"Pain is in your head" - I challenged the 'expert' and won!

[Noggsy]

Ladies,

If you have been told 'it's all in your head' - you may find this very interesting.

I am currently seeing a counsellor because I am finding it hard to deal with endo and drug side effects at the minute. So, last week we were talking and she came up with the old, 'your pain is in your head, and you can control it'. Being naturally inquisitive and ready for a fight, I asked her to explain herself. She said:

"Pain is only felt in the brain because that is where the pain receptors are. Pain isn't where the problem (in our case endo) is located, it is a messgae sent from that location to your brain, and your brain turns it into pain. What you need to do is when in pain, breathe deeply and think to yourself my brain is saying I hurt but there is no pain in my brain, and this will stop the pain"

I then asked, so when I am rolling round the floor with my back arched, kicking and lashing out and nearly passing out in pain - how do I do this? She looked blank. I then made her listen to the level of pain we suffer - to the extent of being in agony due to vibrations of people walking past. And asked her again - how do I do this at this level of pain?

She started to back track and say, well it works with the help of pain killers. It just lowers your level of pain so you don't need to take such high doses.

I then queried - well, don't pain killers block the pain recepters in your brain that receive messages from my body that it is in pain? Thus it is the pain killers making this work and not 'mind over matter'.

We promptly changed the subject.

Shell xxxxx

[jaki]

Hi

Sorry to hear this about this doctors saying that. I had that with a gyne before who did my second lap and he said the endo wasn't there anymore and its probably psychological I wasn't impressed.

I went to another hospital where I saw Chris Mann and he said it doesn't disappear and he did my lap and found the endo and excised it.

Always get another opinion don't let these stupid doctors think your going mad.

Take care. X

[MissTeal]

This is brilliant!!!

I got sent to cognative behaviour therapy for the exact same thing. The therapist ended up agreeing with me that it's not in my head. It seems to me that when GP's don't know what's wrong they just put it down to "it's all in her head".........ERM excuse me it's not, it's just you havent found whats wrong yet!!!! Maybe we should inject said Dr's with a dose of endo just so they can see how "in your head" it all is grrrrrrrr

[Tinkerbelle3Laughter]

I've been through this too DESPITE already having had endo diagnoised after a lap. I was told endo could not cause the amount of pain I had and it must be in my head, my doctor at the hospital took me into a room and asked me if I was abused as a child as that would explain the pain (I haven't been by the way). In the end I asked to see a physcologist myself, hoping he would agree with me, which he immediately did and he wrote back to them saying my pain definately had a physical cause!!

Its discusting that we have to go through this. Its hard enough to cope with endo and we all already naturally question ourselves without them adding to the burden! Nightmare.

[tessa36]

Most excellent!
I love it when doctors like them who think they know it all get proved wrong.
Some doctors are so up in their heads that they don't listen to the patients.
I absolutely detest it when people/ women are told that the pain is in their heads when it is caused by endo.
Unless they live with the disease themselves and are an absolute expert on the subject how the hell can they possibly know how much pain endo does or doesn't cause?!
It's like telling a cancer patient to do the same thing.
In my POV we suffer the same amount of pain as a cancer patient does, but without the dying part, and to be frank, I don't know which is worse.
I have been on such strong painkillers that they were the same dosage as my mums' were when she was dying of cancer a couple of years ago and my siblings STILL couldn't understand just how much pain I am in every day.
My GP who is a good doctor thankfully, is trying to get me to reduce the amount of opoiods I am on, because he said to me that if he took someone/anyone off the sidewalk of a street and put them on the dosage of morphine I take every day, he said it would kill them.

I have learned recently that I suffer with Hyperalgesia as well as Hyperesthesia, as well as the endo pains etc etc, even after having a TAH, with all the reproductive stuff taken out.
It's a no wonder I am in such pain all the time. It also makes me wonder just how many of you ladies suffer with hyperalgesia or hyperesthesia?
Look it up in the wikipedia and have a think! xxx

[Noggsy]

Hi Tessa,

You have mentioned something I have been itching to say and have said at work. I am on zoladex which was originally created for and still is used to shrink certain cancer tumours. I often tell people this so they understand just how furrocious and painfull this sh*t is. And, I asked the question at work: if I had cancer and was on this treatment would I be expected not to come into work? As you say, apart from the awful outcome that can happen with cancer, (my mum and partner died of it in the same week), I actually feel and am ill as much as they were when in treatment. Just a thought. $

[tessa36]

See, it's not just me that thinks the same thing.
A lot of people just do not realise how much pain we are in- and when I described it to my mum when she was alive she understood (finally after many years of her thinking I was making a mountain out of a molehill until 2008).

It just seems an awful lot of coincidence when are given treatment that treats cancer. Why are we put on cancer related drugs for endo if the pain for starters, if the pain wasn't as bad as so many ignorant people think?
Plus, there are certain links between endo and cancer yet we don't develop cancer through endo (except for certain rare cases) fully, but it makes one think doesn't it.

[Noggsy]

I have suffered with cervical cancer for years. Pre-cancer and cancer. Interestingly, it was after the op for this in December 2009, did the endo pains really start and a year later (December 2010), I had a lap. I also have a heart shaped uterus.

I can't help but think all of this is linked. I suffered awful periods from word go - giving birth to blood clots, bleeding for 6-8 weeks, cervical erosion, cervical polyps (one with cancer in). I just think I was born with a manky uterus and cervix. Apparantly when I have solution put on my cervix for pre-cancer/cancer, it shows up a line from top to bottom where my cervix didn't quite join exactly when I was conceived, and this is the reason for my uterus being miss-shaped!

My mum always suffered with her periods, but not endo and had a hysterectomy at 40. So, she has always been very understanding with all of my problems, and I just miss her so much as she just totally understood and helped me decide the path to take.