Importance of focusing on Positive with Depression & Anxiety.

Hello @linamend,

I just read several of your posts as well as some of the responses of the members of Connect. I would like to encourage you to try one more thing. Are you aware of the Pain Rehabilitation program at Mayo Clinic?

I would like to invite a Connect mentor, Rachel, @rwinney, to this discussion. She has suffered from chronic pain for a long time. She also attended this Pain Rehabilitation Clinic at Mayo and was helped.

If you have not yet met Rachel here is information from her profile:
"Rachel, Volunteer Mentor (@rwinney)
I'm a wife, mom of two, and CEO and Manager of my Central Nervous System. I have a chronic pain disorder called Central Sensitization Syndrome. I attended Mayo Clinic's Pain Rehabilitation Center in Jacksonville, Florida. There, I learned how to better my path forward by living my best C-life possible. This quote by Dolly Parton sums it up nicely... "We can not direct the wind, but we can adjust the sails"."

Here is an overview of Mayo's Pain Rehabilitation Clinic, https://www.mayoclinic.org/departments-centers/pain-rehabilitation-center/sections/overview/ovc-20481691.

Do you think that you would be interested in learning more about this clinic?

Thanks ever so much for your kindness. But I have been in the Johns Hopkins Pain Clinic program, as well as the Georgetown University pain clinic. I have no more energy to deal w this issue. Getting thru each day is all I can do.

I've had over 80 sessions of Biofeedback, at least 76 sessions of acupuncture, numerous "hypnosis sessions", Rolfing, traditional Vietnamese medicine, you name it, I've tried it. Plus years on very high levels of Oxycontin in the 1990s, to which I never got addicted, and just weaned myself off.

Weaned myself off Fioricet numerous times also.

So what I'm taking now is the lowest dosage of medication of any time in my life.

I think I'll just stay w this regimen since psychologically and emotionally I can't take any more demands to try to get well. I am utterly exhausted.

But thank you so much from my heart. Lin

Hello @linamend, I'm Rachel, it's nice to meet you.

I'm truly sorry for all you've been through. You sound exhausted from the struggle and fight with the invisible disability you've had for all these years. I feel very sad that your prior rehab programs have not privided you with the four main comprehensive components of physical, emotional, behavioral and chemical. Although, maybe they have.

As @hopeful33250 mentioned, I graduated Mayo's Pain Rehab Center. I worked with Dr. Sletten and saw first hand how a program like Mayo's can provide a supportive plan of action and tools for success, but outcomes vary for each participant. Dr. Sletten told us on day one that the program will work for us if we work the program. So, so true and for various reasons not everyone is up to the challenges of self application. An example of this is my mother.

My mom was hit broad side while driving her motorcycle when she was 28, I was 8. It's been a long journey and like you, she is waning in her "invisible disability". I watched her fight all these years. She was stubborn and determined to disguise her disability. She expresses to me now that she can't take any more demands to get well. That's a heart breaker for me as her daughter. She blames her age of 72 mostly. It's tough for me to understand but we go back to everyone is different.

What I hear you say is psychologically and emotionally you're shot, cooked, done. Makes sense, and that's your choice, like it's my mom's. I respect that, but Lin, you came to Connect for a reason. What would you say is your reason? How can we, here on Connect, help?

PS: You won me over by saying, "getting thru each day is all I can do".

PSS: I get thru the next 5 minutes. Small wins.

Thank you, Rachel. I see you are connected totally on this. I am deeply moved by the story of your mom. So sorry.

Like her, I'm 72 and just utterly exhausted by this journey. I have a therapist, a psychiatrist, a neurologist, and an internist. One physician has been working w me for 30+ years and has saved my life more than once.

But there is no more fight left. I'll take what pain relief I can get, and hope I don't have to live thru this much longer.

But I'm extremely healthy in every other way. I dress fashionably, dye my hair funky colors, am financially independent.. in other words-->I am totally in disguise as someone in chronic pain.

There are many people like me. I have close friends in the same situation. We plod along, thankful for the wonderful people like YOU in the world, that understand what we are going thru. We are not living. We are existing.

Sending you BIG THANKFUL HUGS! 🤗

I don't know Lin, you had me at funky hair colors!! Hide all you want behind those funky hair colors, but that tells me you do care enough about yourself to present well, even if it's a facade. Now, we just have to match the inside to the hair.

Here's my thought, and this was a huge part of my rehab and I have to keep myself in check daily on it....
eliminate pain behaviors.

Pain behaviors are anything we do, say or think that reminds us or someome of our symptoms. It's called "accessing the network" and it's self sabatoging. Takes alot of practice.

Thanks for the big thankful hugs. I'm sending them right back atcha along with my wish list for you:

Surround yourself with positive people, find humor everyday, spend time with children, animals and in nature, listen to music, keep a gratitude journal (and put me in it for today - haha), focus on the things you can control not what you can't, and let me know the next color choice for your hair. 😊

You're preaching to the choir, darlin'! That's the the same good advice I get from all my healthcare professionals.

Yes, I care about how I appear to others because I don't want sympathy or tedious "have you tried Tylenol?" type of advice.

And toxic positivity only makes me hurt worse, so I face the way things are, accept it w conscious good grace, and go about my life the best I can.

But I know you understand. Thanks ever so much for being a stalwart support and inspiration to others. That's something we need! 😍

I suffer from depression and am trying meditation through an app called Aura. It gives you a meditation coach who suggests different meditations based on your communicated needs. So far it seems to be helping.

Thanks so much. I appreciate the info. I can't "focus" on any online App, so I can't follow meditation or do Lumosity, etc. But I certainly appreciate that you wrote. I'm so glad it's helping you! 🤗😔

The most incredible thing is that we are all extremely unique mentally, physically and spiritually. Please don’t give up trying to find and work on finding a less painful life. You can do this!! We are on your side!! We can not give you the answer to a better life but we can tell you that the journey is daily with many changes and adjustments to make it better. It’s worth the time trying. You are precious and will succeed at making it happen.

The biggest challenge I can most clearly identify is the "moment-to-moment", hour-to-hour struggle with feeling or being useful, engaging with something rewarding, "just being"...especially NOT wanting to be so weighted down with this struggle. (The recently discovered phrase "existential depression" seems to help describe at least some of it).

Kind of hard to put into words overall, but the unseen tugging toward inertia and ennui is more binding than ever. I've been an accomplished person all my life, but always struggled with feeling "enough" - actually the feeling that won't diminish is "never enough". So, when I'm not doing something (which is the majority of the time lately - and hence the problem) I feel like I just want to almost "freeze in place". It feels safer than the constant trying, which begins to feel like delaying the inevitable - the dysthymia / depression, the weightiness of it all, the always returning weight.

It has been helpful to have words to place on some of these conditions or struggles, but yet they never go away just with descriptive phrases. I visit a LCSW who is supportive, but I can't seem to get through to anyone, my loving partner included, how much of a weight this is, and how much energy it takes to carry this around, with no resolution. Sounds like a bit of what we kids used to call a "pity party" - but it is something that our family has struggled with (I am alone in acknowledging this within the family).

One accomplished member attempted suicide years ago, but the massive weight of denial by all remaining family members (by not talking about the family dysfunction, the pervasive sadness against all outward appearances of success and advantage), equates to not having any hope of validation, let alone recovery). This lack of acknowledgment is almost as bad as the dysfunction and depression itself.

So no words of advice, as I have none. But, as many have shared here - and this does provide some rays of hope, and the validation lacking in my life otherwise - this Mayo Clinic Connect offers something other outlets have not so far - a mediated, moderated sharing of others sincerely describing their own struggles, and the Mayo Mentors that do an excellent job of moving it along and posing reasonable questions and often links to other sites, discussions and resources.

Thank you Mayo Clinic Connect and its participants for existing and maintaining a hopeful environment, often against - what for many of us feels like - all odds.