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johnpalmerSo imagine a memory is accompanied by an emotional maelstrom, where everything in your brain is of nightmarish quality, and the entire experience related by the memory now feels awful and horrible. If you've ever had a panic attack (or thought perhaps you had one), that's kind of what I am talking about, only, directly linked to a memory. Well, that can happen to me, and it's usually a bad memory. The thing is, it doesn't have to be. Let's pretend I have a memory of doing something nice for a child; a good example would be, I looked at mom, who nodded, and gave the child my last cookie, and saw that totally delighted look that only children display fully, especially from a minor treat like a cookie.
Well, if I have a bad pain flare, I can feel horrible, just horrible, that I enjoyed that memory so much, that I cherished it, that I was oh, so, effing proud of myself for giving up a cookie. It can be so bad, I don't want to see the child, or the mom, ever again. If I'm low on resources (which I've been for the past 2-3 years), I might panic to be near the child or the mom, because of the trauma (the neurological pain, and attendent emotional maelstrom) that accompanied me dwelling on the memory.
This has nothing to do with one's normal picture of mental health. I'm not so mentally fragile that even giving a child a cookie can become traumatic. What I am, is beset by so much neurological pain that any action, but especially any meaningful, memorable, action, can become a nightmare.
Now, two sentences to make this a bigger nightmare for the empathic: it's only reasonably possible to survive this, if you know it's your pain lying to you, and that this is not your brain's fragility and inability to cope, okay, so if you don't understand that you're in pain, and that the pain tells you lies, it's easy as eff to die as a result of all this. And I only realized I was in pain, at all, after my pain had been worsening horribly for over a dozen years… not even four years ago, today, was the day I learned that this was all pain, much less that the pain was causing my brain to lie to me.
Good luck out there.
Well, if I have a bad pain flare, I can feel horrible, just horrible, that I enjoyed that memory so much, that I cherished it, that I was oh, so, effing proud of myself for giving up a cookie. It can be so bad, I don't want to see the child, or the mom, ever again. If I'm low on resources (which I've been for the past 2-3 years), I might panic to be near the child or the mom, because of the trauma (the neurological pain, and attendent emotional maelstrom) that accompanied me dwelling on the memory.
This has nothing to do with one's normal picture of mental health. I'm not so mentally fragile that even giving a child a cookie can become traumatic. What I am, is beset by so much neurological pain that any action, but especially any meaningful, memorable, action, can become a nightmare.
Now, two sentences to make this a bigger nightmare for the empathic: it's only reasonably possible to survive this, if you know it's your pain lying to you, and that this is not your brain's fragility and inability to cope, okay, so if you don't understand that you're in pain, and that the pain tells you lies, it's easy as eff to die as a result of all this. And I only realized I was in pain, at all, after my pain had been worsening horribly for over a dozen years… not even four years ago, today, was the day I learned that this was all pain, much less that the pain was causing my brain to lie to me.
Good luck out there.
