Brutkey

Alex Haist
@alexhaist@wandering.shop

Weird physical stuff 1

Background: I am physically disabled. I had a slipped rib digging into my intercostal nerve for a year plus. Surgery to remove the rib saved my life in 2020. After surgery I could eat without horrible pain and nausea, but I have wild pain when I physically exert myself at all. I got a hyper mobile EDS diagnosis, which has led me to my current theory:

It is the way I am moving, not just the fact I am moving, that hurts me.

Alex Haist
@alexhaist@wandering.shop

All my life, I have hurt myself when I move. This is a big hand wave, but because nothing whatsoever appeared to be wrong with me according to doctors, everyone, me included, explained and even processed the physical pain as emotional distress. Mood swings. Depression. Suicidal ideation. I had so many years of therapy, and they were a huge help in managing my rollercoaster brain. The psych meds helped, too.

Alex Haist
@alexhaist@wandering.shop

I was still crazy. The essence of the feeling was that I was fundamentally untrustworthy. I was an imposter to competence, someone who could never quite get it together. ADHD diagnosis helped, and so did the focus meds. You see, the better you can focus, the better you can ignore pain. But I kept being unreliable from what I thought of as emotional exhaustion. Spoiler: it wasn't emotional.

Alex Haist
@alexhaist@wandering.shop

Because of the hyper mobility, every time I exerted myself, I overstrained every involved ligament and tendon. It was like a background static in my head. I know now it was pain because of the way I moved: fast, like I was tossing a hot potato from hand to hand. I know now that crying panic attacks when required to move with slow awareness were a sign that moving hurt, and focusing on the pain was distressing.