**Chronic pain rant below**
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Is it just me, or is it like, a common experience for everyone with chronic pain to gaslight yourself and feel like you’re just over exaggerating everything?
Like I have severe chronic pain to the point where I can’t work, and most of the time I’m stuck in bed. I frequently go 24+ hours without eating because I’m in too much pain to walk to my kitchen and make/eat food (even something quick like a microwave dinner), and there are times where I’m in so much pain that I literally will start crying because I can’t hold my bladder any longer and I have to go to the bathroom—which is 6 steps away from my room—to pee.
When i’m around other people, I never talk about my pain levels (with the exception of doctors), I’m autistic so I really can’t control my facial expressions, but unless I need to go to the ER, I always make sure not to complain, and the most I ever say is ‘I’m just not feeling good’ when i’m asked why i’m quiet/making a face, and yet i’m constantly being told that i’m being dramatic, that i’m a drama queen, etc..
My best friend works in the medical field, and knows all of my medical history, and she’s always trying to tell me that if anything I’m under-reacting, and that if my peers/family members were going through what I am, they’d be screaming, or sobbing, and would be going to the hospital, and a small part of me usually thinks that she’s right.
My doctor has even told me I have a really high pain tolerance; a few years ago, I broke my foot and didn’t even notice, I kept walking on it for 2.5 weeks and the only reason I even got it checked out at that point was because my foot had swollen so much that I couldn’t even fit it into my mom’s shoes (who’s feet are 4 sizes bigger than mine). When I finally got it checked out, the doctor told me that the people he’d seen grown men with the same type/placement of fracture, and they’d been completely unable to put weight on it, and rated it a 9/10–at its worst, the pain in my foot was a 3.5/10; for context, my normal, base level is a 6 (although it’s worth mentioning I really struggle with pain scales; to me an 8 is unbearable, can’t move, or talk, and there’s been points in the hospital where I’ve given a 9 and my heart rate had hit over 200bpm, and the doctors were worried I was going to go into cardiac arrest).
However, most of the time, I can’t help but wonder if maybe I AM being dramatic? Like what if I don’t have a high pain tolerance at all, and I’m actually experiencing something super minor? What if any normal person going through what I am would hardly notice it? What if normal, healthy people do experience the same pain i’m in, and are all just completely fine with it, and are still going about doing their daily activities, and I’m just not able to cope like they do?
Is this feeling/way of thinking something we all go through?
