When a person talks about medical struggles, we often immediately ask ourselves what could physically be wrong with them. There is a vast ocean of seen and unseen medical diagnoses, and our society has trained us to think that they all involve just the body in some way. Only in the past decade have other things really begun to surface, allowing for those struggling mentally to better come forth to reveal themselves. Even now, though, I've seen countless others struggling silently for fear of revealing their vulnerabilities and weaknesses.
In fact, just last year, I was one of those people.
From the first time I entered the world as an adult until April of this year - for nearly a decade of my life - my body has screamed at me for help. As a young person with dreams of serving in the military, I wanted with my entire being to just be able to physically do what everyone else was doing. But my body was simply underprepared and not designed for that kind of physical duress. Within two months of training, I had managed to fracture my hip bones and tear the ligament that seals my femur to my pelvis.
The physical implications were enough to later cause further destruction that led to a very swift medical discharge. I was in and out of the Army in eight short months. And it is my greatest shame in life.
My pain tolerance often reminds me of the Princess and the Pea.
As I near my thirties, I am finally taking charge of all of the mental damage this one event has caused. Today's session was especially hard. We talked about some of the events that have caused a skewed process of thinking and twisted out some answers that I now have to process and begin to understand. My fingers are covered in the ink from my feather pen as I tried to make journaling these thoughts more fun and inviting. My hands tremble at the thought of putting these thoughts, feelings, and ideas to paper and sharing it with the world.
But my hope with sharing this is that I help even one person work through their own troubles, especially the mental ones we never want to talk about.
The kind of injuries I had - some of which will never heal - are invisible. With them comes no casts, no braces, no outward sign of physical struggle. And when the pain becomes an everyday affair, limping dies away as the body adjusts and becomes accustomed to the new normal. Even scars from prior surgeries are hidden. No line on my knee. No scars on my arms or lower legs, nor on my face or even my upper back. Just three tiny dots of pink scar tissue that might show when I wear a bathing suit.
The looks were always the hardest part. Judgment reigns from even the people with the best of intentions. And despite what I knew and understood about myself, it was impossible to think that I was deserving of anything better.
This is where my imposter syndrome begins. I'm not sure yet where it ends, but I know that in time, I will eventually find out.
Going back to today, I had a talk about my thoughts on malingering and attention-seeking and what those ideas had to do with what I went through. There were many events during my short time in the Army where I thought of myself as a malingerer, and even as I continued care outside of the military, I still had those self-deprecating ideas. Who was I to take up a provider's precious time with such a minuscule issue that they can't even seem to solve?
My pain tolerance often reminds me of the Princess and the Pea. Miniscule as it is, my body still reacts to it. I have no control over those reactions, only in how I mentally respond. But there were many times where I just thought, "I'm just not good enough to ignore the pain. I'm weak. So I don't deserve any of the treatment I do get. I should just not react. That'll make the pain go away."
The mental drain of a grain of sand in your eye can make it very hard to focus on getting it out.
In fact, there were many occasions where I tried that method; I just wouldn't react. I wouldn't allow my brain the "satisfaction" of the attention it gets from me when it gives a cry for help. Most of the time, it just made the pain worse.
When I expressed all of these thoughts today, my therapist told me something that changed my thought process very heavily. She said that in everything that we do to our bodies, physical pain and energy and mental energy are linked. In fact, it's been proven many times that people with physical injuries who are also struggling mentally can take significantly longer to heal. Why is that? Because our brains are so focused on the mental aspect that there is no energy left to even worry about the physical aspect.
It reminded me of something I was told by the last physical therapist I saw. She told me that my injury was much like sand. Sand is everywhere, and when a single grain settles onto your skin, you probably won't even notice. Get that same grain in your eye, and it becomes the only thing you can think about. The mental drain of a grain of sand in your eye can make it very hard to focus on getting it out.
Today is the first day since my pain basically disappeared that I really started to feel that imposter syndrome work its way back up. And when it did, it was shot down by that one fact. After my short time in the Army, I struggled with so many mentally draining things in life. I struggled with my identity, my marriage, birthing a child, raising a child alone, and then identity again when I found a new partner - fearful that I was going to make the same mistakes as before. It was a vicious, self-harming cycle.
It was only after a few months of living with that partner - totally separated from my past life and all of its influencers - that I had finally begun to truly heal. And when I gave my mind and my heart time to heal, my body began to follow along like magic. Suddenly, I was no longer facing detrimental surgeries and chronic pain, but instead enjoying my life each day and working on my health as a whole instead of focusing on the same things over and over again.
I am not perfect, nor am I even excellent. If anything, I consider myself to be awesomely mediocre. But I am deserving. I am worth it. I am enough. Even when that tiny voice in my head says that I'm worth less than trash, I am enough.
And so are you.
If this is the kind of stuff you prefer to read, I'm ready to start talking about the events that led me here. Just let me know in the comments, and until next time, happy reading.
-Cass
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