep Tissue Massage for Fibromyalgia

Bones

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My acupuncturist had a family emergency last month which meant he was off for about three weeks.  During that time I had some fairly considerable trigeminal neuralgia flareups and, in a pain induced panic, decided I must see someone … just not someone with needles.

I looked around online for massage therapists near me and stumbled across this one particular one that had good reviews and wasn’t overly expensive.  I got an appointment for the next day and went in, hoping some massage would ease the fire in my face.

It didn’t.  Oh boy did it not.  What it did do, however, was loosen some knots that haven’t been released in decades, knots my shiatsu massager just would never be able to reach.

Now I’m not talking about your normal relaxation massage where you go in and they kneed you for an hour.  No, I’m talking about the massage where the therapist actively finds the painful spots and then digs her thumbs into them for an hour.  It’s painful.  I make some truly spectacular noises and groans of “oh god” while she’s doing this.  It’s amazing.

I left feeling battered and bruised and nauseated, like I always do with any body work that releases tension, but after a few days I felt revivified!  I went back the next week.

This time she discovered even more knots.  See, now that she’d begun relaxing the superficial layer, she was able to find the deep knots, the ones that cause problems.  The ones that haven’t seen the light of day (or rather, felt the “tender” touch of a massage therapist) for decades, nay, eons!  Well after this session I felt so light headed and dizzy I couldn’t quite function for the rest of the day, or the next three days after that.  She’d knocked something loose in my back that had really done my head in.

I’ve just revisited her today and I am definitely noticing an improvement in how my body feels, despite the pain from coming off Tegretol (another blog post in and of itself!).  I’m also noticing an improvement in how my body moves, which is really rewarding.

My theory is this:  I have a lot of knots.  I have a lot of muscle tension.  I have a lot of muscle fuckery.  This will all be amplified by fibromyalgia, causing me both excessive pain, and excessive stiffness.  If I can work out these knots, release this tension, and improve my muscle health through deep tissue massage and gentle exercise, this will reduce the level of pain I will experience from fibromyalgia, because there is less muscle pathology.

So far I think it’s working?  It’s a bit hard to tell, what with exams, the stress of losing a friend, and coming off Tegretol.  To be honest I’m just throwing everything I can think of at my fibromyalgia and trigeminal neuralgia and hoping something sticks, so identifying exactly what is having exactly how much of a positive impact is going to be a bit tricky.  Here’s hoping the deep tissue massage sticks!

Either way, it’s making me feel better, and that’s the most important thing right now.

The Journey from Victim to Vulnerable and the Dichotomy of Being Disabled

Bones

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I had a thoroughly eye-opening discussion with my therapist the other day.

I spoke to her about what had happened with my friend who, after I wrote my last blog, sent me a long message where she accused me of a lot of things (predominantly to do with empathy and consideration, two things she knows I care deeply about), denied she had ever acted in a way that would have me guard myself against her, attack me for what I did to her by making my decision without consulting her, and then cast herself into the victim.  She used DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender – to a rather good initial result.

But I had an uncomfortable feeling in my gut.  Her response didn’t feel right.  It felt like she was trying to guilt me, to suck me in and force me to conform and appease her.

I contacted my good friend who is well and truly experienced in these things, having had years of therapy to work through a narcissistic mother.  He was the one who pointed out what she was doing, and from there we unravelled the past abuse and control so I could see it for what I was.

I explained all of this to my therapist and she pointed out to me that my friend (well, now ex-friend) exists in the Drama Triangle – that is “Fixer”, “Offender” and “Victim”.  The alternative triangle is “Support”, “Assertive” and “Vulnerable”.  Now I exist in this latter triangle with my good friends, and this was where I thought our relationship had existed.  Looking back now, even my behaviour indicates that we weren’t.

I feel like when I acted, when I advised her of my decision, I was being assertive.  I definitely wasn’t in the offender role, I was very careful with my wording so the ‘blame’ for our incompatible conflict styles didn’t rest on her, but rather on both of us, because it IS both of us who have incompatible conflict styles.

Her response, however, was entirely trapped within the Drama Triangle, and she was trying to pull me back into it.  She was very clearly attempting to goad me into responding and returning to her triangle, which will feed her need for drama (she once admitted to me that she would actively seek to start fights, and she would actively continue fights with her best friend – this included calling her a bitch – because she wanted to).  I refused to do so.

We have since had a number of university classes together, in close enough confines, but without direct interaction.  I have felt myself subconsciously fall into the ‘victim’ mentality.  My thoughts go sad, I hunch in, and I feel guilty at the same time as feeling abused.  This is not a role I want to be in, because it means I have fallen back into the Drama Triangle, so I take a moment to breathe, draw my shoulders back, and reaffirm myself and my actions.

While I’m not around her, I am able to stay in the other triangle, in the ‘assertive’ role.  When I am around her, even with her very deliberately and completely cold shouldering me, I find myself falling back into her triangle.

This is because our relationship exists in a ‘closed’ system, where our roles are fixed and there are set rules.  I was, of course, cast into the role of ‘helpless cripple’ while she was in the role of ‘fixer’ or ‘hero’.  In a closed system, there is no movement about the various roles that one can be in a relationship, there can only be these two roles, and when one person in that relationship attempts to move into a different role, or out of the fixed role, the system seeks to return to homeostasis.  That is, the system seeks to return that person to their fixed role, sometimes through any means necessary.

In my other relationships, I exist in ‘open’ systems, where we move through the various roles one can take in the relationship depending on what’s going on at the time.  This means when one person is feeling vulnerable, the other can support them or be the hero, and vice versa.  There is the give and take of healthy relationships.  There is also room to exist in two states which, for someone who is disabled, is exactly what we do.  We exist as ‘vulnerable’ (as we are disabled, and therefore always vulnerable to some extent) but we can exist as ‘hero’ at the same time.

This is the dichotomy of the disabled.  We are always ‘vulnerable’, but we exist beyond that at the same time.  It’s a surprisingly difficult concept to wrap ones head around, and indeed it took me until earlier this year to really grasp it.  Initially, it was my own mentality trapping me there.  Then it was her mentality trapping me there.  Being a pathological people pleaser meant I adapted to what was expected of me, and remained adapted to that long past where I should have.  I remained in her closed system, and placated her closed system when she snapped (because I took a teeny tiny step out of it), for quite some time.

But now I’ve challenged that closed system, and I have removed myself from her Drama Triangle.  She made an attempt to draw me back into both and, due to a combination of being blocked and having no phone credit, as well as being surrounded by amazing friends, I did not return to it.  I did not placate the system, and I did not engage with her aggression and abuse.

It’s a surprisingly freeing feeling.

Today I Lost A Friend (And I Caused It)

Bones

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Today I lost a friend, and I caused that loss.  I’m sad.  Actually, more devastated.  She has been my very close friend throughout this year at university, but prior to that we were friends for about 3 years.

We were going to do a thing together, one that had major financial implications for me, and a lot of time investment from her.  I decided it was not going to work for me, it was not something I wanted to do at all, I told her before she devoted herself to it.  We’d both put some time into it, her more than I, and she’d put some money into it, but neither of us would lose a huge amount.

I decided it wasn’t going to work for me for a number of reasons, some of which were friendship problems (I didn’t think our friendship would survive the business relationship), and the other of which I would be putting in a lot of money that I would rather put to use elsewhere.  Like a deposit for buying my first house.  Or implement some new thing to help with my fibromyalgia or trigeminal neuralgia.

Talking to other friends (right now) is making me realise there were other cracks in our friendship long before now.  There were controlling aspects, an imbalance in the dynamic of the relationship (I was assigned the role of helpless invalid which, at the time, I must admit I was, but it never changed as I became less helpless).

There was an issue wherein she demanded control over my actions and I did not cede to it, because my assessment of the situation was different to hers.  This was a major point of contention, with her continually stating that I had a fear of losing control, that I did not trust her because I did not relinquish complete control to her, and that that was hurtful.  I hadn’t realised until now how manipulative that is.

Okay, so I lost someone I felt was a very close friend because I put myself first in a situation that would have a major impact on me and said this is not something I am going to do.  I want to keep the friendship, and I do not feel it will survive a business partnership, and I am unwilling to mix those.  Therefore I will not do it.

She noped right out the door and locked it after her.  And damn if that doesn’t hurt.

A Little Bit of Magnesium Goes a Long Way!

Bones

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I have been feeling, as a general rule, more achy and grizzly these past few weeks.  I’d put it all down to the stress – both mental, emotional, and physical – of moving and getting set up in a new place, unpacking, and the terror of finding out my exam is this week, not next week as I had thought.

I asked my flatmate if I could borrow some of his epsom salts for a bath on one particularly painful day, and we got to discussing how the primary benefit of the epsom salts is the high magnesium content, and the absorption of it across the skin.  Well I hopped out of that bath feeling a million bucks!  The lovely non-achy feeling continued until the next day, but by the one after that I was a little bundle of aches again.

I finally got my hands back on some magnesium supplements.  Magnesium was something I was taking, along with numerous other supplements, a few months ago, but stopped due to the expense of maintaining the high level of supplementation and the need to spend that money on other things.  Stopping magnesium turned out to be a stupid move.

I’ve started back up with my relatively high dose of magnesium (I think it was 1000mg or something like that) and I think I’m feeling a difference already.  I may do another epsom salt bath in celebration after this exam just to really kick things off.

It just reiterated the importance of appropriate supplementation, especially of magnesium, when you have chronic pain.  So magnesium is a pretty awesome mineral.  It has an essential role in regulating muscle contraction, blood pressure, and insulin metabolism, among other things.  It helps with nerve transmission and neuromuscular coordination.  It also plays a protective role in preventing over excitation of the nerves, thus preventing neuronal death.

There was a study testing the administration of magnesium (300mg) and amitriptyline (10mg) or just magnesium across a small number of women with fibromyalgia, and all noted a reduction in tender points and reduction in pain.

Because of its wide ranging positive influences on the nervous system, magnesium is really something I should have kept on with, and it’s probably something you should try, as well.  It’s a good thing to have at night, as it also helps with sleep.  I always notice a reduced time between head hitting pillow and unconsciousness when I’m on magnesium.

Stepping Down on Tegretol SUCKS

Bones

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It’s been almost a week since I reduced my dose of Tegretol from twice a day to once a day, and my body is still acclimatising.

The first day was excruciating.  I couldn’t think, had no balance, everything hurt (including my face).  My skin was overly sensitive and every sensation was unpleasant or painful.  My team took one look at me and said go home.  I sat down and did some work, but then gratefully took them up on their suggestion and went home to curl up on the couch and watch my latest high value distraction: Mind Hunter.

The second day was a bit better.  I no longer felt like every part of my body was on fire with fever aches.  I didn’t have much balance, and in fact I sat back from interacting directly with the horses during our practical session due to this, but I was more alive than day one.

I’m now almost a week in.  I’m pretty sure I’m coming down with a minor cold or something of that ilk, as I’ve got the heavy duty fever aches, extreme lethargy, and overall fogginess.  While this is a symptom of my fibromyalgia, it’s usually reserved for ‘coming down with something’ rather than ‘you’ve done too much’.

I will not be getting acupuncture this week, as my acupuncturist has had a family emergency.  I’ll see if I can get two acupuncture treatments in next week or the week after, whenever he’s back, to hit the trigeminal neuralgia hard.  It’s been acting up a bit on one tegretol, and I’d like to settle it back down.

As you may be able to see, my thoughts are still sluggish and somewhat disjointed.  I’m going to blame that on the plague rather than the tegretol, and have a nap.