If The Body Keeps The Score, Am I Winning or Losing?

In which I examine what it means to have no diagnosis but plenty of pain to work through.

Photo by Kinga Howard on Unsplash

For the past three days, my all-over body pain has had a resurgence. As I type this it feels like I’ve been wearing a face-mask that burns and tingles. My muscles are heavy and easily fatigued. My hands and thighs feel pins and needles but there is no evidence on my skin.

I’m sick of talking about how sick I feel! I’m sick of being a burden to my family, I told my therapist in a counseling session that took place in my parked car. Rain pattered down on the windows and my coffee sat next to me cold.

Is that true? No. I am not a burden, but I am sick and I am sick of hearing myself think or talk about it. Yet, I am here. Talking about how I honestly feel because that is the promise I made to God ten years ago: to never lie about my mental health again.

I have a fear that my daughter will grow up with a mother who can’t take care of herself. I’ll be on the couch and she’ll be walking out the door with my husband to go do something without me.

Or maybe she won’t be out doing things and she’ll be home, taking care of me because I’m too exhausted and sick to help care for the home.

My therapist listens to me over the video call. Is that something we should try to process today? That fear?

Lindsay Johnstone

recently shared with her Writing For Better Mental and Physical Health class the following excerpt from The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel A. van der Kolk:

Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: The past is alive in the form of gnawing interior discomfort. Their bodies are constantly bombarded by visceral warning signs, and, in an attempt to control these processes, they often become expert at ignoring their gut feelings and in numbing awareness of what is played out inside. They learn to hide from their selves’

’Being frightened means that you live in a body that is always on guard.

Suddenly the word disability was in front of my face. It was on my bed, as I drank coffee and felt the aches and shocks of my body at 4am. It was staring me down and forcing me to confront its reality. This mystery illness has disabled me and I am not able to maintain my house well.

I doubt the people in my life would know this from their interactions with me.

I still show up to the things I do like grocery shopping, family dinners, taking my daughter to the zoo, and church. My husband is the only one who sees the meticulous amount of work I spend thinking of how I’m going to negotiate energy. He is the only who sees me collapse into bed at 7pm but spend the night not sleeping. He’s the one doing twice as much housework as Before to cover my own cleaning time.

Being honest about the fact I am IN pain is a blessing but it doesn’t take away the masking I do. I can’t start crying or jump up when the pain suddenly jolts or burns in me. I ponder my potential failures as a mother and spouse on a daily basis.

There are other big, scary words I have heard in this journey of undiagnosed pain: multiple sclerosis (now cleared by an MRI as not my diagnosis) and fibromyalgia (the one thing with no tests or cure).

My doctor assumes it’s fibromyalgia with pain activated by trauma. That sentence took me a month to accept its possibility but even now it feels aggravating because it’s like a game of Mad Libs; my doctors are filling in the blanks and hoping a diagnosis makes sense. Even my own primary physician (bless this woman) spoke to me about her own frustrations in not knowing how to help me.

Don’t worry, I say over the phone appointment to her, we’ll just keep working through this together.

First to note, fibromyalgia is a diagnosis given by process of elimination and, secondly… trauma?

Does it make sense that my body taking life’s punches in the past five years without treatment would activate my nervous system to never calm down? Yes. But I still find a mental resistance to accepting that anger-inducing phrase every doctor repeats to me: the body keeps the score.

This anger could be grief knocking at my door. I still don’t know if I want to accept it.

Throughout this month, I am interviewing five wonderful mothers on the topic of building community called Nurturing Spaces. I invite you to read more about this project in my previous newsletters.

I expect these podcast episodes and accompanying newsletters to be released beginning the third week of February, so there is still time to subscribe as a free reader or financial backer to Motherhood Minute.

Lastly, I invite you to subscribe to my other newsletter for biblical encouragement. You can read more about my health and life’s pains here. I’m hoping to develop this more in 2024.

Where do we place our hope in hopeless situations?