Originally posted 12 April 2019
As time passes, I’m starting to get the hang of this, and not always in a good way. I now know the signs of the beginning of a flare, a term I didn’t even know existed until the last year or so. It started yesterday. I seem to feel the worst pain in the evening, starting at about 5pm, and that’s obviously super exaggerated during a flare. How do others get through flares? I haven’t found anything that stops the pain. I’ve tried magnesium cream, my black seed oil balm, and my TENS machine. Nothing dents it once it’s bad.
The dread that accompanies a flare is possibly worse than the pain. What if one day I genuinely don’t want to face it anymore? This evening my partner has gone upstairs to play online games, and I’m sitting alone with my pain. He lay with me last night when it was bad, but I won’t ask him to do it every night. I hope this isn’t painful for any of you, I can see how it might be, and I apologise. It’s just that this group is the one place I can be real about what I’m facing, apart from talking to my partner. Thanks for being here.
Radical acceptance
Many years after this post, I learned about the concept of radical acceptance. Accepting things that cannot be changed helps to reduce suffering. This is much more difficult than it sounds. A therapist told me that when you feel resentment (or dread or anger, etc) about your pain, then you are adding to the burden you already have.
I am carrying the burden of pain. I choose not to carry the burden of resentment on top of my existing burden. Accepting it doesn’t mean that I embrace it, or approve of it. It just means that I accept there’s nothing I can do about it.
Like I said, this took many years to get to, and every now and again I still have resentment or anger, but I’m able to move past it, and my mental health is much improved.
