Chronic pain and nervous system disregulation
Photo: Hal Gatewood/Unsplash
After years trying to get to the root of the anxiety and guilt I felt daily, I realised long-term nervous system disregulation was a big part of the picture.
Your nervous sytem is there to protect and propel you - an imperative, evolutionary biological function designed to keep you alive.
So when we dig deep into the science of long-term trauma or pain, it makes sense that it can lead to your nervous system becoming overactive or disregulated, zinging when and how it shouldn’t be.
But if you’re in fight or flight mode for years, living on egg shells because of abuse, neglect, or dealing with daily intense pain, the dial on your nervous system gets used to being set on ‘high.’
Symptoms of disregulation
Feeling on edge or overwhelmed
Insomnia and fatigue
Feeling irritable or sensitive to noise, sound, smell etc.
Chronic pain or illness
Difficulty focusing
Since understanding this biologial defence mechanism, and working to regulate it, my nervous system is starting to calm down. I’m seeing the benefits including a lower baseline of stress and anxiety, adverse events not immediately kicking off a pain flare, and also, hurrah, being less prone to crying at the drop of a hat.
Long-term pain naturally can lead to long term nervous system disregulation because it puts your nervous system in constant stress for prolonged periods.
The trouble with the nervous system is that it cannot easily distinguish between physical pain and emotional stress because the two things travel on the same pathways to the brain.
It can be why people with fibromyalgia often have a history of intense and prolonged stress, grief, abuse etc.
Years of abuse, neglect, pain, trauma - anything that leads to your nervous system being on high alert often - can disregulate its normal and vital functions.
Why it happens
Your nervous system being activated is a defence and warning mechanism, linking all the way back to our hunter/gatherer days. Being finely tuned to environmental hazards allowed humans to thrive and survive.
Over time, the biggest threats became largely neutralised - predators, extreme weather, exposure, starvation etc. - but that nervous system response didn’t just evolve out of us. The triggers changed, with our brain protecting us against other more common dangers - abuse, stress, neglect, pain, trauma.
For me, that nervous system disregulation presented as rage, anxiety, and insomnia. I had cognitive behaviour therapy (CBT) for many years, thinking it would give me better coping strategies for the anxiety, but I never reached a deeper resolution with the issues I was dealing with emotionally. This type of therapy didn’t dig deep enough to find the cause and was like sticking a plaster on a cut artery.
The root of my disregulation was not benign - long-term emotional abuse nearly destroyed me, long before my illnesses and pain took hold.
The change for me really came when I found intensive solution-focused therapy, having spent many months first learning about the issues I had unknowingly dealt with for decades.
I began working on things by myself, reading books by experts, completing homework, attending virtual seminars and all the things I could find. When I needed professional help for the latter stages of my emotional recovery, I sought an experienced therapist.
With the right therapy modality (framework or style), I next focused on the abuse, its impact on me, the grief, anger, sadness, and resulting guilt and anxiety. Only now, after all this active work - and time - has my nervous system started to settle.
The positive effects are quite extraordinary. First, I’ve been able to see in real-time the impact of stress or worry on my experience of pain, fatigue, flares etc. The regular therapy, wider reading, understanding, journaling extensively and continued guided work has helped me start to regulate my nervous system.
I no longer feel white-hot rage or anger. I do not lose my head in a red mist over minor things, or much at all actually. My emotions are more controlled. I do not cry as easily or as randomly as before, though I remain highly effected by videos and songs - something that has been linked to the empathy centre in the brain.
The misplaced guilt and unecessary people-pleasing have abated. I now have firm, healthy boundaries and am not afraid of protecting them.
In essence, I’ve learned regulating the nervous system can help you cope better with pain, and start to dampen down pain responses that are linked to emotions and the well-worn neural pathways of chronic pain.
For me, the physical pain of hEDS and endometriosis is real. They are two extremely painful conditions. Nothing really is going to fix that. But what the nervous system regulation is doing is helping to stop spikes of pain and peripheral symptoms going bonkers due to stress.
It’s not a perfect process or system, and I’m absolutely not saying the pain is in your head. Simply, the nervous system and its disregulation can quickly dial up pain and make you feel even worse.
Some of the things that have helped me better regulate my nervous system include:
*Knowledge. Understanding the mechanisms - and medical conditions - at play in my body has been enormously helpful.
*Therapy. The right kind for me.
*Journaling. I couldn’t go on about my problems 24/7 without driving my people around the bend so I journaled. A lot. Daily, multiple times a day even, until I was all journaled out. I love the Waffle app for journaling and sharing what I want, with who I want.
*Sleeping better. Better sleep hygiene, a set bedtime, doing the winding down as best suited me etc. helped. I still have painsomnia most nights but nervous system disregulation is not waking me up at 3am anymore - unless I’m disregulated from pain flare/stress and then I know why it’s happening and work to alleviate it.
*Medication. Sometimes self-work and therapt isn’t enough. I have needed a few nights worth of prescribed sleeping tablets to disrupt the acute zinging of my nervous system. It did wonders when necessary.
I hope this is helpful. Feel free to email me anytime through the contact tab in the header/footer.