Stress/Anxiety

[diamond]

How does stress and anxiety affect your fibromyalgia.

Is it instant pain or a response you feel a while later?

Does it cause a significant body wide increase in pain or just small increase short term?

Stress is a killer for me ...and pretty instant change.

Just wondered how/if it affects the rest of you lovely people.

 

[Brenda K]

Hi Diamond. I read in another post that you are having a bad time. Me too. I have been rea ding the board but didn't even feel well enough to put a message together. I too have that soul crushing burning pain, it's downright brutal. I wish I had a fix for that

With stress/anxiety I find if I get stressed or anxious or have an adrenaline rush that it turns to instant burning pain in my muscles and it's like I just hit a wall. My body will hurt and it feels like I have cinder blocks ties to my limbs I feel very heavy and become extremely off balance.
Most days it will stay with me for the whole day, usually longer. Lately I have been taking a Lorazepam and a muscle relaxant when this stress comes on to try and stay ahead of the pain so to speak. I find the Lorazepam helps calm me quicker and between that and the muscle relaxant I feel very tired so I will lay down and actually get some sleep, which for me is rare as I barely sleep ever. But when I wake up it's usually less severe.... I've just started this so I will see if it really doesn't help or if it's just been a lucky fluke.... or maybe the sleep is actually helping me lol

We had our first big snowfall on the weekend. Oh joy having to shovel that just about did me in. Spent two days in bed... at one point I thought I was trapped in my bed because I couldn't even lift my duvet off me I was so weak. I swear it weighed a hundred pounds that day. Ha ha can you imagine? Help I'm stuck under my covers.... ha ha ha.

 

[Tipnatee N]

It strike at the instant and kept on getting worsen.

It's wide spread all over then the shock or lighting strike just kept on coming, naucouse sick to my guts , on an off feeling like being burning alive , my organs twitch and spasms, my body seize up, vertigo, if very lucky then sleep attack on off with extreme muscle weakness or suffering on going panic/ hyperventilate attack , heavy pains on the whole spine like just woken up from the terrible care accidents without pain killer with a severe whiplash, around the body feeling like stitch pains/electric shocking /pins needle/ stabbing pains all happening at once I can't keep up.

Yeah, stress is hell on earth for me, not to mention the mentally situation that it also bring along after. I could just having a good day and then at the instant the stress hit , I've got suddenly thrown right in to the war zone just like that. All my sense are overload I only could pray for my body to shut down as soon as I can cause usually there will always be a long sleepless night or loads of sleep disturbance , terrible vivid dreams , awful hallucination , and many more of the crazy roller coaster ride. :-(

 

[Tipnatee N]

Me too. Branda K

I really like lorazepam for the stress relating sleep problem also. Not as much of the bad physical side effect like the warning lable said lol ( :lol: yes the death part) . My only side effect from it is massive fibro fog after.

lol the duvet cover is too heavy for me , I like thick plush fleece blankets but on bad night I kept get it tangle up my body ( thanks to restless legs) I couldn't get up cause literally get I tied up in bed . :mrgreen: Somebody please UNTIED ME!

 

[diamond]

oh you guys thanks so much for sharing....not that its good because you are suffering too...but at least i know its not just my body that responds like we all describe....mine just got stuck.

I take diazepam to try and ease the anxiety of being like this but it doesn't help....lol i don't even know Ive taken it. I know we build tolerance but honestly i could double or treble the dose and still wake with my adrenaline pumping even if the pills put me to sleep.

Its like my mind finally is saying i cant do this at this level anymore.

I have always had a problem where sleep doesn't allow my mind to escape my emotions...so through trauma times or high stress my mind doesn't shut off to sleep...the wounds or fears come out in my sleep with nightmares...hot sweats and adrenaline pumping hard even though i do eventually sleep i wake like ive been 9 rounds with a world champion boxer and terrible migraine.

And my stress tolerance is now so low...what would have been a mild worry now feels overwhelming..i could cry at the drop of a hat..lol or less!

I hope you lovely people do have some better days..this is no fun for any of us.hugs to you

 

[diamond]

BrendaK oh my shovelling snow....i hope you don't have to do that too often but Im guessing in Manitoba snow is frequent companion from now on through out winter ...pretty but brr cold and hard work!

 

[vickythecat]

This is a question I really had to think about for a while.

Anxiety is such a constant in my life, just like pain. It seems they are both there all the time. (If I am not anxious about what will happen to me today, I will be anxious about the rain forests in the amazon, knowing how many animals are being killed every single second, then the doorbell will ring, on starts my social anxiety - even though I never answer the door...)

But stress...my body reacts to it instantly. Then adrenaline kicks in; I will experience intense pain, often also in the weirdest corners of my body (left big toe, my right bicep, my eyebrow...), but I can't sit still. I will eat, without knowing what I am eating (opening and closing the fridge over and over again). I'll mumble things to myself, I might move things around the house (and lose them!) etc. But I cannot be still. This can last hours.

Night times are worst with the burning pain, so I already take a muscle relaxant to ease my body, but lately I also started taking lorazepam once/twice a week....The muscle relaxant might relax my body, but I might lay awake all night with a brain on overdrive. The lorazepam allows my brain to rest.

 

[diamond]

May i ask do you recover again to a tolerable level or quality of life some days...able to go out or be a bit busy pottering around?

 

[diamond]

vicky i just saw your post ..yes i know that pace around feeling....you have to keep moving cant concentrate and don't even know what youve done or are doing...racing thoughts supercharged feeling.

That's how i got over the things ive shared with some of you guys and it carried on for so long...then the pain and weakness got so bad that caused the same adrenaline feeling except my body eventually crashed and never recovered...but it still feels like adrenaline rush a lot of the time but the energy burst it used to give...that pacing around my body can no longer do.

So im often in bed with my body being pounded by adrenaline but me still and laying here against what feel like an attack.

If only a way to fix this mechanism maybe i could improve.

So much more i could say to explain but dont really feel able on a forum...not to you guys but i often forget this is a public place.

 

[Tipnatee N]

oh yes .. diamond you made sense to me perfectly.

I have been studying my own patterns of stress for more than a few years now trying to find the way to control it, funny how we all have our own solid pattern of how we react to things with stress or anxiety. Once I learned , then I tried to aviod and if it's unaviodable the I'll find what kind of thing I can use to reflecting of soften the blow effectively so I can maneuver my stress/anxiety better by thinking about my reaction and all action like jigsaw puzzles pieces that need to be connecting correctly in to their places.

It's kinda like keeping my mind outside of what attacking me in to somewhat meditating stage/ semi self hypnosis / or day dreaming.

First deep breath a few times try to claim my heart rates as much as I could, then close my eyes and use my vivid imagination that if I could stop time and stepping out of my own body to walk around the room with everything or everybody else all frozen in places , then looking back at my own suffering body like I'm someone else trying to help gently. What do I see? .Open my eyes looking around the places what do I see that can be useful? What used to help me before, maybe I can do that...Then I starting to figure out more plan from there.

It's tough for me not to stray my vivid imagination and letting it run wild so everytime I stray, I imagining looking back at my self and keep breathing in the same paces.

Some people might find it crazy but I often separating my self in my mind to protecting me from going crazier than I already am. If multiple personality type people can conjure up another personality to protect one self from stress. Why can't I do the same? Well in theory anyway. I don't think I'm that crazy yet lol.

 

[vickythecat]

May i ask do you recover again to a tolerable level or quality of life some days...able to go out or be a bit busy pottering around?

Thankfully I do. But it usually takes a while, especially after a stressful event.

I had an anxiety attack yesterday and did nothing all day. But today, I woke up with the usual pains plus a deep pelvic/rectal pain (hard to explain). My sister wanted to go to a mall, she was driving, so I decided to tag along as I had not been there in months. I took 4 paracetamol (which did not do much, but I figure half of the effect can be placebo) I walked a little bit, but had to sit down and take rests as she continued to shop. The mall and the traffic were thankfully also very calm and empty. (and I bought some decent shower gels and body creams - ready to combat the itchy winter skin )

I know you are going through a very tough patch right now. I really hope you will feel a bit better soon.

 

[Brenda K]

Diamond
Sometimes I recover fairly quick, all depends on how bad I was doing in the first place.
Lately though, it just keeps happening and in the past two weeks I have spent more time in bed in the dark as my sensory issues are also on overload right now.
I did something completely crazy. I had a realtor come out yesterday and am planning to put my house up on the market asap.... enter more stress and anxiety! So now I have a million things to do and no energy to actually get them done. I was trying to sand a little portion of wall that I had patched. I am so weak that it wasn't sanding. I had to get the grittiest sandpaper I could find just to do it. I just have no strength in my hands or arms right now. It's so frustrating.
I also get that pace around feeling. I think it comes from my mind wanting to get up and do stuff but my body just can't get it together so I get really anxious and start pacing and wringing my hands and I seem to sigh constantly.
I also have no concentration and seem to have 20 projects on the go but just can't seem to finish them. Or I wander from room to room completely lost, not knowing why I am there. I will also take something out of the cupboard and when I go to put it back I draw a blank as to where it was and find myself putting it on one shelf then taking it off and putting it on another. Sometimes I will do this 5 or 6 times like I have OCD or something, but I draw a total blank and cannot figure out a place for it. Why? I mean really, does it matter which shelf it's on? Why can't I just put it down and walk away from it? Because my mind will not let me....it's maddening!

 

[Peaceandquiet]

Diamond, stress is also a killer for me.

It has always affected me in that adrenaline surge sort of way as well. Have you heard the term "adrenaline junkie"? Well, those people are like aliens to me. They do all sorts of things to get an adrenaline buzz! Exact opposite to us.

Stress or tension of any kind causes me headaches, migraines, instant neck, shoulder and back pain, sleeplessness and much more. I avoid it totally where possible.

Lately, I just put myself to bed in times of stress and cover my face with the bedsheet like a little child might. Funny, but it works.

 

[moe1959]

have you tried Amnitriptolaine? Its a old antidepressant, perscr ibed to help sleep. Start out low 25 mg and work your way up slowly as needed. Its helped me out. There can be s8de effects , like anything else.

 

[moe1959]

I call that resting my brain.